Ringing Portable Harddrive?

starmanbrand

So, I got a portable harddrive a few months ago, and i use it as media storage and some mild back up (School papers, pictures, and what not). I leave it on all the time, as my computer is on all the time.

For the past month or so, every once in a while it will make a ringing. It stops when I do something I on the drive, like go into a folder and select something, but its obnoxious to do that when i am watching a movie or something.

Any ideas on what is causing this?

bowen

Sounds like a leaky capacitor on the board that handles all that IO activity lights and the transfer from IDE/SATA to USB/e-SATA.

Backup data, nonetheless, and maybe get a new enclosure for the drive.

starmanbrand

bowen wrote: »

Sounds like a leaky capacitor on the board that handles all that IO activity lights and the transfer from IDE/SATA to USB/e-SATA.

Backup data, nonetheless, and maybe get a new enclosure for the drive.

So I don't know what you just said.

And it's a single unit, not an enclosure+HDD.

bowen

Capacitors are little doodads on the circuit boards that hold electrical charges and all that. Someone can probably give you a better description of it. When you're idling chances are the leak becomes more prominent. Might be problematic in the future, it might not be anything more than just an annoying sound.

However all external stand alone units are typically enclosures that have either a laptop hard drive or a normal hard drive in them once opened.

If you're interested in the Do-it yourself approach you can snap it apart and find out what kind of enclosure to get and just reset it all up.

However, the best bet for you is to probably call the company that you bought this enclosure from, inform them of what's happening, and see if you can get an RMA. Make sure to back up your data before you do this because chances are you won't ever see that drive again and it'll be a new unit.

starmanbrand

Alrighty, thank you. especially thank you for the lightening fast reply.