Old P4 System Crashing. Makes Clicking Noise Randomly

[geokilla]

Overview of the problem
- Computer was working fine
- Lately, hard drive light stays on and it won't turn off
- Computer then freezes forcing me to restart manually
- Sometimes I hear a clicking noise. Does not sound like the hard drive clicking noises on Youtube though.


Full description of the problem and symptoms
Lately, my sister was complaining that her computer was running slower than usual. Starting on like Monday, the computer has been crashing a lot and at first I just told her to manually reset it. But now, it's crashing more frequently.

Every once in a while, I will hear a clicking type of noise coming from the computer. I tried using my digital camera to record the sound but it's not working. The clicking noise doesn't sound like the clicking sound made by a dying hard drive but I might be wrong. I'll try to record the sound and if it works, I'll post the link.

Did it work normally at one time, or has the problem always existed?
It worked normally for like the past 6 to 7 years.

Is the problem consistent and repeatable, or entirely random, or semi-random?
The problem is semi-random. I know that the computer crashed when my sister calls me that it crashed lol.

I already tried these steps:
- System restore
- Checking cable connections
- Ran Disk Check or w/e it was called for all of my partitions
- Disk Defragmenter
- Ad-Aware and Kaspersky full system scan

My software:
Windows XP SP2
Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0
Ad-Aware SE Pro

My hardware
Custom built computer

Intel D850GB
Intel Pentium 4 @ 1.5GHz (stock)
EVGA MX 4000
Total 256MB RAMBUS (I think they're Samsungs and rated for PC 8000?)
Unknown
Old Creative Soundcard

Other information that might be relevant
I was planning to exchange the old hard drive for a newer one, but I didn't do that at the end. I had put my hard drives on the case because I was too lazy to find one of those OEM hard drive bags (anti-static bags?).

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[martini161]

this is like the exact description of what my old p4 laptop did before the harddrive went to heaven (aka my dead parts disasemble for fun table) run a SMART test on it

[bubba]

yup, sounds a lot like the click of death drives can get. Starts out as a here and there thing, then that is all it will do. Get your stuff backed up, then run the drive test with S.M.A.R.T.

[werty316]

Yep, most likely the hard drive is on its last leg. Better to backup anything on it that you want to keep just incase.

[geokilla]

Is there an easy way to test which hard drive is failing? I have two drives and I got no clue which one is dying. Or would the SMART test detect that automatically?

Does such an old computer support SMART anyways?

BTW, my sister's computer crashed again today. Currently she's using the Acer laptop that I mentioned like a month ago in another thread. Maybe it's time for me to get a new rig if both drives are dying...

[bubba]

It should, it would be more if the drive has it.

Easy way to here the click is to unplug the secondary drive, back up the primary, if while backing up the primary you don't here the click its the secondary. If you hear the click its the primary and you already have you stuff backed up.

[geokilla]

Hmm, I'll just run the SMART test first. What program can I use to run the SMART test? Hopefully, it'll tell me which drive is bad.

[geokilla]

I'm currently running the Seagate diagnostic test and I ran it on the Maxtor hard drive and it passed. I'm currently running it on my secondary Maxtor hard drive and prior to the test, it said that SMART had been tripped prior to running the test.

So far, 34% of the test has been completed and the test found 21 errors. Guess it's time to replace the drive.

[stopthekilling77]

yeah time to fork over some cash :/

[geokilla]

The test finished just now and the diagnostics test tried to repair the damaged blocks but it didn't work. Now I just have to find the time to back up the drive and stuff.

yeah time to fork over some cash :/

Luckily, I got a free hard drive the other day so I don't have to spend a penny. Unfortunately, it'll take me a couple of hours to rearrange and backup ALL the files. Would ghosting the files on the bad hard drive and then using that image on the new drive work? I'll be using Norton Ghost to ghost the drive.

[DMB2000uk]

Depends on if the bad drive has corrupted something like windows, and as it is crashing so much, it well could have.

Dan

[geokilla]

I've decided to move all the data from the bad drive to the new drive that I have. However, I don't know what's the quickest way to move the files besides copying and pasting it from bad drive to USB to new drive. Anyone got any ideas?

[geokilla]

Well I'm moving the data by using a USB. Taking forever though.

Anyways here's something weird. Turns out it wasn't my hard drive that was causing the weird somewhat clicking noise. It was my case fan! So thanks to my case fan, I found out that my hard drive was dying.

Wow.

[DMB2000uk]

Wow, that is kinda lucky. Would have sucked if the drive had of just kicked it without any warning. So at least you were able to get your data safe.

Dan