27" iMac hard drive noise

AreHaving to pay more to correct a design flaw.

Bear in mind that Apple does not manufacture hard drives.

Your iMac was put together in a noisy factory in China where the noise would be difficult to detect. I also received a Mac once with a noisy hard drive. This was in a Mac Pro where the hard drive can be replaced in 20 seconds with no tools.

Hard drives are difficult to replace in the iMac. Take your iMac to any Apple Store and they will replace the drive for you.

I have four drives in my Mac Pro. I cannot hear anything from them unless I put my ear on the tower.

can I write directly to Tim Cook?

Sure you can, but he'll never see it. ( No criticism of Apple here. It's been well reported that the majority of e-mails sent to companies are never read.)

jayster1981,

Can you give me a bit more info on where you are from and where your mac was sent to. Did you have a contact name at apple care who arranged this for you? Or, did you have to purchase the WD yourself and take it to apple certified repair?

This is what I've been trying to argue for - get rid of the seagate and replace it with a WD drive but apple have twice now refused to do this and simply replaced the thing with the stock seagate drive. I explained to the guy at the genius bar in the apple store all of this and told him that seagate drives didn't work acoustically in these imacs. They took no notice of this and when I got my mac back it had another seagate! I then got on the phone to apple care in a complete rage (there was no change to the level of noise, if anything it was worse!) and apple care picked the machine up (through UPS). I attached a long letter to the service engineer of the repair place my mac was getting sent to going into great detail how the problem was with seagates. I even cut and pasted comments from this site. They ignored me! Told me it was seagate or nothing. Got my mac back and no change in the level of growling/grumbling noise. I'm sooooo angry at apple over all of this.

Derek, I am not sure whether you shouod fight for WD drive, many people reply they are humming and are not more silent than Seagate. At least the model that has FALS in its name. My Hitachi 2 Tb is not grumblijg but it causes the aliminium case to hum and in a quiet environment it drives ceazy after some time. so your only option is SSD. Actually if I could know the real situation with 2011 iMacs I would be waiting for 2012 release - maybe they will offer 512 Gb SSD option as 256 GB is just not enough to be used without hard drive.

people, please don't tell "Apple does not manufacture hard drives". that's what I already heard in apple services. Actually they ORDER a custom hard drives , which makes them impossibke to replace without their help, then they provide no help at all. that's just not acceptable for $3000 I paid.

DizzyDown,

What I can't understand is that I have a virtually silent imac at work, 21.5 inch model and it has a WD drive, but it's 500GB. Another option I've thought about is getting firewire external (with a long cable) and tuck it away from my work space. Switch off this seagate thing and run OS off that? Not sure if that would be possible. I have a 1TB USB WD external so storage is not a major problem if I need to go SSD. But why should I have to pay for this? I've emailed the senior apple care guy again yesterday with a link to these pages urging him to take action. He's not got back to me. I simply cannot believe that apple would treat its customers like this. We've spent a fortune on these machines. All I want is the same apple mac experience that I've had for years - vitually silent machines! I bought a mac for music-making and this thing is simply too noisy!

<Edited by Host>

Oh my god... I just found out that the iMac hum/vibration is related to the desk it's on. I tested it by lifting the iMac from the table - hum stops - and then I put it on another (more solid) table. The hum stopped. So, this means that the desk is acting as a resonance system. I'm trying to figure out the best way to stop the coupling of the iMac and the desk. Probably I'll need a better table top instead of the cheap (but fine) IKEA one.... I'll post when I find more about this, but there are some discussions around that mention this desk resonance effect.

that's a know issue that vibration/humming from wd fals drive can be greatly reduced by placing imac on a silicon pad. as it creates a resonanse with a table (don't you think you should not have this issue for such amount of money)?

but with my hitachi drive it does not help at all. it does not cause the case to vibrate but only to hum. maybe it's better than WD FALS - I had no chance to listen to that wd drive yet.

I have a little hope that the hum will decrease with a time, as somebody wrote that the drive's mechanical parts sound louder when new. but it's a very little hope.

Derek, you can use that firewire solution, but it will work only with mac os x and not windows. Again, don't you think it's not what Apple customers supposed to do as they advertise iMacs as the best computers in the world?

Derek, you can also try to install Mac OS X (or just clone your existing system with Disk Utility) on 128 or 256 GB USB flash drive and use it as your boot device.

Unfortunately, speedy USB 3.0 drives are not supported by Apple.

Solutions like this one seems to be better but I never saw such drives on sale

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Kanguru_Releases_First_FireWire_Flash_Dri ve/

Dizzydown,

The hard drive on my iMac is a 1 TB Seagate ST3100528. Well, and the computer hums like crazy... I thought this problem was related to WD drives!

I'm thinking about buying a new desk, so that it does not vibrate. There is one dining table at my flat that doesn't vibrate when the iMac is standing on it. So, this is really a resonance effect of the hard drive going through the case and getting amplified by table tops. I just hope the new table stops the hum, otherwise, I'll ask for a replacement iMac or refund.

I, too, had a good iMac before the hard drive replacement, so there are silent iMacs out there...

Derek - I saw that Apple page long time ago - and that page tells nothing about the constant humming!

The funny thing is Hitachi drive has ho grumbling sounds at all (they are very very soft and hard to be heard). But it has a constant humming which can be heard from 2 meters in a quiet room! And Apple never told about that.

Actually I was asking about the hard drive noise before purchase and I was told there is no noise. So I was cheated.

Derek, you could also try to request a downgrade to 512 GB WD drive - but first visit an Apple shop and request to test a standard model with 512 Gb drive in a quiet environment.

Spinn - obviously that humming is caused by a specific acoustic of the aluminium case, as I am sure the old plastic cases have a lot better sound isolation.. Well, it's a design flaw anyway.

DizzyDown,

that's an idea, but I've no need to visit my local store. I've got a 21.5 inch imac at work, WD 512 drive and I took it into a really quite area of my work - virtually silent. Thing is, i said all of this to apple care and even told them I'd be willing to accept this drive, but all the did was send my mac back from repair with another 1TB seagate!!!!

Apple services are very limited in what they can do - Apple dictates all rules. They cannot even order the part they need if it does not match Apple records for this Mac.

Derek, just curious - please comment whether your iMac has a fan-like constant humming (caused by HDD rotation) with this 1 Tb Seagate drive? I am just trying to understand whether this humming is unique to some drives, or it's caused by design of the iMac case. I don't mean read/write "grumbling" caused by the movement of HDD heads.

Spinn: why to spend on a new table if you can just put something soft between the stand and your table? Some people report it helps to reduce vibration but some humming will be still there.

DizzyDown,

There is a humming sound from the same area as the grumbling comes from on my mac, so the answer to your question is yes. However, there is also a hum also from the macs I have at work (they are all 21.5 inch) although I have to say I don't really notice this due to the building's ventilation fans. As I've had my ear to the back of my work machines (when trying to compare the grumbling with my own mac at home), I can though confirm that a hum is there in the 21.5 inch models. Some of the macs I have at work have WD drives so they also seem to make this humming sound too.

Just now things are extremely busy for me with a number of work based deadlines; however, when I've the time I'm going to bring one of my 21.5 inch macs home and sit it beside my 27inch model which has the seagate 1TB. I'll make and audio and video recording of the 2 machines together, both undertaking the same tasks. One will be vitually silent, one will sound like a coffee percilator. I'll put these on youtube. I'll take all of this evidence into the genius bar of my local mac store (along with my 27inch mac - not easy to take into Glasgow city centre) and not leave until they give me an answer that I'm happy with.

Thing is, I have dropped in to this store several times and asked staff about this. All seem completely baffled that I can hear any noise from my mac. Also, I know these stores are really noisy but I have had my ear right up against the back of 27inch display models while the machine is loading up and running software such as logic and garage band. A member of staff has operated the store mac for me. I can't hear anything. I do the same at home, running the same software (playing music in my room and having an old PC on that is really noisy) and the hard drive goes into a grumbling frenzy. I don't even need my ear at the back of the machine to hear the grumbling and growling. I've checked the HD on the display models in the mac store and it's actually the seagate! Same serial number as mine. The olny difference is that the store mac has Lion and I have Snow L. 10.6.8 - What is going on?

Would there be any downside to replacing the HDD in my iMac myself? I've put up with the grumble/popcorn sound for about 15 months now and would like to get rid of it as I find myself using the Mac more and more for work.

Which HDD could I switch it for? I've read that the temperature control breaks when you swap the HDDs, so you have to manually control the fans?

Any help/guidance appreciated - this is something I really would like to get sorted now. I can't believe this thread is still ongoing, my first post in this thread was in on October 4, 2010!

Current HD: Seagate 1TB (ST31000528AS)