My Hardrive makes a weird noise

[Waigo]

I recently bought a Western Digital 40 gig 7200 RPM ATA/100 drive from BUY.COM
When I used it, it worked fine. After two days, it made this odd clanking noise a couple times and I couldn't boot up my computer. Usually, manually restarting my computer would solve it, but one day, I had to turn on teh computer and when it started detecting for hardrives, THEN I plug in the hardrive so it would work. WHen it makes the clanking noise, it doesn't work. But otherwise it works fine. Do you know what the problem might be? Please help. I dont want to have to return it, but if it's a problem that I can't solve, i'll send it back. Please help.

 

[Ausm]

Backup the Data and RMA it

Ausm

 

[Sugadaddy]

Sounds like it's a bad drive... RMA TIME!

 

[Ramius]

send it back, i don't this you can fix it with software/from the outside.
better hurry before buy.com stops accepting returns for market-related reasons...

 

[Waigo]

Thanks alot = D

 

[Vyle]

The clanking noise is not good. Definitely back up your data. I had two Western Digitals do this on me. The last one kept clanking and got to the point where it wouldn't boot. Fortunately, I still could hook it up to another system and salvage my data. Those kinds of sounds are almost always the sound of a drive in death throes.

 

[jamarno]

The chip that position the heads has a transistor that's starting to short. These chips sometimes run very hot, even when the heads don't move much.