Hard drive making a weird noise

My Samsung hard drive is making some weird noises. Sometimes, the noise stops but then starts again within a few minutes. It's warranty is out of date, so I am worried that the noise may indicate an imminent failure.

Any help would be appreciated.

Solution 1:

Click of death? Whirring sound? (I feel like a car mechanic ;) ) Most likely the drive is coming to the end of its life. Does it have SMART? See if that's tossing any errors as well as backup all your data. Probably going to have to get a new one soon.

Solution 2:

First Back it up... Back up your data if you even SUSPECT a hard drive issue...

Then you can safely diagnose it... But the first poster (MrStatic) is correct, what is the noise? Have you tested it with a smart test..?

Remember though, SMART is a quickie... If it fails, then your drive is surely toast, but if it passes, keep an eye on it. It just might have not reached that SMART test thresholds...

Solution 3:

Yes, back up your data immediately. If you don't have somewhere to put backups, go buy a new harddrive and clone everything onto that. You'll need the new drive soon anyway.

As for the sound... it's most likely the hard drive resetting itself and trying to re-read data as a result of errors. As others have said, these errors should show up in SMART info, but don't even waste time looking at that, as your HD could die at any time.