The last couple weeks, when I turn on my computer, or when I start up certain programs, my hard drive revs loudly. (Kind of like a loud whining noise for 30 secs to a minute.) I opened the PC and blew out all the cat hair using compressed Gas Duster. But it is still reving and I'm worried that my PC will fail. Is this something I can attend to? Or do I need to contact a technical support person?
I second the motion of backing up your data as quickly as possible. When a hard drive starts to whine it is very close to failure. Depending on how damaged the drive gets it could become very difficult to impossable to get the data. If you are under warranty contact your Tech support quickly. If you are not under warranty or dont want to deal with the warranty company, let me know and I can help.
Are you sure it is your hard drive making this noise? The revving up sound you mentioned sounds like a CD ROM drive that has a disk in it. Some CD drives (even new ones) will sound like that. Easy way to check it out is to make sure you don' t have a CD in the drive and start your PC. If the revving sound goes away, you found your noisemaker. If the noise is still there after having the CD drive empty, then backing up and preparing for a replacement hard drive should be on your to-do list.
I had added an extra fan in my case sometime back. When it started going out it sounded like it would rev a bit. If you're not sure if it is your hard drive, try the fan.
Took my PC to Romworks - terrified that I would lose my data. Problem appears to be in hard drive but hasn't failed yet. Getting a new hard drive for operating system, etc. and keeping old drive for data. Plus getting a general cleanup (still more cat hair )
