Replace Hard Disk In XPS 420 Due To High Pitch Noise Heard

1. Do I really have to replace the hard disk? Does it mean that there is no way to salvage or repair the hard disk, right? Sometimes, I can hear the noise from the CPU and sometimes, there is no noise.

if the noise is due to the hard drive, you'll have to replace it.  Be sure it's not a fan that's causing the noise.

2. Could you recommend a hard disk that is suitable to be installed in the XPS 420 CPU? My main priority is the outright performance of the hard disk, rather than its capacity, so that it will not hamper the gaming performance of my computer. The price of the hard disk needs not to be cheap, as long as it is not too exorbitant that performance gain does not commensurate with the added cost.

For performance, the best you can get is the WD Velociraptor.

I am still undecided between 500 GB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA 7200 rpm 32 MB cache and 150 GB Western Digital Velociraptor 10000 rpm SATA 3.0 Gb/s 16 MB cache. Of course, other brands of suitable hard disk can also be suggested.

Your call - the Velociraptor is more expensive than the Black but performs faster.

3. Is it true that 10000 rpm hard disks is more prone to failure than the 7200 rpm ones as it spin much faster? Yes, I want my hard disk to perform faster, but not at the expense of reliability. 4. Can the XPS 420 motherboard support SATA Revision 3.0 (SATA 6 Gb/s) hard disk? Or, does it support only SATA Revision 2.0 (SATA 3 Gb/s) hard disk?

Not at all - the 10K VR drives are built as Enterprise-class - the Raptors have a very good reliability reputation.

The system is SATA 3.0 - but note that even that is far more bandwidth than any single drive - even a 10K drive - can deliver.  The ONLY reason for SATA 6.0 is if you've a large array of drives.  One or two drives, even as RAID 0, will not come anywhere near delivering even 100 MBps - let alone 3 Gbps.

Thank you for your reply.

1. Regarding the high pitch hard disk noise, what would potentially be the cause of such hard disk failure? Is it because I format or defrag it too frequently? Or, is it just because it is approaching the end of its life time? What can I do to prevent this failure from happening again?

2. I heard that Western Digital Velociraptor is quite hot during operating. Should I install additional heat sink or fan inside the CPU? If that is so, what would be suitable brand of such components and their price?

Thank you.