[rescue] An interesting sound

[Kurt Huhn]

> One of my PC's on my desk at work (the Solaris 8 box) has started making
> strange sounds from the hard disk I believe.  It was silent then out of
> nowhere I hear light tiny sounds that remind me of a circular saw
> contacting something it's cutting... not loud or anything... it happens
> every now and then fading in and out.  I telnetted in and its still
> happily running.  It's a test machine anyways and I haven't done anything
> with it for the 22 days it has been up so far.  HD failing?
>

What you're hearing is chatter from the bearings that support the spindle,
upon which the platters are mounted.  This *sometimes* means that the
bearings *might* fail.  I've seen drives that operate just fine for a couple
years after they start to make this noise - and I've seen others that will
run fine, until the drive spins down, then it refuses to spin up.

Just because a drive makes this noise doesn't mean it's going to fail - but
sometimes this is indicative of a pending failure of these bearings.

What does one do?  I guess it all depends on your comfort level.  Replace
the drive, or not.  However, if I were you, I would make sure you've got
importnat data being backed up regularly in the even thtat the drive fails.
Personally, I'll make regular backups and replace the drive if/when it
fails.

Kurt