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Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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Need help identifying HDD sound

October 1st, 2016, 13:11

Hi!

I just bought a Seagate barracuda 4TB drive after doing some research and it seemed like a decent HDD according to the data published by BackBlaze.

I noticed some weird sounds right away, because they sound nothing like the noises that my computer normally makes. At first i thought that it was coil whine or something, but I've double checked and the sounds are coming from the HDD.

Here is the recording: http://puu.sh/rucm5/06e64ef3e0.mp3
The first part includes both types of noises that the HDD makes.
-2 seconds in a short click and a low hum happens for about a second
-11 seconds in a chirping sound happens

This is the first HDD I've purchased in 5 years, so i'm just trying to make sure if this noise is indicative of a faulty hard drive or not, before i take it in for warranty.
The chirping sound may be occurring when the hard drive is accessed for the first time in a bit, but i'm not certain about it. I was thinking that it may be an idle -> active -> idle type of deal, but i can't reproduce the sound with such consistency. I could record ~10 instances within 5 minutes easily.
When i use the hard drive normally, like copying a lot of files at the same time it doesn't seem to happen. I also downloaded Seagate's benchmark tool, but it didn't yield any negative results.

Thank you for reading.

Re: Need help identifying HDD sound

October 1st, 2016, 18:04

Update: I've read into it more, apparently Seagate's automatic parking timer is 8 seconds (APM/AAPM) and every time it re-parks, it makes that chirping sound.

Still not sure if this noise is the normal unparking noise though, so my question still stands. It's definitely not a normal sound in my opinions, sounds like something is grinding.
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