Whenever I do a disk cleanup, a get a loud whirring sound from my hard
drive
(I think), and it sound like when I'm burning a CD. It also does it from
time
to time at other times. Is this anything to be concerned about?
Data loss can occur at any time, from a variety of causes including hardware
failure, such as your possibly failing hard drive, software problems,
malware, etc., and is a matter of when not if. So to protect against data
loss, always have a full and complete backup of all important data.
I recommend a drive imaging program, Acronis True Image, to image the system
to an external hard drive. This allows for individual file recovery or
recovery of the complete system to a bare clean drive in case of drive
failure. This is a relatively low cost backup and recovery solution. After
a first full image, subsequent images can be differential or incremental.
Images can be done on a drive or partition basis, and recovery can be on a
drive, partition, folder or file basis. It also does file backup and disk
cloning. Using the tools in Acronis it can be scheduled to image on a
nightly basis. For maximum protection use two different external drives
alternating between them on a weekly basis; one can be stored off site.
To check the health of the drive download a drive diagnostic utility from
the drive manufacturer's web site. This will create a bootable floppy or
CD. Boot from that and run the diagnostics. It may or may not indicate a
problem with the drive, but the fact that it shows good doesn't mean it
might not fail in the near future.
