I purchased a New Seagate Maxtor 320GB Hard Drive about a month ago.
For the past couple of weeks, Strange Crackling Sound is coming from the Hard Drive. Nothing is wrong, my hard drive is working fine, but I am scared. Â Is it harmful for my hard disk?
It is normal for hard disks to release crackling sounds when in use. The sound heard is the effect of the speed of the disk while the data is being read or written. Mostly, hard disks have 3 operating speeds: 1 Silent, 2 Factory default, 3 Optimal. In silent mode, no noise will be heard from the hard drive. But the effect in the speed of accessing and writing data to and from the disk is quite slow.
In Factory default, your disk will operate in its normal speed and a little crackling sound can be heard. And in Optimal, this is the fastest speed for the hard drive to operate. Data execution is fast, and as a result, a much intense crackling sound will be heard. UDMA or Ultra Direct Memory Access settings in the CMOS is the one that handles the speed when you are in Optimum mode.
Are you sure the sound is coming from your hard drive and not from your system fans? Is there a case fan near your hard drive? If there is, disconnect the fan from its power source so that it stops operating and turn the computer on and see if the sound is still there. If you have multiple case fans, kindly disconnect all the power sources for those fans and see if the sound is still there (leave the CPU fan working). Also, mechanical hard drive tend to make a bit of a screeching sound when the platter spins and the hard drive is busy, this is normal. If you do hear some clicking sound from the hard drive, this would be an indication that it is becoming defective and you need to start backing up your files as it is going to fail soon.
