27" iMac hard drive noise

Mgaw, out of curiosity. Was it a new refurbish purchase or a new iMac??. I have the same issue with the same drive and apple was going to replace it for me but they quoted a few days (like 7). Some forum users report silence with the western digital drive so we may have a bad batch. In my case I used my iPhone to record the sound it makes while the computer boots up and played that sound to the genius as evidence since the store is relatively loud and hard to demonstrate the sound.

I tried to live with it at first but the one thing that thre me over the edge was a podcast recording using the iMac built in microphone. Whe. I clicked to launch an app during the podcast the harddrive scratching sound appeared on the audio of the podcast during playback and somewhat obvious even at regular volume. This was a clear sign this drive had to be changed despite all diagnostics indicating the drive was fine.

Well I ordered a _new_ iMac, but who knows what they really send you.. I guess I'll be dragging it soon to apple care too. The Airport seems to be dropping the wifi connection too (I've tried pretty much every trick to fix it I could find in the interweb) so there's another reason to pay them a visit.

After 12 years as a PC user, I decided after much thought to buy a refurbished 27" imac with the i5 cpu. I purchased a refurbished model as I wanted the 1gb GPU and my budget only stretched to a refurb.

The hard drive is a Western Digital WD1001FALS-403AA0 and can be heard when doing pretty much anything that involves hard drive access. This is the first mac I have ever bought and I was expecting it to be silent as many others have told me. Apple are taking it back and refunding my money but after many months deciding if I should buy a mac, I am feeling rather disappointed.

After reading this thread, I am not sure if I want to try again. Have I just been unlucky or is this noise becoming the norm? The imac itself is a beautiful machine but I bought it for the peace and tranquility it offered. It let me down.

ray-macclesfield wrote:

After 12 years as a PC user, I decided after much thought to buy a refurbished 27" imac with the i5 cpu. I purchased a refurbished model as I wanted the 1gb GPU.

The hard drive is a Western Digital WD1001FALS-403AA0 and can be heard when doing pretty much anything that involves hard drive access. This is the first mac I have ever bought and I was expecting it to be silent as many others have told me. Apple are taking it back and refunding my money but after many months deciding if I should buy a mac, I am feeling rather disappointed.

After reading this thread, I am not sure if I want to try again. Have I just been unlucky or is this noise becoming the norm? The imac itself is a beautiful machine but I bought it for the peace and tranquility it offered. It let me down.

I fall in the exact same scenario, with the same iMac i5 with the same 1gb GPU same refurb process. Don't let this deter you from having a Mac though. In my case, the genious bar offered to swap it out. Diagnosing at the apple store is difficult with the ambiant sound of enthusiastic apple shoppers. To help the genious with this I simply used my iPhone to record ambiant sound under the mac while it was booting up and then offered this to the genius with some noise cancellation headphones i happen to have. He heard it really clear and agreed that's not how the iMac should sound.

The referb you got was probably returned because of the drive while everything else is flawless. I would go ahead and purchase it as it's great with games of all types. If you happen to get the same WD1001FALS drive (and it happens to be noisy; some are not from what I hear) just swap it out. You will not be disappointed in the long run. Apple is generally good at ensuring 100% customer satisfaction. I don't even notice the drive working now and extremely happy and the end results.

The drive in my early 2008 iMac failed last month after it started intermittent noise a few months ago. My iMac would not recognize the drive at power up time occasionally. It would start up okay next morning. This became more frequent and finally I took it to a local Apple Store. Fortunately my three year Apple Care took care of the replacement. This type of intermittent problems is most difficult to be diagnosed until the failure becomes more predictable. I could appreciate your disappointment but I would not let this discourage you to buy Apple product. In my fifteen years of using Apple product, hardware failures have been rare and Apple service has been excellent, especially if you have an Apple Store nearby. This is from a retired computer engineer. Stay with Apple. PC's are no better and the service *****.

I confirm that my iMac 21.5'' Core i5 2011 has a constant HDD humming as well. It's not too loud, but very recognizable in a silent room even from some meters away. the HDD access noise does not bother me as it's quiet enough. Actually all Apple coomputers I have had a crappy loud hard drives, which is weird for the computers of such price. While the silent drives do exist on the market, Apple prefers to install a cheap hard drives to save some bucks. I am really disappointed that 2011 models have a proprietary hard drives, which limit the upgrade. I tried to listen to this Mac at the shop where I purchased it and heard nothing, but the room was not perfectly silent. When I ran it at home I've got the noise immediately. I have Hitachi 2 Tb drive (it's pretty old model to install in 2011 computers, what a shame Apple). While the drive speed is good, the humming just kills the entire iMac idea , because you have it right at your face. I don't wish to go back to the shop cause it's actually in another country and it will be not easy to move it back and forth.. And I doubt they will be able to help me.

I am just curious is this humming in every iMacs with 2 Tb Hitachi, or mine is not OK?

BTW there are LOTS of complaints on noisy iMAc HDDs for years, and it's weird Apple does nothing to fix it.

I would probably prefer to have a 1 Tb HDD without a humming, than pay so much extra for BTO iMac just to get this problem. I think I will try to replace my HDD at some moment, but with 2011 iMac limitations that could be some problem if you are not in the USA.

i just got one brand new imac 27 inch one week ago and i can say i was surprized because of the bad hdd noise, everythig silent, even the fan dosent make that much noise but the hdd make quite some noise when i run things open programs or surf the web. I got the mac because a friend told me is the most silent and all in one i can get from the market. im really suprised to find so many posts about this problem for such an expensive computer.And beside all this if u dont have a good, strong desk u can hear and feel the vibration of the fans or whatever is doing this vibrations. quite disapointed.

Hi!

I have also noisy 27 imac. With Seagete 7200.12 AP25.

Now I use as a boot drive and also main drive external fw800 (small and fw-powered disk)

I unmount internal Seagete at the login. In this way I get almost silent iMac. But something feels still bad.

External drive is slower and this is not "Apple-style" to use great machine with external extra drive.

Has anyone updated Seagates firmware? There seems to be cc49 firmware out, but it does not include AP25.

What do we lose if we patch drive with this Seagate -standard firmware. Is it the temperature info or what.

Or any other ideas to get internal drive to stop its noisy pop corn sound, when rw/head is moving.

Changing the disc in the service costs very much, and even they cannot be sure what is the new drive or is it as noisy as this old one etc. SSD drive is silent, but those cost too much in this time.

Hi,

Also have a 27" iMac with Seagate 7200.12 1TB disk, purchased new with AppleCare mid 2011 - 3.1 GHz core I5.

Disk model is ST31000528AS revision AP4C serial 5VP8PJTR

Within a few days of purchase, I received the Apple email advising the disk is faulty, and I should have it replaced at their cost. I have lived happily with my iMac for ~ 6 months now.

I am very very susceptible to noise, particularly fan noise - I've even knocked holes in walls to locate my workstation in adjacent rooms; at work I usually insist on locating them under the desk, much to other's surprise - which is one reason I'm prepared now to pay top dollar for Apple kit. I haven't had too much noise yet - it's acceptable - certainly not the problems others have had in this forum.

My iMac is unusually ventillated being on an articulated arm from the wall rather than a desk.

I may just keep it as it is and not get it replaced: Here's why.

Last week, decided to look into getting peace of mind and get it replaced. Phoned my local Apple Store, and spoken with the Genius Bar representative - they made it clear that I would have to bring my 27" iMac in a number of times, probably at least three (3). And they didn't fill me with confidence. I also asked to purchase and have installed an SSD. They advised I have to go elsewhere. I have also placed a call with the AppleCare number and been advised I'll receive an email response, but it's been a couple of days and I haven't yet. I've researched the procedure to do it myself - it's non-trivial which is OK - iMac's aren't meant to be user-serviceable - so I won't risk it.

I've installed SMART monitoring (disk drill), and fan speed control (HDD fan control), and note no problems as yet - no SMART problems and no heat problems, though here in Melbourne we are on the brink of Summer which usually challenges my kit.

I reckon if I elect to hand my iMac over, even to get the AppleCare on-site maintenance, I'll could end up with something with problems when currently I don't think I have any.

Agree with the comments above that the beautiful iMac should be quiet, and I wouldn't be happy if mine wasn't. If we can't get quiet Winchester drives I reckon the SSDs are a better option. I don't need much space on the iMac, so replacing the Winchester with the SSD would be a solution for me.

Apple does not seem to advise what the fault with these disks are, only that they need to be replaced; Does anybody know if the Apple recall is based purely on the disks inability monitor and manage heat, and / or their acoustic properties, which, btw, I also have had on PCs and successfully used the drive's vendor's software to change the on-device configuration of acoustic properties.

If I get SMART warnings, it'll be an on-site replacement, by, preferably an Apple SSD, but I understand from AppleCare that this is an even more expensive option than buying the Apple SSD at the time of the iMac, so, maybe I'll consider voiding my warrantee and AppleCare and install an SSD myself, and consider it lesson learnt.

Whaddayadink?

If I had known I would have ended up with a noiser drive I would have never brought it in. I would have just dealt with a dead drive in the off chance it actually occured.

The noise is REALLY annoying. It might be nit picky but it really *****.

Calling phone support they suggested bringing the noisy one in for the genius bar to "hear if it is abnormally loud"

I know exactly how that conversation is going to go so i'm not going to bother lugging this beast in for that frustration.

On top of all of that, the genius bar nicked the outside casing of my imac. again, nitpicky, but really annoying.

At this point. I am thinking about just cracking open the case myself and throwing in an SSD.

There's a lot of pages to read here, so apologies in advance if this repeats info already noted 😀. My late 2009 27" iMac made the dreaded percolating coffee pot HDD noises. Finally, about a week ago I couldn't take it any more. I replaced the 1 TB Seagate drive on my own. If you are on the fence about doing it yourself, it's a *lot* simpler than you might think. It takes about 10-15 minutes at most to do the physical replacement. I replaced the stock seagate HDD with a 2.0TB Western Digital Caviar Green "GreenPower" SATA-II HDD drive. I also replaced the stock seagate HDD temp sensor with the older style HDD temperature sensor that adheres to the HDD case. The new HDD works like you would expect a HDD to work -- *inaudibly*.

thank you for the hard drive replacement hardware suggestion. i was able to find the caviar green hd on amazon.

1. can you recommend a specific temp sensor as well?

2. any suggestions on recommended software to easily move my applications/configs.

3. suggested youtube video showing a how to on replacing the drive?

puddytat wrote:

thank you for the hard drive replacement hardware suggestion. i was able to find the caviar green hd on amazon.

1. can you recommend a specific temp sensor as well?

2. any suggestions on recommended software to easily move my applications/configs.

3. suggested youtube video showing a how to on replacing the drive?

If you are going to go the direct route, I strongly recommend you get the air canister to blow the dust out. I am 100% comfortable opening and building my own PCs for 20 years now however opened my iMac 27 for the first time a few months to resolve the drive noise. I can say with confidence, no matter how much you wipe and clean ..you will get notorius lint and particles stuck between the glass and LED screen which will be plainly visible when the monitor is dark or off. After numerous attemps at remove wipe replace, etc. I was able to get it relatively lint/dust-free by spraying with the air canister directly between the screen and glass from the sides while the glass was already attached to the bottom but spearated from the top by a few inches.

In short, spray (first away to get any liquid residue the can may have) then blow in through the sides and immediately close the glass.

puddytat wrote:

1. can you recommend a specific temp sensor as well?

macpartsonline #922-9229

2. any suggestions on recommended software to easily move my applications/configs.

time machine/time capsule

3. suggested youtube video showing a how to on replacing the drive?

even better: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac-Intel-27-Inch-Hard-Drive-Replacement/1634/1

Ok, so i have exactly the same problem as most users on here, got my 1TB 27" IMac in Dec 2011... love everything, amazing machine apart from the grumbling noise crap.... so after a while of reading most posts on here i have noticed that most that have taken thier IMacs back have got a replacement with the same problem and those that dont have the problem find it preposterous that Apple makes a noisy product.... well they do.... shame, my only question being to all the lovely people (and helpful) on here is

What should i do?

thanks in advance