2012 Mac Mini HDD operation noise annoying

[slickadam]

So you do in fact hear the HD? I'm wondering if the people who say 'dead silent' have a decent amount of ambient noise around, or louder computers. I have a quiet home office and am really wondering if I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill or if I should take it in.

yes , as i said clearly hear fan and spin HD also read/write noise. just surfing. My old MBP 2009 duo is much quieter at the same distance cca 40cm . I decidet to go over it

i heard the HDD noise of my first i7 mini too. base i5 is totally silent.

 

[dbit]

Well, the new one is quieter. I can still hear it, and the frequency range of the sound is similar, but definitely a little bit quieter. Glad I did the exchange, and the genius bar tech agreed that it was a little louder than typical. I doubt it was anything serious, but now I know, and have an 'almost silent' mini. thanks for the advice everybody!

 

[AC Rempt]

When Ifirst ran my 2012 i7 2.3, I could hear the hard drive on occasion, but since I added an SSD and rolled my own Fusion drive, I don't hear a thing. Now it's silent and fast.

 

[dbit]

Just a final update, this mini is significantly quieter. I have to really try to listen for the hard drive except when it's really working hard. Thanks everybody for the nudge to get it checked out, I'm very glad I did!

 

[wsbsteven]

Hard drives seem to have a high infant mortality rate. I ordered an i7 2.6 with fusion drive and it came out of the box with a dead 1tb drive. It wouldn't boot and disk utility only saw the SSD. Now it has to go back, get checked, then have a replacement built which which take a couple of weeks.

 

[dbit]

Seems like a lot of minis failing recently have the hitachi drives, maybe a bad batch? Will be interesting to see how big of a problem it is. Apple's been having bad luck with hard drives lately.

 

[Mojo1]

SSDs have their own problems.

I was speaking with an Other World Computing tech rep the other day. He mentioned that while mechanical drives usually fail gradually with obvious warning signs, SSDs tend to fail all at once without any warning. He said a typical scenario is the drive seems fine when the Mac is turned off. But the next time it is booted-up there is a flashing question mark on the display...

I've seen a lot of praise for SSDs on this forum but I don't recall reading any posts about SSDs dying.

Moral of the story: You better have your backup up to date if your primary drive is an SSD.

 

[AC Rempt]

You better have your backup up to date.

Fixed it for ya.



You should ALWAYS have your backups current no matter what your storage is. Drives fail.

 

[Mojo1]

Fixed it for ya.



You should ALWAYS have your backups current no matter what your storage is. Drives fail.

That's a given. I was speaking to the SSD worshippers who seem to think that they are infallible. They aren't... At least mechanical drives often give some warning that they are about to give up the ghost.