FireWire drive noise

hazmat

hazmat

Rusher of Din
I have a LaCie 200-gig Porsche FW drive. I find when it's idle, it will all of a sudden make a noise for a while like a sewing machine. It's pretty loud, too. Actual operating noise from the drive is pretty quiet. It will make this noise every once in a while and it drives me nuts. If it's making the noise and I access the drive, it will quiet down. But if I've interrupted it when it's doing whatever it's doing, it will start it again much sooner. I reported this to LaCie and they had me send it back to them and they said it was fine, but sent me a new one, and it does the same thing, so I don't think it's a problem with the drive itself. Any ideas or suggestions on what it is or how I can figure out what it's doing?

Thanks.
 
hazmat said:
Any ideas or suggestions on what it is or how I can figure out what it's doing?
Click to expand...

My LaCie Porsche FW 250 GB is very quiet always. I don't see how the problem, if there is one, could be anything but the drive. Still, LaCie says the one you sent back was OK. So, I'm puzzled too. Do you have access to another computer you could connect the drive to?
 
Thanks, good suggestion. I'll try connecting it to another computer and see if it does the same thing.
 
It's the same kind of hard drive sound inside computers. These devices operate on a rotating motor that spins the platters around so the heads can read data off the platters. With any mechanical moving part, it can suffer from wear and tear. Usually after several months of use.

External drives suffer a little more than internal ones. Because the fact that they're external, portable, and we have that "plug and play" mindset, those drives go through more frequent power-up and power-down cycles that put more wear on the moving parts.

When those moving parts start to wear down you start to hear whiny ambient noises coming from the drive itself.
 
Lycander: thanks, but that's not it. When the drive is working, it's pretty quiet. It's only when it's been idle and it all of a sudden starts making the different noise. It's a combination of a sort of spinning and clicking, but not the clicking of a crashed hard drive. I've heard plenty of those. I've never heard a noise like this.
 
It still spins when idle... it only stops spinning if specifically told to, like in Apples energy saver prefs. Hehe, it'd be funny if it turns out that's actually the sound of the drive spinning down from power saver that you're hearing.

Just for kicks, can you tell us what you currently have set for that "spin hard drives down after X minutes" setting in Energy Saver pref?
 
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