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Loud, earsplitting whine coming from PSU?

falter

falter

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Joined
Jan 22, 2011
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Location
Vancouver, BC
I've been working with an Intel branded 386 and have been having no problems, but this morning I started hearing this whine noise. It's not like fan bearing - it's very high pitched, almost shrieking. It got so loud I immediately shut the machine down. From what I can discern, it seems to be coming from the PSU area.. can't really tell if it's hard drive or PSU but my guess is PSU. Is this warning of impending explosion? :)
 
NM. Answered my own question. It was the hard drive.. a Maxtor 80mb. I plugged it into another computer and got the same sound. Turning it upside down made the noise go away. Weird.
 
I’m guessing the best angle for that Maxtor hard drive to be at is somewhere in the middle of a gentle arc towards the nearest trash can.

Note that some older hard drives specifically don’t want to be upside down. Bubble-up or on either edge is fine, inverted bad.
 
It certainly might be an interesting experiment to see how long it can run in its new orientation, but if the bearings are so bad they’re screaming the other way I wouldn’t make any long-term plans featuring the drive.
 
Honestly I've never heard a sound like that from a HDD in my life. It was was seriously high pitched, very, very loud. I thought the computer was going to blow.

I ran it upside down for over an hour...sound never came back. Are these things like their old 5.25" cousins where lubricant etc moves around if you change the orientation? I remember turning the 10mb in my 5162 sideways for a bit helped with its awful noise.
 
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