Hard Drive Noises and Freezing

[Rubsomb]

So randomly one day about two weeks ago i was browsing some web page when out of nowhere my computer freezes up totally except for the mouse and the hard drive starts making a sort of dit dit dit dit noise that was sort of louder than usual and just didn't sound good, so i restarted my computer and now randomly about every 5-10 minutes since then, my computer freezes up and the hard drive makes this same noise for about 30 seconds to a minute or two and then stops and everything works fine, except now i am having serious problems even getting windows to start up without it freezing up about 5 times before it can even load. Anyone have any ideas? This is also a 5 month old PIII 1000 with a 45 gig 7200rpm ultra ATA IBM Deskstar drive.
Also, i have been trying to run a surface scan and i can't because scandisk keeps telling me that there is a disk error and that it can't scan the drive. Any help would be great. Thanks in Advance.

[hapoo]

sounds like its overheating, I have a Maxtor 40 gig 7200 that would get hotter than my cpu when i used it. It would bring my whole system down to its knees. next time your computer crashes have the case open and touch your hard drive, see if its too hot.

[Rubsomb]

well, i don't think it is overheating, it is slightly warm to the touch but not hot by any means, not to mention that it does it about 30 seconds after i turn on my computer after it had been off for a good 12 hours. It is really bothering me cause i have a ton of stuff on here i would rather not lose, think it's just worth it to buy a new drive? If so, is it simple enough to transfer everything to the new drive since i have never had to do that? I feel like the drive is corrupted or damaged but i have no idea how that would have happened and i don't know much about the details of stuff like that. I just wonder if the new drive won't have the same problem(i.e. corrupted files not drive)?? Thanks for the advice, if you have any other ideas they would be greatly appreciated.

[topane]

Originally posted by Rubsomb
...Also, i have been trying to run a surface scan and i can't because scandisk keeps telling me that there is a disk error and that it can't scan the drive...
Sounds like a physical problem, you should contact the vendor for a replacement drive. See if they'll cross ship a new one so you can transfer data then send them the old one. If you need a hand, just let us know.

[Rubsomb]

Thats what i thought too, that it must be a physical problem. The computer was put together by dell and is still under warranty, guess i will be giving them a call, i just hope that they will be willing to cross ship them, i don't know if they will do that. Thanks for the input, and i'm sure i will need some tips on transfering all my stuff from one to the other so thanks in advance for offering your guys advice, i really appreciate you guys helping me out.

[Rubsomb]

and the lady i talked to was totally clueless but was more than happy to send me a new drive and let me transfer my data and then send them the old one after. Not only that but they payed for shipping both ways and they dont offer a 45 gig anymore, only a 40, so they had to give me something comparable so they are sending me a new 75 gig! Pretty lucky eh? Thanks for all the help, looks like everything will work out quite nicely in the end.

[hapoo]

holy shit, your very lucky!

[Rubsomb]

Just when i thought dell had done something right....they went and did something even better! I talked to them yesterday afternoon and i definitly have the new drive in my computer already. Now thats service. Overnight shipping, woohoo!

[unnamed]

wow, i guess prebuilt systems have one positive thing going for them.