seagate barracuda IV whine when in sleep mode

davidp · Post by **davidp** » Mon Nov 04, 2002 3:04 pm

This is an annoying problem. When my hard drive goes to sleep after 20 minutes of nonusage (an option under power savings in display properties of winXP), a high pitched whine resembling some sort of alarm is persistent. When I hit the keyboard, the hard drive spools up and the whine stops. I suppose my motherboard is to blame for overreacting. It must think there is a problem when the hard drive is not running all the time. Does anyone know how to stop this sleep mode alarm? Is it a bios setting or? My motherboard is a gigabyte ga7vrxp. Thanks

Gxcad · Post by **Gxcad** » Mon Nov 11, 2002 6:08 pm

Is it at all possible that you can only hear the whine when the harddrive is off because usually the noise of the harddrive "masks" the whineing? Could be the chipset fan... Just curious.

-Ken

davidp · Post by **davidp** » Mon Nov 11, 2002 7:00 pm

It doesn't whine at all when it is running. It is some type of alarm, the same type of alarm goes off if your cpu goes over 70 degrees celcius. It has a very high annoying frequency. Gigabyte really sucks, they haven't got back to me yet after I emailed them 3 weeks ago. For now, I just have the power saving option for the hard drive turned off so it runs all the time. It is much quieter that way. Maybe I should just leave it running all the time, but I thought that would shorten it's lifespan. Is that not true for this harddrive though: 80GB barracuda 4?

schnee · Post by **schnee** » Thu Nov 14, 2002 1:43 pm

Having it crank up and down all the time will kill it faster than letting it always spin at the same speed.... the wear comes from heating up and cooling down, higher torque on the bearings, etc.

Just like a car. Stop and go traffic kill's em. Highway miles are easy.

I'd just leave it on.

davidp · Post by **davidp** » Fri Nov 15, 2002 12:24 am

Alright, I will leave it on, it is much quieter that way. Wouldn't my hard drive make more noise if it was running for 5 years straight (probably obsolete by this time so thats all it needs to last for) because of loss of bearing lubrication...? If no, then who really cares, no point wasting time with this issue anymore. If yes, then I'm going to have to unfortunately because it shouldn't make that noise anyways from what I'm told from Gigabyte and Seagate.
Thanks for the replies,
David