So what was the solution in the end? A new power adapter. I had not noticed this noise coming from the power adapter, but low and behold mine was making the same sound. The power supply adapter a made high pitch sound (not very noticeable unless up close) and upon opening the board had burnt brown areas and the capacitors where bulging out the tops. Problems included bad booting up, clicking noises, freezes and a complete failure to mount ( link) Two of them described what was happening to my drive perfectly. Now this is where the love of the internet comes into play. The third hit was a blog post entitled LaCie Big Disk Extreme Failure. My first google on the subject was "lacie big disk extreme sucks" (realizing later mine was not 'extreme'). It sounded like it really wanted to but it just couldn't.
Sure enough the LaCie drive failed to mount. I debated a while and then bought a Drobo last week! Now I have 4TB usable on the local network :)Īfter playing around with the Drobo I decided it was time to fire up the LaCie and back it up. This started to freak me out since I had nowhere to back up 1TB. The drive would also emit a loud hissing noise while running. Very recently the drive decided to start making some strange noises while struggling to start up. But, if one drive fails then you lose all your data! This means that the data is 'striped' across two 500GB drives for performance. The only problem with this external drive is that it is setup in a RAID 0. I bought a LaCie 1TB Big Disk a couple of years ago and it slowly became my "everything disk". If the device is powered by USB, or another interface, test with a different cable, a different port, or on another computer as it might mean the interface cable is faulty. For other kinds of beeps and their meanings, check the specific drive model’s User Guide.There are days when you just have to say, "I fuckin' love the internets!!", more on that in a minute.
If it has its own power supply, test with another supply which is compatible. In most cases, a single intermittent beep means the drive isn’t getting enough power. Another hint is that the drive no longer spins up (doesn’t whir or vibrate), and some models will also emit an intermittent but regular beep.Įxternal Hard drives will only beep if they’re experiencing an issue. If the humming is pronounced, or you can hear occasional crackles coming from it, it’s possible the power supply is no longer supplying enough power to the drive. If an external HDD has its own power supply, as mentioned earlier, it’s normal to hear a slight humming coming from it. When possible, compare to other drives known to be healthy. But if a hard clicking persists or is accompanied by any kind of repeating clunking (or grinding) sound, then there is likely a physical issue with the drive. Mentioned above, a solitary hard clicking sound can mean the heads are getting parked.
A healthy drive emits mild and regular sounds of whirring. Compare multiple drives when possible to establish a normal vibration baseline. Listen for irregularities in the vibrations as well. While all spinning drives will cause a modicum of vibration, a faulty drive can experience exaggerated and abnormal vibrations. When HDDs spin, they create vibrations and vibrations from an HDD sitting on a desk may cause other objects on the desk, or even the desk itself, to emit a sound. These can also produce sounds which can be more noticeable in warmer environments where the fan will kick in sooner and more often – this sounds like the HDD whirring mentioned above. Some external drive enclosures have internal fans, especially devices with multiple hard drives.
The HDD’s heads, which read and write the data, are constantly making rapid movements as well – this usually sounds like an occasional soft click during use but can sound like a hard click when the heads get parked, for example during shutdown or when entering sleep mode. While an HDD is reading or writing data, the disk’s platters are spinning rapidly – this typically emits a whirring sound and can be more pronounced when an HDD is winding up or down. Even if not actively being accessed by a user, hard drives are often used by the computer in the background, for example, during automatic indexing.