27" iMac hard drive noise

that's a fan problem for sure. try to set your fans to max with smcFanContrl and keep for 5 minutes (better by creating a new profile there), then set everything back to default. If that won't help request a fan replacement from Apple service.

My iMac has made a puzzling change in the noise the drive makes. It is a:

1 TB Hitachi HDE721010SLA330 Media 27"

and the very best word to describe the noise is sussuration -- at the risk of sounding pretentious. No clicks, whines, or grumbles. Almost like wind flowing, but it has gone from almost silent to this noise winding up every hour or so, to it being almost continuous, and increasing in volume.

I make my living on this iMac and would be very grateful for any comments and suggestions.

Thank you,

Sheila

hi Sheila, it seems that this type of noise is created by all Hitachi models ending SLA330.. BTW this model is dated 2009 so it was awful to have it in newer iMacs. I am not sure how Apple is choosing the Hdd models, I guess they are just installing the most cheap they could order.

OK, I have never posted on this forum before, and I have been reading many of the responses. Need some clarification though. I just got my 1 TB Seagate HD replaced and my LCD replaced both under the recall for my 27" Imac. HD went bad and the LCD was getting splotches on it. LCD looks great now, but the HD seems louder and slower than the original HD I had in it. Can this be my imagination? I can't recall hearing the fan/ clicking like I do before the replacement, and it seems to take longer to start up. The replacemnt HD is also ST31000528AS, don't know where to find the revsion #. Thanks for any advice.

Thank you so much for your advice!

You may find how it has developed interesting: the noise in this 27" iMac has subsided to about half now and remains an even shushing sound, rather than increasing periodicallly. Simply by shutting down every night instead of putting it to sleep for a couple days in a row, (wow, that was bad advice from somewhere in the past-- "you can just put your computer to sleep for several days and not shut down") and of course doing disk permission repair -- also running MacJanitor -- both of these a little more often than once a week for now.

In spite of having this dread Hitachi SLA330 drive, it has behaved wonderfullly for years.

REALISATION REGARDING HARD DRIVE NOISE

I thought my iMac 27 i7 2011 was making much louder hard drive noises than previously. After many months of irritation and replacing the drive twice, I realised that I had moved it much nearer the wall. The nearer to the wall the louder the noise. Move it forward away from the wall by a foot and the noise virtually dissappears. I was amazed when I found this. I do think the 2TB Hitachi Drive I have is a dog regards noise but the Seagate wasn't much different and that died on me. Try it.

Hi There,

I have just had my Seagate HD replaced and the replacement hard drive is running really noisy, which id driving me mad. I am going to contact Apple about this. My HD model number is also the same as the old one. It also seems to be responding slower than my old drive and i have just noticed blotches in the top right hand side of my screen. I have had to wait a week for my mac to have work done on it and its aklso a 45min drive to the store, i was wondering if you got back in touch with Apple.

Hey

I recently purchased a refurbed iMac 27 inch 2011 model

The first one I recieved had the read/write rumbling noise, I have owned many Apple computers and never heard this noise from the HD before, I called Apple got a replacement and the same problem again.

These two machines both had WD hard drives, I called Apple for the 3rd time and got the perfect machine without the noise from the HD

This working one I have has a Seagate HD, seems wierd as most people have the problem the opposite way round.

Does this mean I will get the noise eventually?

I believe I have "stumbled" upon the fix for the "percolating" noise in Imac HD. I was looking around in Safari and doing some editing. Open Safari Preferences, when the dialog box for General-Tabs-Autofill-Passwords etc appears,under Autofill dialog uncheck all four boxes ..... Worked for me. I am happy. I hope this works for all

I have a 27 inch imac 2011 with a 1tb wd hdd in , have had it replaced twice due to load noise and it still does it but every time i take it in the store say its ok and nothing wrong really does my head in as it was my 1st mac and cost a lot of money

After about 2 years i struggled with the noise (see my post in this thread below). So, suddenly a couple a weeks ago, the noise dissapeared. Don´t know why, but seems that my plan to send the iMac to service, can be cancelled.

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

«I have Imac mid 2011, 21,4" (2,8 GHz, 16 gb ram, Apple 256 GB SSD-hd + 2 TB serialata-HD (Hitachi) and use the Imac as no 2-screen and Eizo CG223w as mainscreen.

I have to say that the noise is making me crazy.

I have been in contact with apple support, but their suggestions (restart etc) did not help. So they adviced me to send the machine to service. Support told me it was fan-noise, but i dont know, sounds more like HD.

Tried to download smcfancontrol, did not help.

So the terrible sound as many of you in this tread describe seems to come from the right side of the Imac. So it seems that it not helped change the Seagate-HD.

By the way: Where is the hd placed it the imac?»

i don't know if i already replay to the first tread but.. for all of u with this problem and i guess are many! the only solution is to add an ssd and remove that stupid HDD with 5400 rotations and add an external very slim and slick design hdd. my imac is dead silent now! the only problem is the HDD that huge grumbling noise u hear is not the fans.. not the mac is just the HDD! add a ssd and u will be the happiest imac user ever trust me!

gl and hope this helps!

and trust me few bucks more will solve this big deal noise!

Wow, just acquired one of these, Jan 2016, **** Seagate HDD. Obviously, well out of any warranty, great to know that the machine you got missed a vital recall. Meh. Noisy as you can imagine. No fail so far, but jeez, in a quiet house alone, it's the only noise I can hear.

(new) iMac are quiet - probably the most quiet you can buy

I just got a 2015 uMac I ran it in a quiet room and couldn't hear anything at all 1 TB HD 5400/7200 noises or fan noises either no matter what my "usage / application" running/load was. i was surprised because this site had many noises fear Q&A.

I've read in other "mac is noisy" complain questions that other iMac users say the same: on iMac you can't even hear it it's so quiet.