Hard drive weird noise

[dingy]

Hi, I just built my new PC and my Seagate Barracuda 2TB ST2000DM008 hard drive keeps making this weird noise every few seconds. It sounds much louder than in the video (around 0:03).

 

Is this normal or should I return it? And if I do should I get a better hard drive? Thanks.

[DG House]

iv never heard a HDD sound that like before

when you 100% sure thats ur HDD i recommend retuning

 

HDDs a phisycal medium, 1 in 1000 are bad and need to return, usual no blame to the manufatorar

[dingy]

Just now, DG House said:

iv never heard a HDD sound that like before

when you 100% sure thats ur HDD i recommend retuning

 

HDDs a phisycal medium, 1 in 1000 are bad and need to return, usual no blame to the manufatorar

Yeah here is the hard drive is outside the case. Noise towards the end of the video.

[Spotty]

What software do you have running in the background? Any hardware monitoring stuff like HWInfo64, HWmonitor, Aida64, etc?
They can sometimes poll the hard drive every few seconds causing this.

[dingy]

Just now, Spotty said:

What software do you have running in the background? Any hardware monitoring stuff like HWInfo64, HWmonitor, Aida64, etc?
They can sometimes poll the hard drive every few seconds causing this.

Oh I did indeed have HWMonitor running in the background and the noise stopped, but is the noise still normal? My old hard drive never made this noise under similar circumstances (running hardware monitoring stuff).

[Spotty]

Just now, dingy said:

Oh I did indeed have HWMonitor running in the background and the noise stopped, but is the noise still normal? My old hard drive never made this noise under similar circumstances (running hardware monitoring stuff).

Yeah, it's normal. My Seagate drives do the same thing if I let HWinfo64 poll the drives. It's because HWMonitor is waking the drive every few seconds and going "Psst... You okay bro? Tell me something about yourself" in order to display information like the drive temperature, SMART status, etc.

 

I can't see any obvious way to disable HDD polling in HWMonitor but you can do it in HWinfo64 by right clicking the drive in the hardware list and clicking "Disable Monitoring". HWinfo64 is in my opinion better than HWMonitor anyway.

[dingy]

Just now, Spotty said:

Yeah, it's normal. My Seagate drives do the same thing if I let HWinfo64 poll the drives. It's because HWMonitor is waking the drive every few seconds and going "Psst... You okay bro? Tell me something about yourself" in order to display information like the drive temperature, SMART status, etc.

 

I can't see any obvious way to disable HDD polling in HWMonitor but you can do it in HWinfo64 by right clicking the drive in the hardware list and clicking "Disable Monitoring". HWinfo64 is in my opinion better than HWMonitor anyway.

Ah okay, thanks for the answers.

 

Yeah I wanted to monitor my CPU temp because I had just trouble installing the stock cooler and the thermal paste slightly oozed out onto the side of the CPU, so I was wondering if it's causing the loud CPU fan.

 

Probably off to purchase a quieter CPU fan or something as I think I'm a little sensitive to the noise (the constant humming and speeding up/slowing down of the fan), my old rig was really weak so it was very quiet compared to this.

[Spotty]

1 minute ago, dingy said:

Yeah I wanted to monitor my CPU temp because I had just trouble installing the stock cooler and the thermal paste slightly oozed out onto the side of the CPU, so I was wondering if it's causing the loud CPU fan.

 

Probably off to purchase a quieter CPU fan or something as I think I'm a little sensitive to the noise (the constant humming and speeding/slowing down of the fan), my old rig was really weak so it was very quiet compared to this.

HWinfo64 will also monitor CPU temps if you need that.

How are your CPU temps?
What CPU and what cooler do you have?

Thermal paste oozing out the side isn't going to affect your temperatures, but ideally you should clean it off to prevent it from getting in the socket or on any other components nearby as thermal paste can be electrically conductive.

[mariushm]

It sounds like the drive tends to park its heads pretty soon after activity, and that sound is the drive "waking up" and moving the read/write heads onto the surface of the drive to be ready to read or write stuff.

This is good thing if it's a mobile drive (because if the heads are parked, there's no chance of them hitting the surface of the discs inside if there's some sudden mechanical shock like you hitting the desk with your hands or dropping laptop) and sometimes it's also used by "green" drives to save power.

You should also look to see if it's possible to adjust that behavior through some software supplied by Seagate, at least let's say configure it to park the heads after 30s - 1m of idle time, instead of 5-10 seconds.

 

maybe @seagate_surfer can confirm if this behavior is what I say above (as I could be mistaken) and if so maybe he/she can suggest what tool would be suitable to make such changes and what the optimum settings would be.

 

I don't think the noise is a problem and if it's parking heads as I believe, technically the mechanism is only rated for a few hundred thousand actuations or something like that, so long term I would not want to leave the drive continuously doing that, it may shorten the drive's life.

[dingy]

Just now, Spotty said:

HWinfo64 will also monitor CPU temps if you need that.

How are your CPU temps?
What CPU and what cooler do you have?

Thermal paste oozing out the side isn't going to affect your temperatures, but ideally you should clean it off to prevent it from getting in the socket or on any other components nearby as thermal paste can be electrically conductive.

I'm using Ryzen 5 3600 and the stock cooler (Wraith Stealth?).

 

My idle temp in bios was 34-36 °C, 38-40 °C idle on Windows 10 but it's constantly spiking to around 50 °C which is when the fan speeds up (Might be HWMonitor though, however fans still constantly speed up and slow down with it closed).

 

 

[Spotty]

57 minutes ago, dingy said:

I'm using Ryzen 5 3600 and the stock cooler (Wraith Stealth?).

 

My idle temp in bios was 34-36 °C, 38-40 °C idle on Windows 10 but it's constantly spiking to around 50 °C which is when the fan speeds up (Might be HWMonitor though, however fans still constantly speed up and slow down with it closed).

HWmonitor shouldn't cause your CPU fan to spin up. There could be another program that is using your CPU which is causing a spike in temperatures. Even just a web browser can cause spikes in CPU usage, especially if you start playing a video or something.

 

Basically as the CPU temperature increases the CPU fan should spin faster to keep it cool. The default profile might be a little too aggressive. You can have a look at what fan profile is set and adjust when the fan ramps up and possibly set a less aggressive fan curve which might help. I believe you can adjust it in Ryzen Master or just do it in BIOS.

 

30-40C at idle seems fairly normal and spikes to 50C if there's a load like opening a program or something is to be expected.

It might help to run a benchmark or stress test and see how hot it gets under a constant load.

[dingy]

8 hours ago, Spotty said:

HWmonitor shouldn't cause your CPU fan to spin up. There could be another program that is using your CPU which is causing a spike in temperatures. Even just a web browser can cause spikes in CPU usage, especially if you start playing a video or something.

 

Basically as the CPU temperature increases the CPU fan should spin faster to keep it cool. The default profile might be a little too aggressive. You can have a look at what fan profile is set and adjust when the fan ramps up and possibly set a less aggressive fan curve which might help. I believe you can adjust it in Ryzen Master or just do it in BIOS.

 

30-40C at idle seems fairly normal and spikes to 50C if there's a load like opening a program or something is to be expected.

It might help to run a benchmark or stress test and see how hot it gets under a constant load.

I'll look into adjusting the fan curve, right now it floats around 1200-1300 RPM and it kind of sounds like a mini lawn mower. I manually stopped the fan with my finger on the middle of the fan for a few seconds and the noise stopped. I am probably just going to deal with it and put the PC under the table for less noise, or buy a quieter cooler and reapply the thermal paste.

 

 

Here is a video just in case, sounds the same on inside of the case. Probably gonna ask other Ryzen 5 3600 stock cooler owners if it's the same for them.

[seagate_surfer]

13 hours ago, mariushm said:

It sounds like the drive tends to park its heads pretty soon after activity, and that sound is the drive "waking up" and moving the read/write heads onto the surface of the drive to be ready to read or write stuff.

This is good thing if it's a mobile drive (because if the heads are parked, there's no chance of them hitting the surface of the discs inside if there's some sudden mechanical shock like you hitting the desk with your hands or dropping laptop) and sometimes it's also used by "green" drives to save power.

You should also look to see if it's possible to adjust that behavior through some software supplied by Seagate, at least let's say configure it to park the heads after 30s - 1m of idle time, instead of 5-10 seconds.

 

maybe @seagate_surfer can confirm if this behavior is what I say above (as I could be mistaken) and if so maybe he/she can suggest what tool would be suitable to make such changes and what the optimum settings would be.

 

I don't think the noise is a problem and if it's parking heads as I believe, technically the mechanism is only rated for a few hundred thousand actuations or something like that, so long term I would not want to leave the drive continuously doing that, it may shorten the drive's life.

There is an effect related to what you say called "rotational vibration interference", also known as RVI. RVI occurs when other components cause vibrations. These components can be other hard drives mounted on the same system, or even the cooling fans in the system or the power supply. Like you said, hard drives use mechanical heads that moves back and forth over the surface of the drive to read and write, vibration can cause a head to move temporarily off track. When this happens, the drive has to wait for the disk to make another revolution and then try the operation again.

I'm not entirely sure if SeaChest has a function that works in a way that allows you to set the frequency at which the arm works. You will have to visit he website of SeaChest Utilities | Seagate Support US and then check the User manual and User guide and read if any the command lines allows you to set up the parking of the heads to an specific time. This tool is made for experts but I have only used SeaChest for loud noises, down below you can see what I wrote about it:

 

On 9/5/2019 at 7:43 AM, seagate_surfer said:

 

I Once posted about this and how the noise could be reduced, here is that post in case you want to see it:

 

  On 8/13/2019 at 1:13 PM, seagate_surfer said:

There is a "feature" to put it in a way that can be de-enabled to help reduce noise (PowerControl) but first a little background on why Seagate uses proprietary technology that can be disabled and why it is not disabled by default. In HDDs standards, there is one that's used as an automatic power-saving feature that is activated during very brief periods of command inactivity without impacting performance, it is called PowerTrim technology, but PowerChoice now called Power Control technology (a proprietary implementation of T10 Approved Standard No T10/09-054 and T13 Standard No T13/452-2008) complements PowerTrim technology by enabling even greater power reductions that cover idle periods greater than one second. The result? PowerChoice technology decreases drive power consumption by up to 54 percent in enterprise environments. For example, a 1U rack filled with twenty-four 500 GB Constellation drives that have entered PowerChoice technology C mode delivers 12 TB of storage, yet consumes only 43W or slightly more power than a single 40W light bulb! Delivering a combination of energy efficiency and user flexibility.

 

Now I introduce you SeaChest, to use this tool you have to be familiar with executing command lines or it will complicate everything a bit, the download link is here: https://www.seagate.com/support/software/seachest/ To learn more about PowerChoice (PowerControl) you can open the User Manual from the link above and go to the section:

• 
  ================================
  How PowerChoice Technology Works
  ================================

I will now paste some screenshots of the command lines that will help you disable PowerControl and thus getting a lower noise from the HDD that support this: 

How to disable EPC (Extended Power Conditions)
Note: PowerChoice has now been replaced with PowerControl

1. Download the latest SeaChest and install it in Windows.
2. Next, confirm if EPC is supported and Enabled for the drive in question. First. get the drive's Handle which could be PD0, PD1, or PD2, etc. Copy and Paste or type in this command then Enter:

   • SeaChest_PowerControl --scan

   • 

3. Now copy and paste or type in this command then Enter.

   • SeaChest_PowerControl -d PD(N)

     • Replace (N) with the handle of the target disk

   • Scroll to Features Supported and look for EPC [Enabled]

   • 

4. To disable EPC on the drive Copy and paste or type this command then Enter:

   • SeaChest_PowerControl -d PD(N) --EPCfeature disable

   • Replace (N) with the handle of the target disk

   • Wait for a message stating EPC was disabled successfully

   • 

5. Now we need to confirm that EPC is disabled. Repeat step 3, Copy and paste or type in this command then Enter

   • SeaChest_PowerControl -d PD(N)

     • Replace (N) with the handle of the target disk

   • Scroll to Features Supported and look for EPC

     • [Enabled] should no longer be seen

     • 

6.  Shut down the computer then reinstall the drive into the NAS if it was the case.

If you type in Google disable epc site:seagate.com you will notice that many models show up because many models support the EPC and thus giving one more option to help you reduce noise from your machine.

 

 

[dingy]

@seagate_surfer Interesting, I'll make sure to try this if my hard drive is still noisy as I do still occasionally hear it when I access files in the hard drive. But all I'm hearing from my case now is my CPU fan/mini lawn mower. Thanks for the answer.

[seagate_surfer]

2 hours ago, dingy said:

@seagate_surfer Interesting, I'll make sure to try this if my hard drive is still noisy as I do still occasionally hear it when I access files in the hard drive. But all I'm hearing from my case now is my CPU fan/mini lawn mower. Thanks for the answer.

Oh alright, cool! And you are welcome. 

[Robchil]

On 2/18/2020 at 12:48 PM, dingy said:

Hi, I just built my new PC and my Seagate Barracuda 2TB ST2000DM008 hard drive keeps making this weird noise every few seconds. It sounds much louder than in the video (around 0:03).

 

Is this normal or should I return it? And if I do should I get a better hard drive? Thanks.

IMG_0329.MOV

that sound is the read head that has interference of some sort.  if you ever get a head crash it will tick constantly trying to allign itself.  i would change it if it's new. did you ever drop it?

It might run for a looooong time.. or it might not.. you never know.