HDD plays tune

Hi,

My 120 gig hard drive (maxtor diamondmax 9+) won't detect at all and
insists on playing a little tune to me instead - even when it's only got
power and not connected to my board. Entertaining as it is, it's a bit
rubbish as a storage device. My board is a gigabyte GA7-VRXP.

The maxtor site says that "maxtor hard drives do not contain speakers" -
seems logical enough but it still does it even when my PC speaker is
disconnected, and definitely seems to be coming from the drive. It's not
drive noise, that's for sure - it's several pure tones that sound like a
non-polyphonic mobile. Aargh!

The drive itself is about 18 months old I think, so it's not at the
stage where it's going to start falling to pieces. It's hardly been used
in the last 6 months in any case.

Anybody come across this before?

Cheers,

Matt

I've heard the tunes. In my case, they came from Seagate harddrives.
Generally mid-1990's ones, and I've yet to figure out how to fix them when
they do that, but I DO know what is is inside them that makes the sound.

The magnetic pickup inside the HD swings on an arm so it can access any
track of the HD, and that arm is moved across its reach not by a stepper,
but by a voicecoil. And if the circuit that controls the positioning of the
arm goes unstable, it can make tones, squawks, horrible clanking noises
-- And yet still work, ...sometimes... usually not for long.

One such HD I saw do that was quite new and was sent back for warranty.
The one they replaced it with was same model# and worked fine.
Regrettably, this doesn't help you retrieve your lost data.

Matt Sissons wrote:

> Hi,
>
> My 120 gig hard drive (maxtor diamondmax 9+) won't detect at all and
> insists on playing a little tune to me instead - (snip)

Thanks for the info! I've just found out it's 7 months out of warranty
so i guess i'll just have to use it as a paperweight. Won't be buying a
Maxtor drive again!




Shark Byte wrote:
> I've heard the tunes. In my case, they came from Seagate harddrives.
> Generally mid-1990's ones, and I've yet to figure out how to fix them when
> they do that, but I DO know what is is inside them that makes the sound.
>
> The magnetic pickup inside the HD swings on an arm so it can access any
> track of the HD, and that arm is moved across its reach not by a stepper,
> but by a voicecoil. And if the circuit that controls the positioning of
> the
> arm goes unstable, it can make tones, squawks, horrible clanking noises
> -- And yet still work, ...sometimes... usually not for long.
>
> One such HD I saw do that was quite new and was sent back for warranty.
> The one they replaced it with was same model# and worked fine.
> Regrettably, this doesn't help you retrieve your lost data.
>
> Matt Sissons wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> My 120 gig hard drive (maxtor diamondmax 9+) won't detect at all and
>> insists on playing a little tune to me instead - (snip)
>
>
>
>