Hard Drive Grinding Noise

[ganestalay]

So I have had my Hitachi 3 TB HDD for a month now with the noise problem as soon as I got it out of the box.

Sometimes, when transferring files or downloading a new application, there is this very loud grinding/churning sound that occurs for as long as the download occurs.

 

Does anyone have any fixes?

The speed of reading/writing is fine, just the noise and vibration seem a bit concerning at the moment.

[.Apex.]

7 minutes ago, ganestalay said:

So I have had my Hitachi 3 TB HDD for a month now with the noise problem as soon as I got it out of the box.

Sometimes, when transferring files or downloading a new application, there is this very loud grinding/churning sound that occurs for as long as the download occurs.

 

Does anyone have any fixes?

The speed of reading/writing is fine, just the noise and vibration seem a bit concerning at the moment.

there's a wide range of grinding noises an HDD can make, it would be helpful if we could hear it

[ganestalay]

2 minutes ago, syn2112 said:

there's a wide range of grinding noises an HDD can make, it would be helpful if we could hear it

 

Very similar to this around 0:11-0:24. Is there a way to fix this noise or is that something that cannot be fixed through hardware?

 

Also, I did scan the drive with Seatools for Windows and it said that it passed the short generic test.

[Husky]

1 minute ago, ganestalay said:

 

Very similar to this around 0:11-0:24. Is there a way to fix this noise or is that something that cannot be fixed through hardware?

 

Also, I did scan the drive with Seatools for Windows and it said that it passed the short generic test.

That is perfectly normal. My hard drive (WD Black) is even louder.

 

Hard Drives make a lot of weird scary noises and they sometimes sound like they are about to explode, but most sounds are normal.

[ganestalay]

Just now, Husky said:

That is perfectly normal. My hard drive (WD Black) is even louder.

 

Hard Drives make a lot of weird scary noises and they sometimes sound like they are about to explode, but most sounds are normal.

Is there not a way to fix this? There's no way anything can be louder than my blue switch keyboard, but this comes fairly close.

[Constantin]

11 minutes ago, Husky said:

That is perfectly normal. My hard drive (WD Black) is even louder.

 

Hard Drives make a lot of weird scary noises and they sometimes sound like they are about to explode, but most sounds are normal.

This is not normal, it's 2019....

I remember those noise back at the 90's

[NunoLava1998]

Just now, Constantin said:

This is not normal, it's 2019....

I remember those noise back at the 90's

My harddrive from 2009 makes the same noise but 2x louder.

[Constantin]

Just now, NunoLava1998 said:

My harddrive from 2009 makes the same noise but 2x louder.

This is not normal, i have 3 HHD (from 2011 till 2015) and you barely can hear them.

[NunoLava1998]

1 minute ago, Constantin said:

This is not normal, i have 3 HHD (from 2011 till 2015) and you barely can hear them.

It absolutely is

[ganestalay]

Just now, NunoLava1998 said:

It absolutely is

 

2 minutes ago, Constantin said:

This is not normal, i have 3 HHD (from 2011 till 2015) and you barely can hear them.

If it is not normal, then how do you fix it?

What causes it?

[NunoLava1998]

Just now, ganestalay said:

 

If it is not normal, then how do you fix it?

What causes it?

It's perfectly normal. You can't fix it, except for getting an SSD

[Husky]

2 minutes ago, ganestalay said:

 

If it is not normal, then how do you fix it?

What causes it?

Yeah it's normal. Hard drives are literally spinning discs with a big clicky arm moving super fast over the spinning discs. The arm clicking back and forth hundreds of times a second is what makes that lovely grinding sound.

[ganestalay]

5 minutes ago, Husky said:

Yeah it's normal. Hard drives are literally spinning discs with a big clicky arm moving super fast over the spinning discs. The arm clicking back and forth hundreds of times a second is what makes that lovely grinding sound.

Then how come some are quieter than others? It seems like the basic structure of a hard drive is the same despite differences in models. 

 

Sorry, I don't know anything about this subject.

[Husky]

2 minutes ago, ganestalay said:

Then how come some are quieter than others? It seems like the basic structure of a hard drive is the same despite differences in models. 

 

Sorry, I don't know anything about this subject.

Some drives spin at a slower rate and their actuator arm is tuned to make less of a noise but they run a bit slower due to this. Especially laptop drives. But some desktop drives can be "tuned" for quietness. Most desktop drives are tuned for performance though and are thus quite loud.

 

Edit: for example, my WD Black (2016, so quite new) rattles my entire case when I am copying files or loading a game, but my WD Red (also 2016, same size) is almost dead quiet but is slightly slower than the Black. The Blacks are tuned for performance and therefore noise is not an issue as performance is the top priority, Reds are tuned to be energy efficient and especially to vibrate as little as possible since they are tuned for NAS use where vibrations can damage other drives running together. The Blues are probably somewhere in between.

Edited January 5, 2019 by Husky
More info

[Kingcodi2004]

On 1/5/2019 at 4:14 AM, ganestalay said:

So I have had my Hitachi 3 TB HDD for a month now with the noise problem as soon as I got it out of the box.

Sometimes, when transferring files or downloading a new application, there is this very loud grinding/churning sound that occurs for as long as the download occurs.

 

Does anyone have any fixes?

The speed of reading/writing is fine, just the noise and vibration seem a bit concerning at the moment.

My ps4 makes that sound but a bit quieter as the HDD is smaller. Was concerning me but it seems to work fine.