implication of churning sound from hard drive?

Question

briefly explain the implication of the churning sound one hears from the hard drive whenever it is retrieving data

Answer 1

It's the drive heads. when they change position they move in steps... each step is the click you hear, when the head changes position multiple times in a row you get the rumble sound. The heads change position very rapidly and precisely... imagine the force required to stop a moving object, when it hits the surface you get the knocking sound, in the drive heads it's a very strong magnetic field that the heads 'hit' to stop moving and produce the sound

It's usually drives with a faster seek time that make the most noise as the drive heads have to move faster (and so stop quicker)

Answer 2

Hi,

Files are stored generally in 4KB chunks all over the hard-drive, defragmenting the harddrive will help place these sequentially and thus reduce noise and time to fine the parts of the file.

To add to the first answer the hard drive will also have a number of platters - i.e. a number of magnetic disks stored, like a spindle of CDs. The noise is generated from the heads and the mechanical motor moving them to the different parts of the disk for file info.

The more defragmented and the larger the file the more noise from the hard drive.

HTH

Answer 3

Might start churning if you're pushing Windows to the limit, running many tasks at a time, the hard disk has to do more things at once, the drive head is trying to cope with 100 things at once, that's usually why it churns.

Answer 4

There are two moving parts in a hard drive (basically). The first is the disk(s) itself. The second is the head. The head is mounted on a pivoting arm that is moved magnetically. Data in a single file is stored (if possible) sequentially (sort of) on the disk, but often, data is stored on multiple tracks. When the drive is looking for data on multiple tracks, the head moves in and out from the center of the disk. When it does this, it moves rapidly and this is the sound that you are hearing.

Answer 5

There may be many factors that are responsible for the creation of sound. I can give you a link that deals with hard drive problems.
Some hard drive problems can be easily fixed yourself by using easily available tools. I found the info at http://fixit.in useful

Answer 6

Bad- implies the bearings are going. Modern discs are largely silent. Ensure you have backups of your data.
A faint rumbly hum is ok -like a marble rolling on wood- this is the heads moving into position.

Answer 7

Churning sound eh? It could be making butter, thats if you poured some milk onto it first.

Answer 8

That would be a combination of factors, the motors if they are older and getting worn most probably.

It would be either the motors that control the platters or the motor(s) that control the heads.

Hope that helps.

Answer 9

BASICALLY THE CHURNING SOUND MEANS...Accessing Data, please wait....