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harrisjamieh · Jan 30, 2006, 03:25 AM

So I love my 17" core duo, and its quiet, very quiet, except for the 160 GB hard drive. Its very noisy! I had a G5 isight iMac for about a week a few weeks back, and the hard drive in that was very quiet, and at its loudest it sounded like a laptop drive - very quiet. I dont understand why my new one it so loud! Do you rekon its OK, or is it faulty? The iMac doesnt seem to have any operational problems, just this darn noisy HD!

I ran hardware test and it reported no problems, but im not convinced.

Cheers

icruise · Jan 30, 2006, 03:29 AM

How loud are we talking about? Are you talking about read/writing sounds or a hum that can be heard all the time it is in operation?

harrisjamieh · Jan 30, 2006, 06:30 AM

generally read/write sounds & general HD chattering

ciparis · Jan 30, 2006, 08:59 AM

Sounds faulty to me. I can't hear mine (20" Core Duo, 250GB).

GiphLag · Jan 30, 2006, 10:38 AM

Yea, mine is very quiet as well. (20" Core Duo, 250GB)

harrisjamieh · Jan 30, 2006, 01:13 PM

I just spoke to Apple, they obviously cannot tell if the machine is faulty, but have agreed to send me out a new one free of charge. So I look at it this way: ill be without my machine for a week (still got me iBook), and if the new one comes and sounds as loud, then Oh well, and if it comes and is quieter, then WOO!

codex57 · Jan 30, 2006, 01:51 PM

Cool! May be faulty. Is the 160GB from the same manufacturer as the 250GB one? The responses indicate that the 250GB one is really silent. I can attest. I had my Dell laptop and my new 20" iMac running at the same time. The laptop sounded about 30x louder. Various clicks, whirrs, hums, etc. The iMac was nearly silent. With everything turned off, I could hear it some of the time. It's actually a little too quiet IMO. I can't tell if the computer is processing something or not without that reassuring noise.

harrisjamieh · Jan 30, 2006, 01:55 PM

Im not sure, i know the 160 is made by Seagate, anyone tell me who the 250 is made by?

MusicalTone · Jan 30, 2006, 02:48 PM

I can hear my HD on the 17" Core Duo too. Didn't occur to me that it may be a fault. It is just the HD being read and written too. I suspect that the 512 RAM may be at play - lots of caching to disk... Will not be sending it back. I am in love with it now. It is my baby.

hickey · Jan 30, 2006, 03:27 PM

so the concensus is the 160 drive is quite loud compared to the 250? Or was the drive in question an anomaly?

harrisjamieh · Jan 30, 2006, 03:52 PM

It seems that way. I will be able to tell you when I get the new 1 if its just as loud as the old 1, then yes your staement it correct

Binarymix · Jan 31, 2006, 06:56 AM

As the poster above said, if you only have 512MB of ram, thats really not enough for OS X (or really any modern OS, I don't know why these large companies insist on only giving you 512), and it will cause the pagefile to be written to, which in return makes the HD make more grinding, whirring noises than usual.

StiZeven · Jan 31, 2006, 08:06 AM

If your noisy drive is indeed a 'Seagate' then that noise is unfortunately normal as Seagate hard drives *are* inherently noisy and click clacky when seeking (and this will be more obvious in a quiet low fan iMac versus a G5 Tower).

It's ironic, because Seagate used to be *the* 'Quiet Hard Drive' company years ago - not sure what happened. Western Digital and Maxtor desktop drives are nearly silent, so hopefully your replacement will have one of those in it!

icruise · Jan 31, 2006, 10:42 AM

Originally Posted by hickey

so the concensus is the 160 drive is quite loud compared to the 250?

No. My 160 is silent. It's a Western Digital.

powerbook911 · Jan 31, 2006, 12:34 PM

The 160 in mine is Maxtor. I haven't noticed any hard drive sounds. I've only noticed fans, when doing H264 encoding (for several hours). Isn't is strange they are using Seagate, Maxtor, and Western Digital. One would think you'd get best rate by buying huge stock of one, but I guess that is not true.

Yeah, are Maxtor drives ok these days? I thought people used to give them a hard time?

harrisjamieh · Jan 31, 2006, 12:57 PM

Right, so theres Maxtor, WD, and Seagate. All I gotta do now is hope and pray I get a WD or a Maxtor in my new iMac replacement due to arrive on thursday (pretty quick service: complained on monday, get replacement on thursday). My luck though that I will get another seagate....

parsec_kadets · Jan 31, 2006, 01:19 PM

Originally Posted by powerbook911

Yeah, are Maxtor drives ok these days? I thought people used to give them a hard time?

I've had a Maxtor drive in my PC for going on 8 years now (bought it in 1998) and it's still going strong. Meanwhile, I upgraded the drive in my Ti to an IBM Travelstar in 2001 and it failed a year and a half later. That sure taught me that in the hard drive industry some reputations are undeserved, both bad and good.

ghporter · Jan 31, 2006, 08:17 PM

I bailed on WD a long time ago in favor of Maxtor and I have not had a single problem with a Maxtor drive. I notice that WD drives are now running significantly cheaper than all the other brands; maybe they noticed that they lost sales a while back and they're trying to catch up.

In any case, Maxtor is a good name and they make solid, reliable drives. But they make a lot of them, and eventually there will be some failures. Warranties are your friend.

Dog Like Nature · Feb 1, 2006, 11:35 AM

For what it's worth, Seagate is acquiring Maxtor.

ghporter · Feb 1, 2006, 12:40 PM

Originally Posted by Dog Like Nature

For what it's worth, Seagate is acquiring Maxtor.

That's a Good Thing for all hard drive users. Seagate has tons of experience with small computer hard drives (they were almost the only source of drives way back when...) and Maxtor has a lot of production capacity, plus a dedicated customer base.

Now, back to the topic...

Any new info from anyone about drive noise in Intel iMacs?

harrisjamieh · Feb 1, 2006, 12:46 PM

Not yet, but im expecting my replacement iMac to be delivered tomorrow, so with a bit of luck I can give some feedback. Oh how im spending my days hoping I dont get another seagate...

mduell · Feb 1, 2006, 02:57 PM

Are there any utilities out for OS X (PPC or Intel) that allow you to change the acoustic management setting on your hard drive?

harrisjamieh · Feb 1, 2006, 03:10 PM

I just got my replacement iMac (WOW! I complained on Monday, and got it today! now thats quick!) Anyway, it has a Western Digital HD in it, and its AWESOME!!!! Soooooo much quieter than the seagate HD. Im VERY VERY pleased with it.

When i started it up, and first heard the hard drive, I sighed a sigh of relief, as I knew instantly that it was no crap seagate inside this new machine!

So im now the proud new owner of my third imac in a month ...

(the first was a G5 which I bought 6 days b4 the intel was announced, and so john lewis agreed to take it back, the second was the one with the seagate HD that was unacceptable in terms of noise, and now this one, which is, so far, PERFECT!!)

MusicalTone · Feb 2, 2006, 05:14 AM

Glad you got it sorted. I am tempted to do the same but do not have another machine to use in the meantime and I would loose all my data.... Oh well.

harrisjamieh · Feb 2, 2006, 10:09 AM

I'd burn your data onto dvds, and just bite the bullet and wait for a new one. Its so worth it!

codex57 · Feb 2, 2006, 09:46 PM

Glad everything worked out