27" iMac hard drive noise

Hi nick, yeah the sound is definately the HD, its the usual grumble noise of it seeking. If this was my first imac i'd just take it as normal, but because its my third, both of which we're silent... hd and all, its sticks out like a sore thumb.

Web pages doesnt effect the noise what so ever

And how do you work this DiskLED, does it just flicker when the HD is in use? Anyway after watching it for a while whilst performing tasks the noise is corresponding to the flicker... so defo HD, but i have heard of people having the ground loop issue.

Anyways, i suppose i'll have to get the HD changed by a reseller to protect my warranty. Or just put up with it, but its a shame cause my previous Seagate drive (500gb) in my iMac 21.5" 2009 was silent everyday.... its a shame these Seagate 1tb drive can come considerably noisier

My name is George and I come from Greece.

Having read most of the posts of these thread I would like to share my experience hoping that this may assist, at least some, like it did myself.

I own an 27" i7 iMac which - until recently - used to work flawlessly and especially without any noticeable sounds.

A few weeks ago I started hearing loud 'growling' disturbing sounds from the HDD when the system was accessing the disk. The sounds became worse after upgrading to Lion. In the meantime had already noticed that the back of the iMac was becoming quite warm; at least warmer than it used to.

In any case and in order to cut the long story short, as I was about to have the iMac sent back to the dealer to have the HDD checked I decided to address the issue of the warming up by installing a relevant application that reports the temperature and the speed of the fan and also controls same accordingly. The moment the application was started I immediately heard the fan working at full speed; reporting abt 6000 rpm and a temperature in xs of 60C (that is 140F...). It kept working like that for abt 10' until the temperature and the speed dropped below 50C (122F) and 2600 rpm respectively.

Since then the HDD started behaving normally and its noise went back to the normal low levels of the good old days.

Now, why the system did not address this by itself in increasing the rpm of the fan I do not know but - at least in my case - HDD noise was apparently due to overheating....

/G.

Thanks for your input george. What program did you use to monitor and control temps and fan usage? I'll give it a go but my HD is reading at 46 degrees at the mo, which sounds about normal. The back of the iMac is quite hot though, not sure if its any hotter than it should be, but interested in testing out your method

Thanks

I recently bought a 27in iMac and it has a Western Digital 1 TB hard drive. it makes the same grumbling noise as mentioned in other posts. i called apple and they suggested replacing it. however they did not acknowledge that this was a known issue. i got a new replacement and this one too has the same issue.

Honestly I am a bit disappointed

Abhijeet

George, I had similar findings after reading your post. I instead used iStat Menus which I coincidentally had got with latest mac update promo fall bundle.

I have a Hitachi 2TB drive in my new iMac 27". I notice that when accessing the drive it makes access noise. This noise is not uncommon to me since I have a strong background in PCs (I remember I could hear our server HDD down the hallway from my office where I used to work).

I noticed that both my cpu and hdd were pretty high - around 54 degrees. I set the minimimum hdd and cpu fan higher and the temps came down. But more important I cannot hear the HDD sound nearly at all anymore. What actually happens is it does not really fix the HDD sound but rather the fan sound appears to mask out the HDD seek noise. I would rather listen to a nice consistent fan than intermittent HDD rumbling. I found setting a combination of the fans at a higher minimum speed produces good results to hide the HDD noise and also brought down my temperatures.

When I get my SSD, that 2TB is coming out anyways and I'll replace it with something quieter.

Brian, thank you for your last.

I'm pretty sure though that the fan noise did not mask the hdd noise.

What I have finally come to believe is that my issue was due to a number of factors. One being the temperature of the drive and the other a couple of applications that started misbehaving after the latest snow leopard updates and also after the upgrade to lion.

One application was an antivirus which although properly set up, did not like it when time machine was backing up my sys and the other was an application that monitored an wifi camera I have in my office. Reason I do not name names is that it's been more than a month since I uninstalled both and have to search for which they were. In any case apparently these two resulted in heavy usage of the hdd, hence the temperature, hence the noise.

Now things have "cooled down" and my sys behaves as before; the hdd can be heard but on actual high usage and not so often.

One question I would like to ask you is which iMac you have and you intend to install the ssd..? Mine is a late '09 model and the options I have found on the internet for such an upgrade have all their drawbacks...

/G.

GMakris,

I have a 2011 3.4Ghz Quad i7.

I had to order special USB cable for mine and waiting to get that before I get the SSD. I think that while I am in there I may as well change the stock 2TB Hitachi but I may change my mind when the time comes. I am looking at installing a 480GB OCZ Vertex.

Brian.

everyone here is mentioning seagate as the culprit and i thought i'd throw my $0.02 in. i have 2011 27" imac that had a recalled seagate hard drive in it. prior to bringing it in to have the hard drive replaced under the recall the hard drive never made any audible noise... now with a new (i'd assume) western digital hard drive, installed by apple at an apple store, the thing is unbearably noisy!!! not too happy...

Hi

I curious if SSD really fix the problem, I hope so.

Thanks everybody for posting! I just return for refund mine 1st and probably last iMac 21.5 because it has the same noise and Seagate inside. First couple of days I wasnt sure what is that noise and serch and found this thread. I had appointment with one of "genius" in the local Apple and he mention same BS about mechanical noise all computer making and was asking about what kind of computer I have, I had in the past and so on. I have silent custom PC Win 7x64 which is the way to go I think for many known reasons.

I may be try Mac again when problems sorted out and SSD fall reasonably in price.

Also I would prefer to shop in BestBuy since they more focused on satisfaction and asking less questions when you returning item you don't like.

Here is interesting article... it refers to the EXACT Hitachi drive I have.

http://petermoulding.com/hitachi_disk_hds722020ala330

I can see using noisy drive in MacPro, but iMac is supposed to be a nice, quiet machine... especially when the drive is right in front of you on the desk!

I'm definitely gonna change mine out - add an SSD and replace noisy Hitachi... I am just waiting for some parts because I only want to open my iMac once.

Apple finally agreed to replace my entire machine... I received a 'quiet as a church mouse' machine with a Seagate Barracuda HD. My conclusion is that the current lot of Western Digital hard drives are too noisy for these machines and create far too much noise pollution for a quiet working environment. Given that my original machine had a Seagate HD (from a lot that was unfortunately recalled) and it was silent during HD operation and this new machine has a Seagate HD and is just as quiet, I'd say that Seagate has clearly improved their offering for use with the iMac. Good luck to everyone else dealing with this... My advice? Keep pushing! You should NOT be able to hear any noise whatsoever from the operation of the hard drive in an iMac, period. You have a right to a whisper quiet machine because you paid really good money for it, really good money.

Hi, I got a 27 iMac in Feb2011, and its made this odd rocking/clicking noise every since day 1 which I would guess is the same as what you are experiencing.

(oh BTW I do know what a regular hard drive sounds like - and this is not it)

I took it to an authorised repairer who after saying they had no idea what I was talking about replaced the hard drive. I brought it home and within 24hrs it was making it again.

I then took it to the Bondi Apple store and where the "Genius"????? plugged it in and said he could hear nothing against the noisy surrounds of the store. Supergenius perhaps.

The computer was left and they claimed they found the problem and replaced the Optical drive. Once again the noise was there once I had turned it on.

It's a real annoying sound. If you watching a video, or listening to music you can hear it. If you reading documents or working on somehting with no background noise its dam annoying. If the computer is sitting untouched for 15 minutes it makes the noise. If its turned to sleep it does not make the noise.

A friend of mine has the same computer and "no noise"

Ok Apple I am out of patience, and your loosing me with this one and I am tired of being told this has been fixed when the Genius staff are only guessing as to whats wong with it.

Honestly, the sound you're describing isn't what I was experiencing, but it sounds (no pun) like it could be worse. What worked well for me was opening a ticket at http://expresslane.apple.com. From there, if you don't get the help you need with your first call, schedule another call from the Email you'll be sent if the issue keeps occurring. In my situation this call was immediately routed to a level 2 support person who was able to take more control of the situation and solve the problem. Good luck!

jspeciner wrote:

everyone here is mentioning seagate as the culprit and i thought i'd throw my $0.02 in. i have 2011 27" imac that had a recalled seagate hard drive in it. prior to bringing it in to have the hard drive replaced under the recall the hard drive never made any audible noise... now with a new (i'd assume) western digital hard drive, installed by apple at an apple store, the thing is unbearably noisy!!! not too happy...

I second this. I have a 2011 27" with the Western Digital 1TB drive and boy is it noisy during use. Upgrading from a dead silent 24" iMac it's a bit of a disappointment. At the office I happen to have a 2011 27" and after reading this forum, I checked and it happens to have the Seagate and it's relatively silent. You can still hear it, but it sounds like a low tone "thump"...instead of a higher pitched "streek" while in use.

Fu...Just bought my first iMac (27" midd 2011) and it sounds just like my old PC back in 2000! Apparently I'm not the only on with this noisy HD issue. The model is: WDC WD1001FALS-403AA0 (1TB) and it makes the typical cache/search crackle sound of an old hd.

****, I don't know if to get it changed or just turn up the volume more..