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My Acer Aspire One has been making some funny noises for about an hour from the center of the case.
Some sound clips:
Long w/ beeps
Short w/o beeps
These were recorded with the built-in microphone.
Anyone need more information?
Different55
Posted 2012-04-09T23:51:44.100
Reputation: 125
1
The place where the noise seems to be coming from is about 2-3 inches from the right side and right under the bottom edge of the keyboard.
That is where the hard-drive is located. If you look on the bottom of the laptop, you will see a panel that can be removed to give you access to the RAM and HD. (The hard-drive is in a physically sensible, but logically stupid location since non-SSD drives get constantly knocked from the hands and palms hitting the keyboard; so the HD in even a new system will register numerous errors-due-to-external-shocks in the SMART data.)
The clicks are coming from the hard-drive which of course is not good.
What you will want to do is to use a program like SpeedFan, Defraggler, etc. to view the SMART data of the drive. That way you can see just how bad it is and depending on the program, even estimate how long until it has a catastrophic error. Then, if the system is still under warranty (Acer laptops usually come with a one year warranty, and a hard-drive failure should be covered by it), you can get it replaced or repaired.
I'm afraid this ordeal will likely be quite inconvenient, especially since you will need to backup all of your data and wipe the drive before returning it; but at least you'll have a (presumably) healthy and reliable system again when it's all over.
If the laptop is out of warranty, you should still contact Acer first to see if they may be magnanimous enough to do a courtesy repair/replacement. Sometimes, companies (like EPoX and Western Digital in my experience) are gracious and you might get lucky. If you are not and they turn out to be jerks (like ATI and Intel in my experience), then you will want to buy a 2.5" laptop hard-drive and have it replaced (or replace it yourself).
Either way, the faster you take care of it, the better since you will be less likely to lose data.
Synetech
Posted 2012-04-09T23:51:44.100
Reputation: 63 242
1It was the hard drive, it died about a month ago. Everything important got moved off before it died. Until we get a new hard drive we're running linux off a flash drive. – Different55 – 2012-06-02T08:35:38.937
1Glad to hear you didn’t lose anything. You may be able to find a replacement from local classifieds like eBay Classifieds or Kijiji. – Synetech – 2012-06-02T13:47:42.270
It sounds a little like the head of a hard drive, and some seek jumping, although it is very loud for that (or just an excellent recording) How could a person get such a clean recording , wouldnt the fans be making noises? More information? Yes what other moving parts are in an acer aspire? It seems too slow for a fan blade hitting. What did you need? If A chunk of metal has come loose inside the interior, and is being pushed by Air, and banging like that, a different rotation of the aspire (to earth gravity) would change the sound. a hard drive should sounds the same. – Psycogeek – 2012-04-10T04:06:07.260
The sound is recorded from the built-in microphone, but all those sounds really are that loud. I can hear them all when it's on my lap. The fans are pretty quiet. The sound continues, even if I put it on a flat level surface. Right now the sound seems to be coming from under my right hand. The bottom right part of it, under the edge of the keyboard. I don't think there are any fans there since there aren't any places for air to blow out and I can't think of any other possible moving parts. – Different55 – 2012-04-10T10:37:00.010
Which model is it ? What item would be under your right hand? the dissasembly pics on the web are not usefull without knowing the specific model number. If the recording continued for another 5 minutes, would it continue to sound just like that, non stop? or is it "edited" to where it made the specific sounds? and if you carefully turned it upside down, does it make the same sounds? – Psycogeek – 2012-04-10T10:54:01.403
It is a Aspire One D257. The place where the noise seems to be coming from is about 2-3 inches from the right side and right under the bottom edge of the keyboard. I can make another recording. I didn't edit the two I posted. The noises don't go away, except when you restart. It's been off all day and when I turned it on it didn't return... an error popped up and told me that my hard drive is at risk. Now I know what the problem is. -_- The noise never returned and I turned it off now. If anyone needs me I'll be running Linux from a flash drive – Different55 – 2012-04-10T22:18:24.150