PCTech Forums

Recently I noticed that my HDD (20 GB, 6 years old) was becoming quite hot after 20 – 30 mins of operation and couple of times it gave two beeps, while windows & regular applications were running. I felt it was coming from HDD & not from Mobo / cabinet speaker. That sharp beep sound gave me a feeling as if something was wrong and it was going to fail.

Indeed, eventually PC Froze and on restart it halted giving error message ‘Primary Hard Disk Fail’

I have experienced POST beeps but never heard beep from HDD up till now.
Is there any such behavior by design in hard drives?

Thanks,

There are no speakers inside a HDD

Most likely what you are hearing is the heads hitting the platter while the platter is spinning.
That can sound like a beep I’ve heard it before but if you listen real close the pitch changes just a little.
That pitch change is caused by the platter slowing down just a little when the head hits it