Are these noises normal?

[Nicki2012]

My windows 7 crashed and showed me a blue screen. The ensuing action of win 7 was dumping memory stash. After that, win 7 might have shut down my HDD, an seagate, server-grade.

I said "might have" because later, during the reboot session, my HDD yield a conspicuous spin-up noise, and it took a while for the BIOS to read the SMART status. The noise that most motors would make when spinning up. It is pretty loud, but don't get the wrong idea, it's not that loud as I have little ambient noise.

Then came the part that really worried me: right after the spin-up noise, there was a low "puuuf" sound, I really can't describe it in words, as I can't really tell if it is "hum" or the HDD just resonated with my computer case, which was purely accidental.

To make the concept easier to grasp, have you ever used those old-time 3.5' 1.44mb drives? Those drives makes this "puuuf" "dwoo" sound when operating. Yea, that's the kind of sound, but not really exactly the same.

Or it could be the air pressure that built in during the abnormal shutdown-spin-up sequence. Of course, this is purely my speculation.

[Vulcan]

it took a while for the BIOS to read the SMART status.

That behaviour likely means you've got a problem with the drive, as there is no good reason for a drive causing a (measurable) delay reporting its SMART status. As always (and especially with that indication of an internal drive problem), the drive could fail at any time. This drive problem might even have been the cause of the Win7 crash.

There are several possible options, depending on the value of the data on the drive, whether you have a recent backup or not (and how much data is not backed-up), your attitude to risk, your skills (if you decide to take the risk of DIY activities), your budget etc. etc.

If you give more info about the current situation, then readers might be able to give more replies.

[Nicki2012]

it took a while for the BIOS to read the SMART status.

That behaviour likely means you've got a problem with the drive, as there is no good reason for a drive causing a (measurable) delay reporting its SMART status. As always (and especially with that indication of an internal drive problem), the drive could fail at any time. This drive problem might even have been the cause of the Win7 crash.

There are several possible options, depending on the value of the data on the drive, whether you have a recent backup or not (and how much data is not backed-up), your attitude to risk, your skills (if you decide to take the risk of DIY activities), your budget etc. etc.

If you give more info about the current situation, then readers might be able to give more replies.

Thank you, I feel I need to clarify a few things:

It's a new drive.
It has performed rather stably.
The delay happened BEFORE the HD was spin up, as soon as the motor reached the normal speed, the SMART was displayed immediately, WITHOUT delay.

There is some strange though, I can't read health status using HD tune. Don't know why.

Would an error scan by HD tune help decide it's actual status?

[Vulcan]

Thanks for the clarifications.

It's a new drive.

You haven't answered my question about whether you need the data on the drive, and whether you have a current backup. If the drive has a problem (remember I can't hear the sounds you mention, so I'm having to guess what the sounds might be), anything you do has risks - drives can become unreadable without any warning. It's your choice as to what actions you choose to do.

It has performed rather stably.

Why do you say rather stably? That could suggest that you have some concerns. Have there been any other problems before now?

Has the drive always made the spin-up sound that you mention, or is this new behaviour - e.g. only since the Win7 crash? I think you're saying that this noise is definitely new (which is bad news), but I'm not sure.

The delay happened BEFORE the HD was spin up, as soon as the motor reached the normal speed, the SMART was displayed immediately, WITHOUT delay.

Thanks, that explains the delay in the BIOS displaying the SMART status, since SMART data is held on the platters, so the drive can't report it's SMART status until the platters are spinning. However this suggests that the drive took a long time to spin-up (not just being noisy), since usually a drive would be spinning before the end of even a "fast" BIOS POST. I'm assuming that the BIOS displayed the drive's SMART status as "pass" (since you didn't say it was reported as "fail"), but of course SMART is not guaranteed to predict all failures, so a SMART "pass" does not mean that the drive is OK.

There is some strange though, I can't read health status using HD tune. Don't know why.

A screenshot may help, as well as you checking the Windows System Event Log for any error messages at the relevant time (especially any that appear disk-related). Without an error message or more data, I don't know why you can't see the expected info in HD Tune either, other than to say this also sounds worrying.

Would an error scan by HD tune help decide it's actual status?

You could do that, although there's no guarantee of a conclusive answer and it may be the final straw for a failing drive, or try another utility to read the full SMART data from the drive, and include that in your reply and ask readers here if that gives a hint...

If the data on the drive is important and you don't have a current backup, then instead of investigating, personally I suggest the priority should be cloning the drive or using any other technique you prefer to get a backup of the data that you need (all options have risks, because we can't predict if/when the drive may fail). A long spin-up time is a bad sign.

[Nicki2012]

Thanks Vulcan, thank you very much for your patient response!

Thanks for the clarifications.

You are welcome. My pleasure.

You haven't answered my question about whether you need the data on the drive, and whether you have a current backup.

I'm gonna get it backed up ASAP. Thanks for the heads up.

Why do you say rather stably? That could suggest that you have some concerns. Have there been any other problems before now?

No, no other problems at all.

Has the drive always made the spin-up sound that you mention, or is this new behaviour - e.g. only since the Win7 crash?

No it does not always, but I recall faintly this happened before as Win7 has some errant behavior: after installing updates, it will shutdown my harddrive first, then reboot, instead of just reboot, after that, there is an interval of spin-up, but the speed is quite normal.

I feel that right after the crash AND after win7 DUMPED ALL THE DATA, win7 shutdown my drive INTENTIONALLY. I think it makes sense though, If I wrote this part of Operating system, I would do the same — if you don't shut it down, and if it is the fault of the HDD, the problem would persist after rebooting. But this is, again, my personal speculation, and please do excuse my digression. My point being, the shutdown was caused by Win7 rather than a genuine piece of hardware failure.

Oh and, the spin-down is rather noisy too and quite slow comparing to other drives that I had before. Please allow me to emphasize that "noisy" because my ambient noise is rather low. It's not even as noisy as toy motors.

I think you're saying that this noise is definitely new (which is bad news), but I'm not sure.

Why bad? The "pooh" sound is new, but spin-down noise is rather familiar to me.

Thanks, that explains the delay in the BIOS displaying the SMART status, since SMART data is held on the platters, so the drive can't report it's SMART status until the platters are spinning. However this suggests that the drive took a long time to spin-up (not just being noisy), since usually a drive would be spinning before the end of even a "fast" BIOS POST.

My point is, I know I'm starting to sound repetitive, WIN7 somehow managed to shutdown my HDD COMPLETELY, the drive wasn't initiated UNTIL SMART check, or this could just be the glitch of my Motherboard. I'm fairly sure that the HDD was shutdown first, for reasons that I do not know.

Or it could be the protective mechanism of my HDD, since turning it on immediately after turning if off would be damaging, I suppose, so there is some kind of delay action circuit, I think?

I'm assuming that the BIOS displayed the drive's SMART status as "pass" (since you didn't say it was reported as "fail"), but of course SMART is not guaranteed to predict all failures, so a SMART "pass" does not mean that the drive is OK.

I pressed F10 in MHDD and it did a screencap, but it was saved as .log file, which I haven't yet figured out how to read it.

A screenshot may help, as well as you checking the Windows System Event Log for any error messages at the relevant time (especially any that appear disk-related). Without an error message or more data, I don't know why you can't see the expected info in HD Tune either, other than to say this also sounds worrying.

The problem is probably caused by WIN7, as MHDD read the full, detailed SMART attribute, again, I don't know how to open it.

If the data on the drive is important and you don't have a current backup, then instead of investigating, personally I suggest the priority should be cloning the drive or using any other technique you prefer to get a backup of the data that you need (all options have risks, because we can't predict if/when the drive may fail). A long spin-up time is a bad sign.

Thank you again for the heads up, I'm posting the full surface scan by MHDD here:

Average speed, 120M+
<3ms, 7657632
<10 3102
<50, 96
<150ms, 4 — 4 green dot, should I worry even more?
No sectors > 150ms.

1T drive, scan cost 2hour 22minute.

[Vulcan]

There were some parts of your reply which I didn't really understand, but I'll comment on the parts which I can.

I think you're saying that this noise is definitely new (which is bad news), but I'm not sure.

Why bad? The "pooh" sound is new, but spin-down noise is rather familiar to me.

Without hearing the specific sounds, everything I am saying is a guess based on my interpretation of your comments, and I could be wrong. However any new sound from a drive might be the only advance warning that you'll get of an impending failure. That's why new sounds are bad news.

The noise from a drive when power is simply cut (e.g. press & hold the PC power-off button for >5s), i.e. without the drive receiving a Standby command first (which happens during a normal Windows shutdown or reboot), will be a different sound. Reading your previous comments, I'm not sure whether the new sounds are occurring every time the drive spins-up/down or whether you are just describing one event. However if the usual spin-up or spin-down sound has changed, than that would worry me.

I pressed F10 in MHDD and it did a screencap, but it was saved as .log file, which I haven't yet figured out how to read it.

I don't have MHDD in front of me at the moment, but I'm fairly sure that it's just a text file (try looking at it with Notepad / Wordpad etc.). Or you could just take a photo of the screen with MHDD displaying the data, and attach that file to your reply (the image only has to be good enough for us to read the text, but without being a huge jpg file!)

MHDD read the full, detailed SMART attribute, again, I don't know how to open it.

Same comment as above.

I'm posting the full surface scan by MHDD here:

Average speed, 120M+
<3ms, 7657632
<10 3102
<50, 96
<150ms, 4 — 4 green dot, should I worry even more?
No sectors > 150ms.

I don't see any cause for worry in that data, but as always, that doesn't prove that the drive is OK.

Let's see whether the full SMART data gives any clues. Also, you said this is a Seagate drive - have you downloaded & run the SeaTools tests on the drive? If not then, after you have made a backup of this drive (and checked that the backup is readable ), I suggest running the SeaTools tests.

Also I didn't see any reply to my earlier suggestion that you checked the Windows System Event Log for any error messages at the relevant time (especially any that appear disk-related). I have seen many previous examples where useful messages were logged there.

Without having the drive in front of me, those are the only suggestions I can think of

[Nicki2012]

There were some parts of your reply which I didn't really understand, but I'll comment on the parts which I can.

The noise from a drive when power is simply cut (e.g. press & hold the PC power-off button for >5s), i.e. without the drive receiving a Standby command first (which happens during a normal Windows shutdown or reboot), will be a different sound. Reading your previous comments, I'm not sure whether the new sounds are occurring every time the drive spins-up/down or whether you are just describing one event. However if the usual spin-up or spin-down sound has changed, than that would worry me.

Please tell me what are those parts. Win 7 behave strangely on my PC from time to time and I really don't know why.

As for the spin-up and spin-down, I suppose they should make the same noise just in an opposite manner? One should makes an "rising up" noise that gets louder by the seconds, another would be the opposite, or shall we say, gets more quiet until the motor stops.

This is my speculation. The spin-down hasn't changed, but the spin-up I heard was definitely new.

I don't have MHDD in front of me at the moment, but I'm fairly sure that it's just a text file (try looking at it with Notepad / Wordpad etc.). Or you could just take a photo of the screen with MHDD displaying the data, and attach that file to your reply (the image only has to be good enough for us to read the text, but without being a huge jpg file!)

Yep, you are right:

Name Val Worst Raw
Att # 1 : Read error rate : 81 63 142604390
Att # 3 : Spin up time : 94 94 0
Att # 4 : Number of spin-up times : 100 100 88
Att # 5 : Reallocated sectors count : 100 100 0
Att # 7 : Seek error rate : 73 60 24544101
Att # 9 : Power-on time : 100 100 630
Att # 10 : Spin-up retries : 100 100 0
Att # 12 : Start/stop count : 100 100 87
Att # 184 : Unknown : 100 100 0
Att # 187 : Unknown : 100 100 0
Att # 188 : Unknown : 100 100 0
Att # 189 : Unknown : 100 100 0
Att # 190 : Unknown : 66 65 587923490
Att # 191 : Unknown : 100 100 0
Att # 192 : Power-off retract count : 100 100 4
Att # 193 : Load/unload cycle count : 100 100 88
Att # 194 : HDA Temperature : 34 40 34
Att # 195 : Hardware ECC recovered : 117 99 142604390
Att # 197 : Current pending sectors : 100 100 0
Att # 198 : Offline scan UNC sectors : 100 100 0
Att # 199 : Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate : 200 200 0

Let's see whether the full SMART data gives any clues. Also, you said this is a Seagate drive - have you downloaded & run the SeaTools tests on the drive? If not then, after you have made a backup of this drive (and checked that the backup is readable ), I suggest running the SeaTools tests.

Also I didn't see any reply to my earlier suggestion that you checked the Windows System Event Log for any error messages at the relevant time (especially any that appear disk-related). I have seen many previous examples where useful messages were logged there.

Without having the drive in front of me, those are the only suggestions I can think of

I'll check it with seatools ASAP when I had time.

About the log, I'm gonna have to be straight, I don't know exactly how to save one.

The recent critical failure is ID 41 Kernel Power. I dunno what it is but I can tell ya my Power source works very stable although it is an aged one. Power outage here is a rare case and would not go unnoticed. I have other comps around so they would fail too but they didn't.

Thanks for your help, please keep them coming. I could use more. Any information you need, just ask.