27" iMac hard drive noise

I received my iMac last Friday, and everything is fine apart (touch wood) from the grumbling noise from the Seagate 1TB hard drive that I can hear if no audio is being played, and I am actually using the computer.

How easy is it for the hard drive to be replaced with one of the Western Digital ones under the Apple warranty? Can the hard drive be replaced by itself, or would the whole computer have to be replaced? Also, how do I find an authorised repair centre? This is my first Mac, so I have no idea what to do.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

I've got the same problem - but noticed that it stops when all users log out and you're just looking at the Login window.

Err, yeah probably.. This only happens during disk activity which won't occur at the login screen..

If you want to see what kind of disk activity, simply type any of these commands in terminal:

sudo iotop
ps wwaxr -o pid,stat,%cpu,time,command | head -10
iostat -w 1 disk0
sudo fs_usage -f filesys

I am considering buying a new 27" imac and I wonder how widespread this problem is currently.

Is it happening in most new imacs and only certain people who use their system more notice the noise?

Or is it only happening to very few defective new imacs (or certain options)?

Just curious if this has been documented. Can anyone explain how loud it is, as a PC user I am use to some fan noise from below my desk. Is this annoying/loud since it is near your ears?

Thanks

Personally, I can't hear any fans whirring, but I can hear the odd clicking (described as grumbling in most of the posts I believe) of the hard drive, but it's certainly more quiet than my previous PC which was bought in 2002/3. I'm not sure if it's a fault, as I've never had a Mac before, or what sort of noise level Apple advertised for the iMac.

My iMac is a week 51 I think, and it was only delivered last Thursday (but I only picked it up and switched it on last Friday). I have one of the Seagate hard drives.

I'm a bit puzzled as to why Apple have decided to make it a lottery when it comes to what make of hard drive we get when we purchase one of the iMacs.

Message was edited by: coss9
Added more detail

My i7 drive is a Hitachi 2TB drive. It's fairly quiet. I bought a raid drive and 4 of the same drives. One of them is making a rumbling sound once in awhile when I first got it but quieted down after a couple of weeks. A friend bought four for the same raid drive I got and one of the drives didn't work properly. So don't blame Apple for noisy drives.

As for the fan in the i7 is was quite noisy out of the box but after 2 weeks is now nice and quiet. Like another post says sometimes it takes a while to break drives as well as fans.

Hm, but which drives are known as noisy?

1TB Western Digital
1TB Seagate?

2TB Hitachi?

If the last one is the most quiet I do want to buy it because some extra hard disk space never does any harm, does it? 🙂

i think western digital are fine mate!

seagate appear to be the "economy" drives in these imac

thedge wrote:
I am considering buying a new 27" imac and I wonder how widespread this problem is currently.

Is it happening in most new imacs and only certain people who use their system more notice the noise?

Or is it only happening to very few defective new imacs (or certain options)?

My iMac has the 1TB Seagate drive. It is completely silent even though it is the drive that is most often accused. OTOH, my "TimeMachine" drive is under my desk and I have no trouble hearing it operating!

Week 47, and on continuously or sleeping ever since.

I work at night in absolute silence - so a quiet compter is important to me. I was aiming for the benchmark set by my 24" alu iMac - a very feint rumble on write/seek.

I've got a 27" i5, with a 1 TB WD 'Black'. A fair bit of seek/write/read noise (more noticeable than loud, though), silent when idle. I thought about complaining, but wasn't sure I had a complaint.

I've tried a WD 1TB 'Green' - better, but still obvious write/seek/read 'grumbles'. I tried to source one of the Seagate drives, but Seagate referred me to Apple, Apple don't sell HDs. Now, I'm using the WD 320GB out of the 24" iMac. I've put the WD Black in an external caddy for the (rare) occasions I need the space.

No idea what to suggest. I think it's a combination of things - people's reaction to noise and the environment they have; batch variability in HDs; and noise of the HD in any case.

And: 1) iMacs are normally class-leading quiet. If it wasn't for the familiarity of my 24" iMac, this wouldn't bother me, and 2) Opening up the iMac and replacing the disk is a scary business! It's easy to damage the screen/connectors, and in the case of the 24" I've had to replace some tape, so it'd be obvious I've 'been in', so the warranty may be affected.

Has anyone heard anything official from Apple regarding an explanation or fix for the noisy clicking Seagate HDD in sleep mode?

my 27: imac makes the same grumbling noise + yesterday i plugged in some external speakers and could here the the scroll of the mouse, the downloading of email attachments, all computer activity amplified through the speakers!!! i now have the noisiest computer in the house, and the other one is dell desktop, this isn't right.

Yes I have had exactly this harddrive sound since I upgraded the firmware - it was silent before I did this.

Any news of Apple recognising this issue?

Just to add that I have the Hitachi 1TB drive.

Mine is the Seagate ST31000528ASQ 1TB HDD. Seems like it's happening across different HDDs, therefore it might be a system issue (ie power saving)?