Strange scratching noises from R50e

[mastermiaow]

I bought the laptop in August 2005. I would say that it has had fairly heavy usage. Recently there have been a lot of strange noises coming from within - scratching, scraping type noises. Also seems a bit slower than before.
I have defragmented and used CC cleaner. I have webroot Spysweeper and AVG anti virus.

Any suggestions gratefully appreciated.

Matthew

[ajkula66]

I would be looking at the fan first...and media drive second.

Good luck.

[pianowizard]

The hard drive might be dying.

[Chris001]

Isolate where the noise is coming from. Remove the optical drive and fire up the laptop. If the noise is coming from the left side of the laptop it is the fan going bad. If the noise is coming from the right side of the laptop it is the HDD going bad.

Thanks,
Chris

[mastermiaow]

OK

Thanks for your help everybody. I assume the optical drive is the CD drive? Is removing it just a matter of taking out the screws underneath?
What is confusing is that the problem is intermittent. Last week I couldn't run anything it got so bad but at the moment there is the occasional clicking but nothing else. IBM support recommended dowloading the drive fitness test from hitachi. I looked at this but got confused because it asks for floppy disk and I don't have a floppy disk drive..... Is it possible to burn onto CD and run from there?

[Chris001]

OK
Thanks for your help everybody. I assume the optical drive is the CD drive? Is removing it just a matter of taking out the screws underneath?

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-53390

Scroll to the botton for the instructions.

Is it possible to burn onto CD and run from there?

Yes, go back to the DFT page and look for the CD image- http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

-- or --

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/d ... 11_b00.iso

Chris