Problem with harddrive?

Hey, how's everyone doing? I have a problem. It seems that shortly after I installed my new video card, which was about 4 months ago, and was forced to move my hard drive in a different place in my tower, my hard drive started acting weird. My hard drive was old and it died on me last week. I bought and installed a brand new 250GB WD IDE 7200RPM 8mb buffer hard drive 2 days ago and believed that all my hard drive problems would be solved. But this one weird thing still happens to me. I often hear, usually when running a few programs or so (but sometimes it happens with very little CPU usage) a sort of "cheek" sound coming from my tower (sounds somewhat like the sound when you turn off power to your computer and the fading sound). I moved closer to it, and it seems to be coming from my hard drive. And when this sound does happen, my computer usually freezes for about 10-15 second before unfreezing and going back to normal. And as weird as it sounds, the first time i heard this was on my old hard drive when i moved it further down in my tower so that my video card could fit nicely. Any idea to what could be going on? I mean the hard drive is brand new, so I'm not sure whats going on.. Those freezes are getting somewhat annoying...

Thanks,
Marko

 

Hey there. Is your rig OC'd at all? What PSU are you using?

 

Well i OC my video card (Radeon X850) a little bit with ATI Tool when i play games, but i bring it back to original speeds when i'm done. Other than that, nothing is OC'd. I have a 500W PSU.

 

try to determine if the sound is definately coming from the hard drive
sound origin can be surprisingly deceptive in a PC Case

Try the old screwdriver stethoscope trick (carefully !)

 

Umm could you explain to me what that is? And what else could make that sort of sound?

PS: I figured something else out... When I tap my tower, that "cheeeek" sound happens and is followed by the computer freezing for a few seconds... Any ideas?

 

I can hardly even guess at what a 'cheek' sound is

perhaps a scraping sound ?
or a fan bearing about to crap itself ?

I had a similar sound issue a couple of weeks ago and could have sworn it was coming from the hard drive, turned out it was coming from a fan 3 to 4 inches below the hard drive. flicked the fan with my finger and its been fine ever since.

the screwdriver stethoscope 'trick' is just a way mechanics and fitters listen to bearings, hold one end of the screwdriver up to the suspect part and the other to your ear and the sound will travel more accurately to your ear

Similar to listening through a wall with a glass (if you are that way inclined)

If you can bring this noise on by tapping your tower
it indicates that something is possibly loose
I would check that all case screws are tight, look for anything that may be vibrating / rubbing against something else
concentrate on fans and cables. (graphics card included)

As to the computer freezing, sorry I dont know.
It may indicate that you are right that it is a hard drive problem
could also be RAM,PSU,Graphics card - possibly any component

check all connections
perhaps disconnect any case fans and see if tapping the case still brings about the noise.

To be on the safe side you may want to back up your data - just in case
and then go through the process of elimination

sorry couldnt be more help