27" iMac hard drive noise

If you are unhappy about the noise level of your harddisc and it is a new machine, take it back and swap it for another unit. Be firm in your request to receive a unit with a WD or Hitachi unit installed. My experience is that for an extra days wait, the Apple Store swapped out my drive for me to a WD. Problem solved without issue. The (forth) unit was ready to go when I came in to pick it up. If you are under Apple care and outside the customer satisfaction period for a swap (in Aus it's 14 days), you would be wise to lodge your complaint firstly through the store, call centre and follow up in writing or an email requesting a drive swap based on your user experience an expectation. Keep notes on who you spoke with each time. Apple trys hard to please customers and will help you if you cover all your bases and are persistent! Alternativley, if you are out of warranty, you can upgrade the disk yourself. There are many articles on how to do this easily. A compatible temperature sensor is all that is required and there are forums on that, just google it! You can buy another of the same sensor used on the internal DVD player or just get the specific one from:

http://www.applecomponents.com/computers/imac-27-inch-mid-2010/

Keep in mind that to use an OEM drive ie not supplied by Apple , you will need to use the DVD player sensor. You just put a patch of instant airframe over the sensor under the drive. Anyhow good luck!

Message was edited by: BOFHMAN

Message was edited by: BOFHMAN

You cannot ask for a unit with a Western Digital Drive, and the Hitachi I believe is only in the 2TB units but I could be wrong, also Hitachi are not known for massive reliability either. Basically any drive could die but the longer you have it the better your chances, if it does not fail in the first few days, the bath tub graph for hard drive failures applies to all drive makes. There is no way of knowing what drive is in the machine from the box, you need to fire it up to find out what drive is in it and in a shop you probably will not hear any noise anyway. So you say take it back, a new iMac, have it stripped and hope they put a Western Digital in? There are reports of WD drives making the same noise, and Hitachi ones as well in this forum, just read back though the posts on iMac hard drive noise and you will see.

If your machine is working fine and you don't mind the noise just enjoy the fact you have a good machine and get on with your life, I for one do not want to risk, dust, damage etc to a new machine just because my drive sounds like it is meant to.

Just my view, but all that hassle to get a WD drive, and it could still fail or be noisy...no thanks.

It's a shame to hear that perhaps your experience was not as enjoyable as mine. None the less, Apple have very good business customer support who really helped me by providing the swap out upon my request after exchanging three units. They are very aware of the issue in my local retail Apple Store. Excellent service. But you must persist. So if you have a situation that you are not happy with, please insist service for a replacement. The nice thing is that the WD drives are able to have the AAM activated as per my original post. Well worth the effort of the return in my opinion. Cheers 🙂

Please refer to my earlier posts. Most server data farms that experienced problems with the Segate drives were running 24x7. Most users standby or switch off their machines. The drives do have a manufacturer MTBF (Meantime Before Failure) rating. For these Seagate disks it's:

- Nonrecoverable read errors 1 per 1014 bits read, max
- Annualized Failure Rate (AFR) 0.32% (nominal power, 25°C ambient temperature)
- Contact start-stop cycles 50,000 cycles
(at nominal voltage and temperature, with 60 cycles per hour and a 50% duty cycle)

So the mass failures I reported in earlier posts were premature for the disks and were way off the manufacturers specification. There are all sorts of other factors which play into this of course. In the end it really comes down to your comfort and risk level regarding the importance of the data you are keeping on the drive.

In the case of the iMac, a simple Time Machine or SuperDuper backup at regular intervals will give you the peace of mind should your drive begin to have problems and you need to return it.

If there is just one piece of golden advice I can give, it would be to backup, backup, backup ... always backup 🙂

All drives have Contact start stop cycle life spans, and yes solid state drives are the way to go, the noise on Seagate's is pretty much how they sound in most machines, if it bugs you that much go get it sorted but remember you could get an iMac with other issues instead, the choice is yours. I have seen good and bad reports on Seagate 7200.12's but most say its a well priced reasonable performer and remember Apple have their own firmware on the drives, not Seagate's. There is firmware which can make the drive quieter I believe but at the cost of performance, but it's Seagate's own firmware, which we cannot apply anyway.

No matter what drive you have, backing up is always the key word. Just remember you have no way of determining the drive you get on purchase and cannot order a iMac with a specific drive, and Seagate have not had massive failures with the 7200.12 like they did with the 7200.11 (which was firmware based) the drive is fine for most PC's and is the most common drive in iMacs. Western Digital Black three platter drives can be noisy and can run hotter than the Seagate 7200.12 twin platter, and the Hitachi 2TB drives can be loud as well, and they all have areas where one drive exceeds the other in performance that tbh most of us will never notice in the real world. Your work/home environment and your hearing as well as where the iMac is placed all play a part also.

Get Applecare as its really worth having as repairs are expensive after your first year, and backup as BOFHMAN says. 🙂

Your point is not correct. You can request a specific Apple drive be used as a replacement when you deal with the business centers. Two of my partners also had this benifit. If you order online you cannot.

I think that the best way to solve this problem is a firmware update from Apple that allow AAM for the all the hard drives and not a 3rd party updates.
SD has a firmware update for the iMac's drive, BUT , Apple make their own firmware for the HD.
I really can't see any reason why they make such quite computer with such noisy HD.
When I use safari the HD going crazy ( PAKPAKPAKPAK).

I hope that someone from Apple working on this firmware update, one year is more then to much time to make such an update....

Have a 27" iMac I purchased mid July 2010. Hard drive started clicking a couple of weeks ago. It started clicking more today, and I called Apple. They advised me to shut it down and start it back up, a couple of times, in order to replicate the issue for the Apple store. Well that worked so well that the computer won't boot at all now. It displays a folder with a question mark.

So here are my questions:
--will Apple come pick up this computer, or send tech help to me?
--Any hope of saving the content on the hard drive? I do have it backed up, just curious.
--What hard drive should I ask for now?

Sheesh. I bought Apple stock at $4 but I'm now wondering why it's so high now... 😉
--Katie

Howdy, sorry to hear your HDD has gone kaput! Depending on why it has failed will determine if you can get data back off it, but if you have a backup, I wouldn't worry too much. You will probably need to take the whole unit back to your local apple store for service. Follow what I have suggested in my previous posts re. hard disks. In regards to the shares, my advice at the moment is SELL. The share market is going to buckle in the US very shortly and for an extended period of time ... years in fact 🙂

I have been following this topic on and off since getting my new iMac (the i5 27" Quad-core) but have not yet seen any real answers to the topic at hand.

I have noticed, since day 1, a relatively loud HD read/write noise on this new iMac which my old 20" (white iMac '06) did not make at all. My old iMac opening Photoshop is quieter than my new one just sitting idle. It's not right.

For the benefit of everyone here, I've tried my hardest to record the noise whilst opening a few applications. Please turn up your volume *a lot*(!) it's quite a poor recording from my iPhone 4 but it's the best I can personally create with the tools I've got. You can hear my mouse clicks too which helps time the read/write noise.

The recording: http://bit.ly/bPRpSZ

So, is this normal? That noise occurs when idle, but only in the 'Pak Pak' manner several other people have mentioned. It's the same tone, just a different tempo when idle - about 2 'clicks' or 'paks' per 10-30 seconds.

Do I take the iMac back to Apple, or have I just got myself another one of Apple's new, erhmm, professional products?

Just bought a new iMac 27" i7 2 days ago.. hard drive is silent, however making a weird clicking noise every so often, usually in three's. Recored it, listen here... http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2848863/My%20Song%203.m4a

Its like click......... click click? Is this the issues everyone else is having?

Nicholas L. Eby wrote:
Its like click......... click click? Is this the issues everyone else is having?

That's definitely not the sound mine makes - that really does sound like a fault. Mine just sounds like a hardrive from the 90's, disappointing but not scary!

I'd suggest taking that Mac back to a store.

Hi dieseL !
I have exactly the same hard drive noise like you.
It`s meanwhile the second iMAc "27 i got within two weeks.
Trying to see if that noise is normal i was in a apple store today.
All 27 " iMacs in the shop were absolutly quiet. No harddrive noise, no fan-noise. QUIET.... being back from store i ordered the third exchange-device now.
Hope the next one will be better . My first and second devices had an seagate hdd and were built in week 22-25.

Hi Chris,

If you could post your result of the next iMac I'd be ever so grateful - I really want to get this dealt with if it's a problem. I've spent a long time setting this Mac up, I would prefer to restart that now than later on.

Thanks,
Andy

I stand corrected, but as I said for the rumble seek noise I would not bother having my hard drive taken out of a perfectly good brand new iMac when nothing is wrong with the drive, that's a bit to ocd for me, and I have ocd myself! Each to their own though 🙂