Lacie Thunderbolt Hard Drive Fan Noise

I just received by brand new LaCie Thunderbolt and as I switch in on the fan makes a lot of noise (like, a lot).

I bought a Lacie thunderbolt Little Big Disk the first day they were available. It's connected to the Apple Thunderbolt Display and yes, it's really noisy. Three issues I have with this configuration;

1) The fan runs full speed all the time. The drive housing is completely cool, and yet the fan runs full speed.

2) Very noisy fan, hard to believe it can be this noisy for such a small fan

3) The Lacie disk stays powered up even when the Macbook Air is disconnected from the monitor. Not very gree of Apple.

I am going to take the drive housing apart to see what fan is in there and to see if I can find a quieter fan. Lastly, I hope Apple makes a firmware change for the Thunderbolt display to shut external drives off when the computer is not connected.

I disassembled my Little Big Disk and disconnected the fan. In my opinion the fan is not required for 2.5" drives. I use a SMART utility and according to it the temperature of the drives has never gone above 35C (96F) which is less then the temperature of the drive inside my Mac Mini.

Are you monitoring the temperature of the components on the PCB or just the drives?

I understand that the PCB is quite densely populated, with consideration for using the entire casing as a heat sink. Disconnecting the fan may lead to other issues you have not considered.

I've viewed the disassembly pictures and note that several heatsink pads are used to make sure several of the chips make physical contact to a metal subassembly to remove heat from the actual chips.

Excessive heat in the wrong places may lead to a shorter life.

Hi, electrical engineering is my trade. The PCB generates "minimal" heat. Of course if the bandwidth increased due to the addition of multiple Thunderbolt devices it's possible that more heat might be generated but, for the moment at least I see no requirement for the fan.

Um yeah, this is a LaCie not an Apple problem.

I have the same problem. I use the drive basically as a Time Machine drive. Other then ejecting it and removing the cable, I simply put a piece of tape over the back vent holes. Sounds much quieter. I'll monitor the heat.

Here's another solution. I ejected the HD from my desktop, pressed the blue front power button to shut the drive/fan off. When I need it again, I just press the power button and it mounts back onto my desktop. I removed the tape from the fan vent. Worried that it might do more harm then good.

I just got one of these, a 2TB refurb init. I was about to send it back thinking it was a bad unit but it sounds like the unbelievable noise it makes is normal, its louder than a PC I have near it. Maybe I'll look into the defanning surgery, or move it inside a cabinet if the thunderbolt cable is long enough.

Also, when my iMac came out of sleep this morning the drive did not remount, I have to cycle power to get the mac to see it.

I also have a refurbished unit and the constant fan noise is insane. I live in Colorado with the temperature in my house right now, there should be no way that fan should be running right now!

Same problem here. I use it for time machine for my MacBook Air. I wound up ejecting it and re mount it once a day for back up. I also don't thinks it is as fast as my Buffalo USB 3.0 external HD???

What happened to all the great speed we were supposed to get using Thunderbolt??