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tclamp07

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 26, 2008
83
0
Hey guys just got my 27" imac yesterday and for the most part love it! My only concern is I am constantly hearing my hdd read/write and its pretty loud. Now before everyone starts to say "its normal for your hdd to make noise etc..." I know that it just seems like it doesnt stop and it is very loud. I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this?
 
Don't have a 27", but my new 21.5 hard drive is way much louder then on my last 2006 iMac - in fact on that one I never noticed any sound.
 
Don't have a 27", but my new 21.5 hard drive is way much louder then on my last 2006 iMac - in fact on that one I never noticed any sound.

I had a 20" imac as well awhile ago and never heard a peep out of it now all of the sudden i feel like the thing is going to explode or something. Do you think this is a problem or just standard noise? Are you going to take it in to get looked at or are you just going to live with it? Thanks for the reply:)
 
It'll be HDD noise - I have an SSD in my 27" iMac and it's absolutely silent, the fans are big and spin fairly slowly to keep noise at an absolute minimum.

lucky you

i put a SSD in my MBP but it was fingers in the nose

it freaks me out to open an iMac

on the MBP, just the cover the remove and that's it...
not the same story for the imac

i was wondering if a CMAA would replace the HDD for me...
 
I've got a new 24" and have the same problem - I returned the first one as I thought it might be faulty as everyone says their mac is silent. The second one had the same problem plus a dodgy screen. I'm now on my third one and it sounds just the same. From looking at the activity monitor the noise occurs whenever the hard drive is reading or writing data. It's really annoying. I was wondering whether to return it and try a new 27" but it sounds like that wouldn't be any better.
 
The Western Digital drives they seem to be using aren't at all quiet. They should have gone Seagate (though they seem to blow up lots, so it's a Catch 22).
 
According to my serial number my hard drive is a Seagate. I now have something else to worry about!
 
The Western Digital drives they seem to be using aren't at all quiet. They should have gone Seagate (though they seem to blow up lots, so it's a Catch 22).

You're right, they're using a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black (the high performance 1TB drive they manufacture) which will make more noise but perform better than the Caviar Blue 1TB drive (which is quieter). It's Catch 22 because you can have quiet and less performance or slightly louder with best performance.
 
Spotted the Black in the iFixit teardown. The Dells we run at work have both WD Velociraptor 160GB and 1TB Caviar Black in them, and despite being on the floor under the desk, running two quad core CPUs and two FX570 graphics cards, the Black can still be heard grinding away.

The lower spec machines run Hitachi drives which are much quieter.
 
Well that sucks. The last loud HDs I had in a system were making little rattling sounds while idle, and grinding whenever I was doing something: opening up an app, moving files, etc. Is it the same with these disks while you're just doing normal stuff on the iMac?
 
I've got a new 24" and have the same problem - I returned the first one as I thought it might be faulty as everyone says their mac is silent. The second one had the same problem plus a dodgy screen. I'm now on my third one and it sounds just the same. From looking at the activity monitor the noise occurs whenever the hard drive is reading or writing data. It's really annoying. I was wondering whether to return it and try a new 27" but it sounds like that wouldn't be any better.

I did this as well... Opened activity monitor and would just open a few thing here and there just to see if it was the read/write from the hdd and sure enough it was. Do you guys think this would be on every imac? Would it be worth carrying this behemoth back to the apple store to exchange?
 
Well that sucks. The last loud HDs I had in a system were making little rattling sounds while idle, and grinding whenever I was doing something: opening up an app, moving files, etc. Is it the same with these disks while you're just doing normal stuff on the iMac?

Yes my hdd is doing exactly this. When idle it will make random rattling sounds and when opening applications and the like it makes a LOUD grinding read/write sound. No good. Im also having issues with my screen so I will be making a trip to the apple store in a couple days. Pretty big hassle though because the closest apple store is an hour and forty five minutes away:mad:
 
I have this too, is this really normal? Otherwise it's super quiet but this is quite irritating since it seems to be on alot at random times, even when just browsing the web...
 
It'll be HDD noise - I have an SSD in my 27" iMac and it's absolutely silent, the fans are big and spin fairly slowly to keep noise at an absolute minimum.

Xcuse me..hoe the f**k did you get an SSD into your 27"?

Please answer, becasue this was never an option for me!

EDIT_ Sorry, did nont read the thread...i did not realise you crazy ass guys were tearing yoor brand new imacs apart..i would never hvae the guts!
Never mind this question, i'll leave you maniacs be!

Although, if someone would like to come home to me and perform this operation on my i7 quad, i would be happy!
 
I'm no expert, but I seem to recall that new HDs make more noise than older ones for some reason (they need to be "broken in?").

If anything, the i5/Seagate combination got worse over a few days. Chugging noise when even summoning up a web page. Emptying some largish audio files in the trash sounded like a locomotive.
 
Same here with me, my 24 was nice and quite but a guess that's what you pay for speed.. Its hard to get use to it when its quite all around you
 
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