Harddrive making loud-pitched sound. HELP!

[chinoloco]

I have a 20 gig Maxtor 7200rpm, and it is driving me nuts! The drive makes a really high pitched sound all the time, and it has been doing it for as long as I remember. I thought it was a fan in my case or CPU, but man, I unplugged the HD, and no more noise.

I would be happy to take the HD out of the case, but the problem is that this is my main HD. Does anyone know how to quiet this thing? Any tips will be appreciated, and if the HD is kaput, please let me know so I can start saving for a new one.

[Diggrr]

Alas, that's the plague of the higher rpm drives.
My IBM Deskstar's do the same thing. Since I watercool, it's much more pronounced though.
You could try some foam or rubber to try and isolate the drive from transmitting it's sound through the case. This helped mine a little. Don't try wrapping the drive with foam, it would overheat and die.

[chinoloco]

Thanks for the response. So what you are saying is basically that that is how it sounds?

Oh well... :eh?: I guess it is time for a new harddrive then, cause this noise is really driving me nuts, I can hear it in the room next to mine! Pretty bad uhh?

[Kendan]

I have an IBM deskstar and it is almost silent. In any case you should back up your data. If it did not always make this noise then it is most probably going bad. You should see if there is any disk diagnostic programs from Maxtor. I know the one for IBM drives will give you a code if there is a problem with your drive and you would use this code to get an RMA. Well good luck and don't forget to backup all important data before you do anthing else.

[Yodums]

I never recall HDD going that loud. I have a 20gig Quantm Fireball 7200rpm and its silent. All my hard drives were silent.

Yodums

[Diggrr]

Well, if IBM had advertised their drives as being loud I wouldn't have bought one. I just looked on their web site in the tech support docs...The deskstar75gxp is rated as high as 48 dba.
That puts is square in with the higher end hsf's.
Mine isn't quite that loud, but the kind of sound is annoying.
The diagnostic program reports no problems.

[zPacKRat]

I just rma'd a hd with maxtor for a ticking noise. It was real easy and smooth. Maxtor has an advanced rma process where you give them a c/c number and they will ship the new drive to you first, and then within 30 days you send the old one back. That way you can copy your partitions to the new drive. Give em a call at 1-800-2maxtor and see what they say.

[Yodums]

Originally posted by zPacKRat
I just rma'd a hd with maxtor for a ticking noise. It was real easy and smooth. Maxtor has an advanced rma process where you give them a c/c number and they will ship the new drive to you first, and then within 30 days you send the old one back. That way you can copy your partitions to the new drive. Give em a call at 1-800-2maxtor and see what they say.

Sounds like a great RMA policy.

WD had a very good one.

One of their factories was about 4 hours from me I shipped by dead drive which died on its own after I guess rebooting Windows ME install and hanged in the "Verifying DMA Pool" so I narrowed it down to the HDD.

Anyways I sent it in with an anti-static bag and packed it good and I didn't include no explination and they took a week to process it and their shipping was 1 day, as it was regional.
I didn't recieve no phone calls about how I broke it or anything.

Yodums

[Wa11y]

With both Maxtor and Seagate, you can go to their website, and get an RMA number on-line, and ship it back, or give them a credit card number if you need to transfer files first. I've not had to use WD's RMA service yet, but I would assume it's the same.

[Yodums]

Originally posted by Wa11y
With both Maxtor and Seagate, you can go to their website, and get an RMA number on-line, and ship it back, or give them a credit card number if you need to transfer files first. I've not had to use WD's RMA service yet, but I would assume it's the same.

Same with WD.

Go online fill in the form for the RMA number they give you a local factory near by to ship through and instructions.

Tell you to write the RMA + Number on 3 sides of the box, 1 week to process and 2 days to probably ship since its local.

Edit:

PS: You can also check the RMA Status(I love that feature! :)

[chinoloco]

I just wanted to thank all of you for all the help and solutions you have posted.

I will RMA the drive with Maxtor and hopefully everything will be alright.

Thanks a lot!:burn:

[MoPMatrix]

I have 9 - 80mm fans in my comp,,, u could take my HD right out of my comp, I wouldn't know the diff,, can't hear crap :P
I cant even hear someone talkin to me from the other room...
Loud HD is the least of my probs :P

[Yodums]

Originally posted by chinoloco
I just wanted to thank all of you for all the help and solutions you have posted.

I will RMA the drive with Maxtor and hopefully everything will be alright.

Thanks a lot!:burn:

Make sure you read their instructions upon sending, they will tell you specific orders. Also don't forget to write what happened to it, when it began to happen and what you did before it to happen.

What I really meant before is I never recalled companies other than IBM having those big dBA HDD's.

Mines so quiet its quiet like probably 10-15dBA.

Which only a dog can hear :D

Yodums

[oc jason]

lol i had same prob with maxtor 7200 60 gig, but turn it vertical and it WILL stop.

I had it vertical and never heard it, buti got new case and it has regulare horizontal mounts and i dtarted hearing it found it it was the the drive, turned it back vertical and all is well, tried it on 3 drives, it worked on all of them dunno why but it did. Try it?

by vertical i dont mean on its ends i mena on its side

[MadMan007]

Does Maxtor have the acoustical management option/program?? I know that Seagates have some acoustical management option that you can turn on and off to silence the drive. There is a small performance hit, but if the drive noise is driving ;) you crazy, look for an acoustical management option through the Maxtor Website...

[VegetaQ]

I hope I Don't dup any answers but I couldent read all of the posts.

Kinda depends on the noise. Ive owned Quantom IBM and Seagate drives that were exceptionally noisey (I loved them though) and Even a maxtor every now and then.

But I belive Maxtor and Wd both have acoustic utilities available on their website.

And if its a ticking noise the drive head may be going out. I worked on a lot of those when I worked for DELL. Those ups people are NOT gentle on our equipment at all.