New iMac, Hard Drive Noise... Driving me nuts!

[JustiNYCity]

Hey Guys,
I recently bought a brand new iMac 3.06 Ghz, 1tb Hard Drive, ATI Graphics...

The trouble is, the hard drive clicking/parking is driving me nuts!
I called Apple last week, they searched for any known problems, and told me that everything should be fine... don't hesitate to call back....

I'm just wondering if anybody else is having constant hard drive clicking/parking noises? A larger 1 tb HD probably parks a lot more right? IDK... Honestly it's annoying the hell out of me as we speak. What should I do?


Thanks so much, I'd appreciate any responses.

 

[Sun Baked]

I thought it was the optical drives that were the noisier than crap units specially selected to turn the user's brains into peanut butter if they leave a disc in the drive.

 

[EMKarelia]

Hello

I dont think that it should be making that sounds. My macbook pro made some HD sound so i took it to the apple store and they fixed it up. I would try to take it back to apple.

 

[rgarjr]

dont really notice any parking noises on mine end here.

 

[DavidR91]

I think that's bad news for a new iMac - I mean, on mine the hard drive was completely inaudible for the first few months (once you get a lot on there and the head has to start skipping around the tracks quite a bit, it becomes more audible) - even when it did become audible, it was just the typical "access noise" you could hear every so often. It certainly wasn't clicking or the clunky parking noise.

So yeah, I would suspect your drive is faulty (especially if you can hear it above the fans and other components during normal use)

 

[fhall1]

I just got a refurb with a 640GB drive - so maybe the 1TB drive is different, but my 640GB drive is silent and I sit about 18 inches away from it.

 

[eric44]

My imac had a noisy hard drive so I had it swapped out for a new one under warranty. The new drive was much quieter but not silent.
My second imac is virtually silent but you can hear slight drive and fan noise.
All in all the machines are quiet but not silent.

 

[Tee.Nutter]

Hey Guys,
I recently bought a brand new iMac 3.06 Ghz, 1tb Hard Drive, ATI Graphics...

The trouble is, the hard drive clicking/parking is driving me nuts!
I called Apple last week, they searched for any known problems, and told me that everything should be fine... don't hesitate to call back....

I'm just wondering if anybody else is having constant hard drive clicking/parking noises? A larger 1 tb HD probably parks a lot more right? IDK... Honestly it's annoying the hell out of me as we speak. What should I do?


Thanks so much, I'd appreciate any responses.

I have the same iMac as your and my hardrive has become more noisier, but it's not a clunking or parking noise, just seem to hear the disk & fans spinning alot more than when I first got it.

Seems as if your hardrive maybe faulty

 

[chhhrrriiisss]

So the low noise that I am hearing. Is it normal or not normal?

When I first got my iMac a couple weeks ago it didn't make any noise and all of a sudden its making a really low but audible spinning noise.

 

[DavidR91]

When I first got my iMac a couple weeks ago it didn't make any noise and all of a sudden its making a really low but audible spinning noise.

Provided it's not continuous (and only happens when reading/writing to disk), yeah, that's perfectly normal. Both machines I've had started off nearly silent, and became slightly more audible after they were 'broken in' to regular usage, so I assume it's normal behavior.

 

[chhhrrriiisss]

Provided it's not continuous (and only happens when reading/writing to disk), yeah, that's perfectly normal. Both machines I've had started off nearly silent, and became slightly more audible after they were 'broken in' to regular usage, so I assume it's normal behavior.

Thanks for the reply. I'm starting to think it is normal because it was fading away then got slightly louder when I started doing more.

 

[rkenning]

I bought an iMac with a 1TB hard drive back in March 2009. It used to be quiet. Seven months later in October, it started making this annoying fan/buzzing sound. Typically, it would occur during start up or shutdown or when I was doing tasks that were hard drive related.

Short of taking it to my local Apple store, are there any diagnostics I can run to assess the situation?