SPCR

Since it seems like everyone here uses Seagate Barracuda IV hard drives, I thought I'd relay a strange story about mine.
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<BR>I own three 40G Barracuda IV drives; each is in a separate system. The one disk failed and I sent it to Seagate and got a replacement. The replacement drive is MUCH noisier than any of the original three I had. The rotational noise is about the same, but, after the drive is on for 10 min, the seek noise is the loudest I've heard since this 540MB Quantum I had 7 years ago. I've been in touch with tech support at Seagate, and they've sent me two different DOS utilities that might help, but I've had no luck with them. On the plus side, tech support e-mails got back to me in less than 24 hours both times. It looks like I'll be sending the drive in for another replacement, since a) I want a quiet drive and b) strange noises are almost always a precursor to failure.
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<BR>Anyone else out there with a similar experience? Anyone have any idea why this one drive would be so much louder than any others (but not have any data corruption problems)?
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[addsig]

I guess Seagate tech support would have the best explanation as to why the disk is noisier than others. My 40GB Barracuda IV is as quiet today as when I bought it eight months ago.

Well, I sent the drive in and got a replacement that is as quiet as the first three. I suppose that one was just a bad apple.

ive just bought my first Barracuda IV drive (40gb). its emmiting a soft buzzing noise (not spin noise) when NOT being accessed. the noise stops for 2 seconds after each disk access, then comes back. is this normal?

in reply to teklan:

I used to have the same problem. Contact Seagate via email and they will email you back a small DOS utility that you run once and it fixes the problem.

thanks petreza, but after leaving the drive on continuously for more than 8 hours as suggested by someone at niko's link above (thanks niko!), the noise disappeared and has not come back! i still dont know what it was, but its gone so im happy

teklan,

"I still don't know what it was"

The post that said to leave the drive on for 8+ hours also told you what the noise was:

The noise you're hearing is most likely the offline scan feature, which activates in the first ~8 power-on hours. It should disappear after that.
Note that there are 8 scans, each with a duration of about an hour. If you set power-management spindown to <1 hour, the scan will restart at the beginning and never finish.

Queue