Maximum PC

Weirdest thing, not a problem yet, hard drive keeps kicking in every 2 minutes or so like software is loading, normal sounds, last for just over a minute then cycles again. Been doing it for about 24 hours, should i be worried??? Am I about to lose the hard drive??

Could be a virus, update your anti-virus and run it. I would also install Malwarebytes, update it and run it too, get the free version.

Nasty

It could also be a background process if you're not doing anything intensive. For instance, Windows will defrag your hard drive in the background.

I had my HDD light flickering on a regular basis about every 30 seconds and couldn't figure it out, turned out to be a bad SATA cable. Might want to install a new cable and see if that helps the issue.

Thanks guys! Just recently got rid of a nasty browser hijacker, ran Malewarebytes, AVG free, and Spybot, got rid of almost everything ( couldn't remove something with Spybot, assumed Malwarebytes got rid of it), this morning sounds have changed to every couple seconds for a couple of seconds, just won't seem to spin up, even defragged entire drive last night. I'm afraid to shut it down, thinking it won't start up again, gonna pick up external hard drive on the way home today and I am running the above programs again, but it sounds as if the hard drive is about to fail!

I would go to the hard drive manufactures site and download and burn the diagnostic iso to a disk and run the diagnostic. Run both parts, the 90 second part first, then the second long running part of the diagnostic. The program will tell you if the drive is failing or not. The second part takes a long time, so go watch a movie.

Disk Management has a rudimentary disk diagnostic that will give you an indication of the drive...healthy, ectra.

Nasty

First off, thanks guys, downloaded all the free stuff, running the diagnostic now, all viruses, spyware are negative, bought a WD 2 TB External for $129.00, gonna burn rescue discs as soon as diagnostic is done. Not sure what clone means. Just use the backup feature for the new HD??? Then run the free stuff on the new drive?? Ironic my 1 TB HD is a Western Digital, but I couldn't pass up the price on 2 TB external with 3 yr warranty. Also the sounds wouldn't play back, but from the descriptions, none of them match my sound and knock on wood, it is still functioning!! Awaiting further instructions.
Murf

Just got off live chat with HP support, seems my recovery partition is corrupted, nothing they can do for me, I must purchase the recovery discs. Anyone remember when they came with the system?? You don't even get real user manuals anymore. Anyways, while hooking up the USB cable for my external hard drive, I noticed it is one of the cooling fans making the noise and cycling every couple seconds, not the hard drive or optical drive. Gonna back up anyways before that fails, any suggestion on which direction to go??? Thanks again!
Murf

Just FYI, I happened to download Piriform Speccy at about the same time this stuff started just to monitor my system and unbelievably the fan comes on when my motherboard temp reaches 71 degrees C and then shuts off when it goes to 70 or below, this noise is driving me crazy!!

Finished with cloning, now desktop is locked into the HP startup page giving me choices from F9 - F-12 and escape but nothing happens when I press these buttons, don't know what happened. It almost seems as though the HP was wiped clean although I don't know why. Anyways, hooked the external HD to my laptop and all my files were saved in separate partitions, OS, Recovery and System. Gonna try to figure out how to unlock or convert these files so I can actually use them. The ongoing saga, unfortunately I can only consider myself an advanced beginner, so any help from here would be greatly appreciated. Murf

If you need an OS here are two places to buy win 7 32 or 64 bit:

http://www.missionsofts.com/microsoft-w ... 4-bit-oem/

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6832116992

Win 7 is half way down the page, get the OEM version using either site.

You can go to your motherboards website to get the appropriate drivers and the video cards site for the drivers for it. You never gave your specs so we don't know what we are trying to fix.

Nasty