27" iMac hard drive noise

I own a 27" i5 iMac and until yesterday it was completely silent, then I needed to plug my cam in the FireWire and I slowly moved the iMac (I am aware that it can't be moved while turned on due to the hard drive).

After that the "stomach grumbling" started.
So, maybe is people getting the noise for this reason?

Now I think I shouldn't have moved it. I miss the completely silent thing.

Well, I exchanged my iMac and brought the new one home ... this one is worse than the first one. In addition to the incredibly annoying HD noises, the fan is very loud and there is a high pitch tone from the back of the unit. I called tech support and told them I wanted to ship it back for a refund. I was told to call back on Monday and speak to a customer relations specialist. Will this be an issue? I really am not happy with this computer and this was my first apple computer ever.

In reply to Rustybucket, I really sympathise.

I feel this way because Apple are, as we know, very big, very successful, and very capable of impressing with state-of-the-art technology.

But for someone on their Applecare phone line to say they have no experience of the hard drive noise problem is unforgiveable.

My reason for thinking this way?

Well, the site you are reading right now is FULL of complaints about this very problem. And - correct me if I am wrong here - this is part of Apple's very own website.

So, if a company does not have the sense to monitor the luxury of seeing what its own customers are saying about its own products on its own website, and feed this on to its customer care line, then doesn't that say something about the company?

I have to say, I liked Apple until about 12 months ago. Now I'm starting to question their approach.

Hello. I have the Seagate HD also (ST31000528ASQ)and have the same very weak 'stomach rumbling noise--or coffee pot on idle as someone described it" noise.

On page 4 of this thread, there is a post and a recording by edrush001 which accurately points out the noise--very weak, but in a quiet environment it is noticeable. The recording is at this link or go to page 4: http://pieter-1asfz.posterous.com/9152957

I seem to notice it when I click on something in the Dock and while it is opening up, that is when it is noticeable.

I believe there is a link where you report these problems to Apple and maybe we should all be reporting it, however I see there are over 100 entries to this thread so hopefully someone in Apple is monitoring it and can see there is a problem. I will be giving Applecare a call soon and see if that helps.
Good luck all and keep this thread going.

I love Apple products, but as soon as I brought my new top of the line iMac home I knew I had bought a lemon. I didn't even mention to any of my work colleagues that I bought it (including the Machead that got me into Macs in the first place) because I didn't want them getting wind of my displeasure. We have an IT support guy at work that is openly hostile towards Apple and Mac owners/users in general and there was no way I was mentioning to him to give him a little ammunition to play with.

iMacs in general have had a few lemons in a model, but the constant returns that people are having to put up with with each computer seemingly getting worse than the last it leaves a sour taste in the mouth. And it's not a nice lemony taste either.

It seems that the run of i5 and i7 iMacs in particular are having a lot of issues in build quality, consistency and reliability. Until I hear Apple are acknowledging and taking care of these issues I won't be buying another Mac for a while. It is starting to look like I may have to sully myself with Windows 7 in the near future. Ack!

I wonder how many other recent Apple converts will be going back to Windows boxes after the trouble they have had with their "premium" iMacs?

Other than this minor irritation, I'm very happy with my iMac and my eMac before that. Your IT guy doesn't impress me much--he should have the moxy to know that Apple doesnt necessarily have more problems than the Windows machines--I know quite a few Windows people who have torn their hair out over Windows problems also. Think Vista!
Having said that, we have to realize that being a piece of complicated electronic gear, Windows or Apple, you may have problems, so let's get used to it and do our damndest to try an get fixes--which of course is what we are trying to do!
The other point of course is that as this is a problem forum, those Apple users, millions of them, that arent having any problems, wont likely be showing up here espousing that fact!
Hope you have better luck soon or maybe you would be happier with Windows.
Good luck in your decision. Cheers.

Sadly though, thousands of people ARE having problems. And that's just the ones that found their way to this forum.

I expect problems. I just don't like Apple's 'head in the sand' approach to them. It took Gizmodo ages to get Apple to respond to the yellow screen issue. Even then, they didn't actually fix it - or even say they were working on a fix.

A little positive communication goes a long way, Apple.

+1 on the "grumbling stomach" HD noise. My new 27' i7 had it right out of the box. Additionally, I have the slight yellow tinge others have noticed running from top to bottom on the left 1/5 of the screen. If I try and ignore the yellow and music or TV sounds in the room keep me from really hearing the HD noise, I can live with it. The unit itself works well and is speedy but is that the way to approach a new product -- settling?

I am, and continue to be, a total Mac guy since my first computer -- 12+ years ago -- but I must say from a QC standpoint this is very disturbing. I'm happy I have Applecare as a fallback but I really don't want the hassle of returning and reloading my data on a new machine that may not even be an improvement.

One question: is it possible these issues can be addressed with software or firmware updates or are they functions of something else such as inferior components (compared to what may have been used in earlier models)? Not being too technically oriented, I'd would love to know if updates are even a realistic option.

Message was edited by: WrongCoaster

This will help some of you. If you have Bootcamp then spotlight might be furiously trying to index that drive. I heard the rumbling on my i5 iMac with a WD drive inside. On someone else's suggestion I opened up Utilities > Terminal and ran:

sudo fs_usage -f filesys

I noticed that my Boot Camp partition was being accessed a whole **** of a lot. I went to System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy and added the BOOTCAMP drive.

Problem gone. See if this works for you.

Hey guys, I have no idea if this helps investigating, but my HDD on my iMac 27 is really loud under OSx but not with Win7!

Under bootcamp/win7, the drive is virtually silent, no noticeable noise or clicking sound even at night in a silent room, you cannot notice the HDD activity. Once you reboot under Leopard, it's a complete annoyance, very loud and noisy HDD!

Any idea please ? Anything to do with the filesystem?

The iMac is probably doing some background task such as keeping up with log files, cataloging inventory for Spotlight searches, that sort of thing. There are hundreds of background tasks going on all of the time on a modern computer, some require access to the hard drive and others do not, but all are probably essential to the smooth running of the machine.

I have given this some thought (my previous 17" iMac was silent, my new i5 iMac is not) and I think the only solution is to have the hard drive replaced once the warranty ends, ensuring that the hard drive that goes in is one that you know for definite is a silent running one.

Some hard drive models are just noisy, both the spin sound and the seek sound, but you can buy absolutely silent ones too. Apple obviously have not taken the care to do this for the current iMac models which is a shame.

I have the Seagate ST31000528ASQ model by the way.

Message was edited by: Jonathan Mortimer

I do agree with you on Apple's approach being lackluster, but I also think that there are quite a few Apple-heads who are making a mountain out of a mole hill. After all, a grumbling hard drive is not stopping you from using the computer, it doesn't affect the performance at all (genuinely faulty hard drives excepted), and on the whole those hard drives would be making that noise regardless of what machine they were in; if it's actually outside of the hard drive's acoustic specifications then I'd have cause to complain, but in order to test that I'd need some professional sound test equipment and the actual hard drive in a proper test box.

I just wonder whether Apple have not activated these hard drive's acoustic dampening technologies, if there's something in the firmware that's not been set, some silent mode setting or other. Perhaps this really could be fixed with a simple Apple update.

Rustybucket wrote:

It is starting to look like I may have to sully myself with Windows 7 in the near future. Ack!

I wonder how many other recent Apple converts will be going back to Windows boxes after the trouble they have had with their "premium" iMacs?

Pfft! Not a chance! If I had to, I'd go to a Kubuntu box, it's like a freaky hybrid of Windows 7 and OS X but without all of the security vulnerabilities of Windows nor the proprietary nature of the Mac. Probably try building my own convection-cooled case for it too, with ultra-silent fans on the CPU and graphics, etc.

WrongCoaster wrote:

The unit itself works well and is speedy but is that the way to approach a new product -- settling?

Mine too, I have settled for the yellow tinge and audible hard drive. Generally I can't see the yellow tinge anyway, and I'm used to noisy hard drives in other computers, though it is annoying as my previous iMac was totally silent. Like you, I really can't be fussed packaging it all up and sending it back time and again as it looks like it's a manufacturing thing that has not been addressed and may not be for some time (or not at all until the next iMac update).

One question: is it possible these issues can be addressed with software or firmware updates or are they functions of something else such as inferior components (compared to what may have been used in earlier models)? Not being too technically oriented, I'd would love to know if updates are even a realistic option.

From what I read on MacRumors forums the yellow tinge is a hardware thing. Someone disassembled their iMac to investigate and, in the process of putting it all back together neatly and tidily, accidentally cured their yellow tinge. They reckoned it was the backing to the monitor, which I can believe as if it's even slightly buckled it would show up as a shadow on the screen, which is effectively what the yellow tinge is. I may well be investigating this myself once I've owned the machine a couple of years, if I can be bothered that is!

From what I've observed using Activity Monitor and the top command, the culprit of the regular disk 'grumbles' / disk writing is the mds process which is for building the meta data index of the hard drive - it never seems to complete!! Even after leaving the machine on over night a couple of times to allow it time to finish it's job.

However, there is only 185MB of data on the disk (no external HDs attached) and I'm not writing additional data at the moment - so it should have finished long ago.

Seems to me like a software problem in Snow Leopard rather than a hardware problem. Could Journaling also be playing a part in the problem or is the swap space being indexed by Spotlight? (which it shouldn't be doing) - which might account for why mds never completes because the swap space can be constantly changing.