I have all my mp3s on an external Maxtor 80gb USB drive. It's about three years old and starting to make some loud, strange noises. Don't know how to describe them, it's a little bit like knocking, but a little different. Definitly mechanical sounding. It happens when it's idling, not only when it's being accessed. And they come and go. Right now all is quiet, tomorrow the noises may come back.

Luckily I have it all backed up on a newer external WD drive, but what I'm wondering is, are these files on the Maxtor safe until the drive fails? How possible is it for them to get corrupted while the drive is still operating but making these weird noises? As of now the the drive is functionally ok. I can read & write to it without problems. I've done lots of spot checking, listening to random files in various folders and everything sounds ok, but I'm wondering if I should stop backing up to the WD from this particular drive.

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

Watch S.M.A.R.T. data of that drive and run CHKDSK from time to time.

Run SpinRite on it XD

(that was a joke)

Sometimes harddisk need to recalibrate itself (bcoz of temperature changes). But as rutra80 suggested you should check its S.M.A.R.T status with program like "SpeedFan".

But if the disks started to do this suddenly and not before, it looks like a sure sign of imminent death.

SMART on consumer IDE drives generally doesn't even give warnings on a disk that is already dead, I wouldn't trust it too much.

Edit: The data you can still take off (backup! backup! backup!) shold be fine. They do have error detection mechanisms...

I agree with Garf, the hard drive is going to fail, it's only a matter of time. Could be days, to weeks, or even months, depending on how often it's used. File data should remain intact up until the drive ultimately fails. I would just bin it and buy a new drive.

My laptop's HDD also started generate strange quite loud noise about 2 years ago. Luckily, untill now it's still working just fine and the noise also stopped after a month or so. I guess it was only calibrating itself since the platter expands as the temperature raise.

ps: don't take my experience as granted. Always backup your data when it's still possible!

My father once complained his laptop's harddrive made strange noises, however he's a total digibete, and it was an old, noisy drive. So i ran speedfan and downloaded the manufacturer's diagnosing utility, ran some tests, and everything was just fine. Two days later it was dead.

Bottom line: If your drive makes noise it hasn't made before, back your data up NOW and stop using the drive. You can wait for it to die, but why bother, i'd just toss it away directly.

On my own system's drive, about a year ago i sometimes got a warning failure was imminent, but no strange noises. I have had one or two occasions where a file got corrupted, but apart from that, still going strong. I have never seen a PC's BIOS warn about the S.M.A.R.T status of a drive.

In my experience harddrives are also the components most likely to fail in a PC, because they're mechanical. Second would be the powersupply, because of the stress it's components are under and the fact that they're often made of cheap crap.

An info that might be useful.
I've noticed that when a hard drives makes a double-clicking noise, like "Klick - Klack" from time to time, it just means that the voltage received is too weak. The drive stops spinning, and restart immediately.
In this case, change the power supply, or unplug some CD-ROM drives that might get the voltage down (it was my case).

Smart usually dies first then the system performance decreases until its unusable. I would back it up, and possible get a new drive, WD has a 5 year warrenty right? or is it 1?

Thanks for all the replies. I will give S.M.A.R.T. a try, but will probably also stop using this drive other than for listening to what's already on it until it croaks. I think I'll play some obnoxious noise as a soundtrack for it to die to.

1. I had an old Quantum (same thing as Maxtor). Some day it began to make that klak-klak you talk. After 30 !!! minutes it was dead. Hapily I backed up most important data. There is a chip in HDD which drives HDD heads and other mechanical parts. Something wrong went with with it. It overheated.
This happened to my HDD. After some uncoordinated spins and head movements, heads began to damage data! Lot's of bad blocks and quick death after that.

2. There is another possible explanation. The motherboard can be the perpetrator. Something can be wrong with power managment.

3. Power suply problems.

If you can exclude 2 and 3 you must do a backup.
But I would advise to do it anyway!