New HD makes grinding noises

[Hactar]

My dad just bought a new 120gig WD drive (IDE) for our oldish dell. I put it in, installed XP, service pack 2, and it worked fine. Yesterday I downloaded the dungeon seige 2 demo. It also worked fine. Then yesterday around 11:30pm it started hanging whenever I went to start an application like AIM or internet explorer. Now, when I started it up this morning, it worked fine, until near the end of the startup process it starts making this "RRRRRRRNNNNNN" noise as if its grinding or something. It just does this continually and doesn't stop until I turn it off. It also won't open anything. I have no idea why its doing this, it worked fine before and it happened very suddenly. Do I need to return it for a new drive? Or is there any way I can fix it? Please help!

Also, the full name of the drive is Western Digital Caviar SE enhanced IDE hard drive.

 

[davidlem]

There is no fixing a grinding HD. Save any data you absolutely need and RMA it.

 

[Hactar]

Alright...I have to ask though, what is RMA? My dad bought it from a retail store.

 

[tdg]

RMA = return merchandise authorization, usually a number given from a mail/internet order place so they can track the package back to you when they receive it.

You don't need that though if you bought it locally at a retail place, just box it up and take it back for an exchange.

 

[Hactar]

Cool, thanks guys. I'll try that out.

 

[Hactar]

I exchanged the drive for another WD drive, so we'll see how that goes.