Hi,
I have a laptop with a SAMSUNG HM500JI hard disk. From time to time (usually not at all for weeks/months, then a few times in a week), I hear a 3000 Hz "beep", about one second, coming from where the hard disk is. While this happens, the HDD LED indicator on the laptop is on and it seems that read/write access to the drive is blocked.

It hasn't happened for a while now, and the disk is otherwise working perfectly with SMART looking quite healthy aside from performance/old age values. Multi-zone error rate is 732, very slowly increasing, calibration retry and load retry counts are 350. I think there is a single "click" noise at the end of the beep. I'm asking more out of curiosity - does anyone know what the beep means? Is this something I should worry about (aka clone the disk onto a new one and stop using it)?

Kind regards,
Jan

Hi,
I dont know anything about the problem, except YES get your data NOW while you still can.

It sux knowing you COULD have got data off, and the drive dies while you contemplate it.

I am running regular and complete backups, of course, in a way that a disk failure during backup will not destroy the last one. It would still mean data loss of several days since the last backup, so if there was a high probability of failure, I would swap the disk preventively.

However, exchanging a disk just because it might possibly fail is pretty pointless as any disk can fail, so unless this indicates a severely increased probability of failure, I'd prefer not to get a new drive. I think I'll be getting a new computer soon anyways.

Your "problem" is normal wear and tear, too technical to explain. Forget the SMART analysis, just backup and use it till it stops then replace. It is possible to refurbish it until the mechanical part reach its EOL, not by you in any case.
Not a big issue because of low cost, though.

Thanks! If anyone would be willing to explain or provide a link/search term so I can look up the details, I'd appreciate it. As I said, I'm mostly asking because I am curious what causes the hard disk to beep.