It's not clear what you are asking in your post but when a hard disk starts squelling or other "bad" sounds then we copy what we didn't have on backup out and toss the drive out.
Bob
I have an eMachines T6522 running Windows Media Center 2005 and a Wester Digital Drive.
While my hard drive was retriving information it made an odd noise, it worried me but only lasted a few seconds. One day later I left my computer running and returned to find it completely frozen. I reset the system and Windows loaded, then froze again this time followed by hard drive noise and the blue windows screen saying the computer was shut down to protect data from an error and that it was dumping the pysical memory and I should restart the computer.
Then I was suspecting the Hard Drive so when Windows loaded my profile I began zipping my large files in preparation for burning to DVD but before this could finnish the hard drive began making noise and the computer shut off.
Next to confirm that the problem was the hard drive I removed it and plugged it into my old system and began pulling off my files and in less than 30 min the drive was making the noises louder and louder and transfer stopped so I shut down fearing damage to the drive.
I don't know much about the internal workings of hard drives and so I don't know what the symptoms point to, why it runs for a while then develops problems. I mostly want to know if I can clone the drive so that I wouldnt loose my data, it is a big drive 200GB and there is only about 30GBs free, but some of it is recorded TV that I dont really need.
Thanks for any light that can be shed on the matter.

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