Could my new WD5000AAKS be defective?
Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2010 8:19 am
Hi,
I have been looking through the "how to silence the HDD"-posts for a while now, yet I do not find very much mention of what is currently my biggest conundrum:
A new WD5000AAKS that is swooshing so loud that I really wonder why I bothered with the Megahalems, silent fans, running Afterburner so as to zero down my GPU card fans etc...
I seems most techniques people apply to silence the HDD address vibration noise, but I have been lying on the floor next to my computer for an hour now (opened case), turning it on and off and disconnecting drives left and right listening to the differences in noise, and to me it seems obvious that in my case it is not vibration that is the problem but the swooshing noise when the drive is idle. I actually have no problem with the rattling seek noise if I make the drive do things, but it is the constant swooshing that irritates me. I even took the WD5000AAKS drive out and muffled it inside a t-shirt lying on the floor next to the computer to really rule out any vibration noise. The swooshing carried through the t-shirt though, so I am confident that it is not vibration noise I am hearing and also I am confident that it is the WD5000AAKS that is the most noisy drive in my system (see signature for the other three drives.)
So I am wondering if I may have been given a faulty/defective drive, because for the love of my life I cannot understand why one would go through the trouble of suspending drives inside the case with elastic when the main noise from a drive (on the recommended list) is so pertinent and not vibration related at all. Yet there is very much discussion about suspension here so I am thinking there must be something weird with my drive. My Samsung 1GB F1 has the same kind of swooshing noise but it is not as loud as the WD5000AAKS. Or are you guys only suspending 5400 RPM-drives?
I even tried suspending the drive but the elastic broke before I had a chance to try it out. No damage to the drive though, it was still in my hand when the elastic broke.
The only thing I have been able to do to reduce the noise is to stack the four drives together at the top of my case, that seems to lower the echoing of the swoosh a tad, but not nearly enough for it to go away.
It is not so easy to take the drive back for a replacement because I installed the system on it thinking it would be the most silent one.
Do you recognize the kind of noise I am talking about?
What do you guys do to dampen it?
Should this drive have this noise at all?
Should I accept this swooshing noise?
Thanks a lot for all input that could help resolving this conundrum.
/g
I have been looking through the "how to silence the HDD"-posts for a while now, yet I do not find very much mention of what is currently my biggest conundrum:
A new WD5000AAKS that is swooshing so loud that I really wonder why I bothered with the Megahalems, silent fans, running Afterburner so as to zero down my GPU card fans etc...
I seems most techniques people apply to silence the HDD address vibration noise, but I have been lying on the floor next to my computer for an hour now (opened case), turning it on and off and disconnecting drives left and right listening to the differences in noise, and to me it seems obvious that in my case it is not vibration that is the problem but the swooshing noise when the drive is idle. I actually have no problem with the rattling seek noise if I make the drive do things, but it is the constant swooshing that irritates me. I even took the WD5000AAKS drive out and muffled it inside a t-shirt lying on the floor next to the computer to really rule out any vibration noise. The swooshing carried through the t-shirt though, so I am confident that it is not vibration noise I am hearing and also I am confident that it is the WD5000AAKS that is the most noisy drive in my system (see signature for the other three drives.)
So I am wondering if I may have been given a faulty/defective drive, because for the love of my life I cannot understand why one would go through the trouble of suspending drives inside the case with elastic when the main noise from a drive (on the recommended list) is so pertinent and not vibration related at all. Yet there is very much discussion about suspension here so I am thinking there must be something weird with my drive. My Samsung 1GB F1 has the same kind of swooshing noise but it is not as loud as the WD5000AAKS. Or are you guys only suspending 5400 RPM-drives?
I even tried suspending the drive but the elastic broke before I had a chance to try it out. No damage to the drive though, it was still in my hand when the elastic broke.
The only thing I have been able to do to reduce the noise is to stack the four drives together at the top of my case, that seems to lower the echoing of the swoosh a tad, but not nearly enough for it to go away.
It is not so easy to take the drive back for a replacement because I installed the system on it thinking it would be the most silent one.
Do you recognize the kind of noise I am talking about?
What do you guys do to dampen it?
Should this drive have this noise at all?
Should I accept this swooshing noise?
Thanks a lot for all input that could help resolving this conundrum.
/g