[chuckles]

I have read about noises but none that are non- distructive, unless constant droning environmental noise counts.

I have a DV SE with 256ram.
From the moment I pulged it in it has a HD spin noise that sounds like a bee is loose inside. If I spin down the hard disk I get the drone to stop. I have reported it and when I don't need my Imac for work and can back it up appropriately, I will get it replaced.
Has anyone else has this noise problem?

I had a continuous noise in my segate 8mb HD. I thought that was the way it was supposed to be and didn't bother with it. Eventually the drive crashed. Nothing could be retrieved. Lost everything.

So my advice, back everything up NOW and get the drive replaced.

[MAlan]

I have a DV/SE as well and that Hard drive noise is driving me crazy too. Will the hard drive definitely be destroyed eventually? I want to hear from more people than just mkoob. I want to get a sense of what the probability of the drive having irreparable harm done to it due to this noise. Maybe one kind of noise from a hard drive is o.k. but another is indicative of a more serious problem.

Any help would be appreciated.
-Mike

At the school where I work as a network technician, we recently got an iMac DV/SE with the 13 gig drive. The drive emits a very noticable whine while running. The kind of whine I hear only from our high speed SCSI drives in our servers. by contrast, we also got 10 of the base iMac 350 machines with the 6 gig drives. They are so quiet, you almost have to look at the power light to make sure they are on. I'm not sure the loud drive noise in the SE is a defect, but it sure is very annoying, considering Apple touts these machines as so quiet. I would almost like to have a internal fan back to help mask the noise sometimes.

I have a blue ibook (rev b) and the first drive got too loud after about 3 weeks and I had a warranty replacement. the warranty service was fast but the new drive came preloaded with the 666 virus (thanks Apple!). I reformatted and got everything back up and running, and now the new drive is starting to exhibit the same metallic whine. This sucks. I am going to wait until it gets unbearable again because it is such a hassle.

I have a iMac 350 (blueberry). I had to remove the Quantum 6 GB Fireball because it made a high pitched whining noice that drove me mad. I now have a silent Maxtor 8.4 Gb drive.

It seems you mileage on sound level may vary. Even from the same manufacturer,

Me too I have a Tangerine iBook and i had the same problem; Apple change my hard drive, but after 4 weeks my hard drive make noise again...

[trusttom]

I purchased a DV/SE in October and was amazed how quiet the machine was. It was beautiful.

In mid-December, however, the hard drive began whirring loudly. With the holidays and birthdays ahead, and my desire to document everything using iMovie , I stuck with it until March when I purchased a 37 gig La Cie hard drive, backed it up, and took it to the shop. My local Apple shop replaced the drive without question.

At the time I took it in I could not leave the machine "awake" and watch tv in the next room, and I used to hook up headphones and listen to MP3s just to mask the loud and piercing sound of the hard drive.

The replacement drive is much better, but I don't think it is as quiet as the original.

I have an tangerine iBook that has recently started exhibiting the annoying metalic whirring mentioned in earlier posts. I am a little bummed. Hard drives are becoming quite inexpensive, but I am getting a little tired of every Mac I own experiencing problems.

BTW, the La Cie drive I purchased in March was about $600. My boss, just yesterday, purchased a 30 gig Western Digital firewire drive from ecost for under $400!

[chuckles]

Wow! MacNN.com rocks!
Fast to responses to pertinent issues from smart, jovial people!

The crashing issue scares me. I am avoiding putting it in the shop because of all the work I have do with it now. I thought I had in house service but Apple told me to take it in and give a number to the shop. It's great that a little machine can do almost everything I need it to do (except some of the things that it is expected to do).

I registered both the noise issue and my piss poor modem (see disconnect issue) with Applecare and am waiting for a good moment to put it in the shop. Here it would seem that when almost any machine with any size drive is repaired, just gets it again. The chance is high that the issue will resurface and in some instances have other problems (I would love to hear Apples explanation of the 666 infection!).

Sounds like Mac is pinching pennies to solve problems and buying crappy drives.

I hope they aren't doing the same for the modem replacement they promised me. I already have the flawed modem.

Maybe there is an Anti-Mac conspiracy going on...
These issues can be detrimental...
and if destructive may be malicious...
hmmmmm...
It would make a good I-movie.

I hope Apple's Reliability Quotient is dropping...if not our Apple faith.

Sometimes when apples's fall, the bump on the head hurts...

I have an old 7500 and my OEM stock 1GB drive crashed a while back... I had a full backup.

A buddy supplied me with a spare 2GB 7200RPM SCSI Western Digital drive that he had lying around. Great that I didn't have to buy a new drive, but upon having the drive spin up for the first time, and every time, it does have a metallic whirring noise louder than the fan in the 7500 (that's loud)...

It is very annoying, and I think it may just be characteristic of a 7200 SCSI drive, but who knows for sure. My buddy says that it never made any noise for him (he has multiple Cheetah 10k RPMs though, they might be loud).

Maybe it's not Apple that's putting crappy/noisy drives in their machines, maybe it's the drive manufacturers that are just making noisy drives theses days.

-T

[iPaul UK]

I have a DVSE and that makes a freakin racket aswell.. Kinda sounds like a loud fridge/freezer type noise! I'm still not sure if it's worth seeing if i can get anything done about it.

[chuckles]

Yep, I have a loud refrigerator and I can't hear it until I spin down my Imac. That's loud...
As it is, with the new advantage of USB items for digital soundwork (see that forum) mine may be to noisy for recording with microphones. Although my Viavoice seems to not notice.

Drives should be mostly silent. Noise at high rpm's means vibration or lack of balance. Now I am wondering if the temperature of the machine really limits the life of all the internal workings, especially the drive, expansion and contraction as such. Manufacturers of drives bid for contracts to provide tons of units. The quality may be secondary to Apple's spec's right now. Maybe they have a sell, sell, sell, fix it later policy.

I have an iMac 350 and 3 days after I got it it started making the whining noise. brought it in immediately and they replaced it because "it's was a little louder than normal." When I got it back it took no more than 6 hours before it started again. It is sooooooo annoying. So I am wondering if I should bring it in again. What a pain! One big problem is that I don't have a drive to back up my hard drive to, which means I have to buy one. What a hassle.

I bought a new iMac DV in the fall of 2000. The hard drive whining commenced within a month or so, and now sounds as obnoxiously loud as my ancient 5300CS powerbook.

Perhaps Apple was so taken with its Walt-Disney-Throwing-Up plastic color schemes, it forgot that putting a hard drive on a desk also puts it a few feet from one's ears. The lovely built-in sound system is largely drowned out now, as is my enthusiasm for Apples. Year after year, every new model hides some major flaw in the steak behind the sizzle.

I got my ibook 1.5 years ago and recently the noise from it is getting worse. I can't work in front of it and the metallic whine is definetly came from the HD. I want to replace the other high queality one and I am wondering which one is a quite HD. A laptop's HD is so close to us and if it is noisy, how can we sit in front of it and work...If anybody have any suggestion about any type of quite HD. Please provide the information. Thank you.

I got my iMac DV SE in May 2000 and the HD whine just started last week. The noise is driving me batty, even while the TV is on! I would shut the computer off, but it also doubles as an aswering machine.

[sniffer]

Had to replace my stock 20 gigs drive cause of whiny-metallic noise. It made me crazy. Wonder if we notice the sound of the HD in the imacs much better since it got no fan to eliminate the worst part of the noise. I think many pces sounds higher, but the sound isn't that bad, if u know what I mean.
Anyway, I think my new 45 gigs IBM 75 gxp was a great investment. It's speedyer, it sounds better, and it's cooler. The only coin must be that it's not 100% quiet, but the sound is much better, and I can use it without put my headphones on. When some of the HD manufactors reach a break-trouth in making quiet drives, I would definitly upgrade if so. There is nothing like a really quiet computer. But I am happy with my new drive!

------------------
---------
sniffer

Hi,
Check this thread out at Macfixit that has some statistics I complied regarding HD whine.
http://www.macfixit.com/ultimate/For...ML/001137.html

Bye
AM

the metallic whine of the HD seems to be a universal problem. i had my ibook sent in to applecare for repair but it was returned untouched, the technicians apparently found it to be 'normal'. YET the whine is making my ears ring. so much for apple CARE.

[pete.z]

I bought my current i-mac in oct.2000 and never had/have any noise from the HD.It works about 8 hours a day.No problems,perfect machine.

I wanted you all to hear that

[Troll]

I've posted elsewhere about the whine in my iMac DV. I had a Quantum Fireball 10GB that was whining (pitch changed constantly). I now have a Maxtor drive that is even worse (high pitched constant whine).

The technician at the shop (thick as a brick) keeps implying that I am overly sensitive and that the noise is normal. It's not! I have, right next to my DV, an iMac 350 (same generation) with a 6GB Maxtor drive that is almost silent. I checked the specs on the two drives and the 10GB DV drive should be quieter (by 2 bels). Maxtor has a diagnostics program on their website but its a PC DOS .exe and doesn't work under Vitual PC.

We need a way to measure the noise so we know when it's abnormal. Any ideas? Can anyone suggest some way of getting the Maxtor diagnostic software to work?

[GraphiteBoi]

that's just your friendly iMac singing to you, you should feel lucky not all iMacs have a great voice, so my advice..SING ALONG!

------------------
i Think, therefore iMac.

[suprz]

i bought my imac 10 mos ago,and it has the same whine (like a loud metallic refrigerator noise) in a quiet room it will drive you crazy. but until i can spring for a new hd and $$ to replace it. i just turn up itunes and let it play, while i surf

------------------
" I think,
therefore....IMAC

[chuckles]

I had my noisy drive replaced by Apple without cost. Things like fragmentation and loose parts can make noise. It is ridiculous to think that you can do sound work or use the internal microphone if there is to much noise. I played the game of loud music to mask it at first, but how about using the computer for work? A truly bad noise is caused by a hard drive out of balance or a noisy arm whizzing around trying to read/write. Whatever it is, if it is unbearable for the owner, it needs replacing (short of seeing if defragmenting helps). Mine has been fairly quiet since the swap. The Imac was made to be inexpensive and saleable. Make sure all the screws are tight (esp. when in for a repair) and run a defragmentor like Protools or Diskwarrior. If this fails and the drive still whines, unbearably, replace it. It is true, that as a spinning object gets louder, it is likely because it is off balance or friction, both detramental to data integrity. That is why some posts say they had disasters soon after the whine intensified. It should be a rare occurance. Drive manufacturers are fairly particular about keeping RPM's up and platters smooth. So why does the occurance with Imac's seem so high? Well, you ever buy a batch of apples and a few are rotten? Even Apple can buy a bad batch of drives, or a few with worms, so to speak. Also, when it happens to you it seems everywhere and louder. My test was, did it effect recording and was the noise higher than my refrigerator compressor. Both were true. To me if you buy the Cadillac it should drive marvelously (mine is the first DV SE purchased a little before the next better DV SE came out). Computers are for working and are not just pretty light bulbs. They should be quiet and do the work you ask of them. I love my Imac, because it has far fewer foibles than any PC. Now will Apple fix my refrigerator?

------------------

[lee vieira]

The iMac HD is a bit...odd, IMHO

In mine for example, the thing would spin continuously (and rather loudly) until I played with the settings in the Energy Saver control panel. Now my iMac is pretty darn quiet

I have NO idea though why the thing wanted to spin continuously in the first place, though, and I do have to wonder if many of the people out there who are complaining of 'loud HDs' don't have the same problem I did.

--lee

[chuckles]

Indeed! Or why can't Apple clearly say, just change your Energy Saver settings "this way or that" or your disk will spin a lot and make noise. Seems simple enough. Certainly, a drive that spins constantly is either being accessed for some activity or is spinning needlessly, both clocking spin time and lessening the life of the drive. Like, I know my drive is being accessed by some mystery process when, I put it in sleep mode and it awakes for no reason that I gave it. This happens sometimes. Therefore, we Imac (Apple) aficionados fiddle until it stops. My disk is being accessed sometimes when I have not given it a task, i.e. I put you to sleep...now sleep already...any drive will make some noise when being used, it may be a matter of how the drive is mounted or what type of sound insulation surrounds the drive. Better cars have more sound insulation and it follows, are more expensive. Maybe all the drives are fine and there should be a simple aftermarket sound insulator to pop in place, just be sure to share the profits with me. We bought Imacs, poised as economical powerhouses not silent, cruising limo's...although they do cruise. I'm still a Mac evangelist. Ah, the peace and quiet of a Mac existence...
(Sorry for the car analogies and my Smiley abuses, they are fun)

[jeromep]

I recently got my PowerBook G3/500 back from Apple because I requested a hard drive replacement. That drive was so noisy that you could hear the computer accross a rather large, carpeted room that has a minute amount of background noise.

I've RMAed lots of PC hard drives in my work; when one works fine for a while and then starts to get noisy that means certain death. I can only make guesses as to what the noise is from, but I figure that the bearings are going out on a drive that quickly becomes noisy. If the bearings go out the disk will eventually stop spinning and the drive will fail.

So, backup all of your data and if you are under warrenty, absolutly have Apple replace that drive.

If you search the forums as a whole for PowerBook drive noise you will discover some interesting items. 1. IBM hard drives in recent PowerBooks have a bad reputation of becoming noisy shortly after the computer is purhcased. 2. Toshiba hard drives placed in PowerBooks do not get noisy, usually.

Apple's repair center replaced my noisy IBM with a Toshiba.

If any of you do not know who manufactured your hard drive, do a system profile and examine your drive's specifications.

[This message has been edited by jeromep (edited 04-04-2001).]

[MAlan]

I'm still under warranty and my hard drive is still making that annoying noise in my iMac Rev A. DV/SE. My problem is exactly like chuckles. I've been living with it but it is unbearable. As soon as my wife is done with working on it for this semester I'm going to take it in to Comp USA to be replaced. I'm so glad that Chuckles got his drive replaced for free. I thought I would have to prove that it was unusable first.

I actually lost one of my partitions that I used to boot from totally. I had one partition with OS 9.04 and one with OS X beta and OS 9.04. Well the one with just 9.04 would crash and I would get the flashing question mark until I booted from the CD went into OS X beta and magically my OS 9.04 partition was fixed until one day that trick no longer worked. Now that partition is temporarily gone.

Fortunately I had the cash to by a LaCie 40 Gig firewire HD so I backed up everything. I didn't lose anything. But now we are hobbling along.

I had this theory that if I went to reformat it might completely disable the hard drive because the reformatting tool might see some damage and decide that the hard drive is finished. I actually hope this happens when I go to reformat after my wife is finished with school this semester.

F.Y.I. my hard drive is a 13 GB Quantum fireball.

Maybe I don't need to reformat though....maybe I can just take it in and demand that CompUSA replace it...it is still under warranty.

-Mike

I have 2 iMacs - one a bondi Rev. A and the other a 400MHz DV SE. I also have noticed that the 13GB drive on the DV SE is annoying loud, both when just spinning and when accessing data. It's mostly just a nuisance because I'd expect SOME noise out of anything spinning at high speed (OK - I use the term high speed loosely - it's 5400 RPM...).

I know that there are quieter drives out there, though. I just replaced the 4GB drive in my Rev. A with a 45GB IBM DeskStar 7200 RPM drive (needed more space in that one...) - it's MUCH quieter than the DV SE's drive. I can barely hear it over the Rev. A's fan. As soon as I get the $$$ and time, I'm going to get another one for the DV SE.

Although my experience with the IBM drive has been good, I've read that even within brands, noise coming from the drive is somewhat 'luck of the draw' - you might get one model that's very quiet and another that is annoyingly loud. Anyone else have a different experience?

Last fall we installed a lab of 20 iMacs. We recently replaced 10 of the drives that had that horrid dentist-drill whine. The replacements (under warranty) are almost as noisy as the original drives. Both the original and replacement drives are Seagates. I can't imagine how anyone would want to sit in front of those machines and do work for any period of time.

[chuckles]

My new drive, replaced whilst under warranty, was a Maxtor. It's purring mildly now. It definitely stops when I put it to sleep. Thank God. These machines are definitely bereft of sound dampening. A plastic box without sound insulation is the worst case scenario, but if it was a deliberate design flaw, they would have encased it in thin aluminum and had forks whizzing around the drive platter. Ahhhhhh, and a chalkboard screen. I'd throw a blanket over it if it wouldn't cook the insides. Cooling is to a minimum too. Only heat sinks as far as I know. No fan, but alas a fan would be noisy as well. It does keep me warm in the winter though...

I just wanted to pass this along. I am a computer tech and have encountered numerous noisy HD's lately in iMacs, G4's and PB's. Anyway, I am reading my MacNN homepage and see the reference to noisy hard drives in an iMac, so I go there and was reading some of the postings and what happens.. My phone rings from one of my customers who has recently purchased an iMac- he has a very noisy HD. This is the second occurrence in which, his company has had an iMac with a noisy HD.

[Troll]

I drove in a Mercedes a while ago that a car stereo system that monitored road noise and then emitted a signal through the car stereo speakers which cancelled out the frequency of the road noise to make the interior quieter. It really worked!

Now I'm thinking; the iMac has speakers, a microphone and a fixed frequency coming from the hard drive; couldn't someone write a program that samples the noise from the hard drive via the microphone, and then plays sound out of the speakers that interferes and cancels the noise?There is a white noise generator available but that's not what I had in mind.

I'm on hard drive number 2 and it is also noisy. Hard drive number 3 is being put in at the moment. I reckon definitely a bad batch somewhere.

My ibook is still making TOO MUCH NOISE. it sounds like a cranky vacuum cleaner. WHY IS APPLE DOING THIS TO ME. i think apple has beautiful products but what's beauty without 'inner peace'. Needless to say, I'm not going to recommend Apple to my mates.