D.G.

I just bought a seagate hard drive (ST380011A) and right away it’s started making a chirping sound. It happens whenever the drive spins up quickly from a stop, such as coming out of standby mode. It’s a single, half-second squeal (loud enough to be heard over case fans and ambient office noise), then it’s quiet again.

The only other hard drives I’ve had were another seagate that hasn’t made a sound in the 2 years I’ve had it, and a 4gig WD from my old computer that sounded like a tractor most of the time. So I don’t know if I just got lucky with first seagate and that kind of noise is normal, or if it means a mechanical flaw that will lead to an early death.

I ran the disk checking program from seagate and that was fine, and there are no other problems. So what I’d like is some feedback on what (noise-wise) is normal, and what is trouble. Thanks.

FishBoy

well i have an old WD drive it makes weird sounds everytime i work on it, it's slow too, but hard drives usually make tiny high pitch sounds as soon as they are turned on for like a sec only, but now loud noise from them try taking it back to the shop and get it replaced maybe

Mainframeguy

I have your identical model drive (had it a couple of years actually) and never a peep out of it.... RMA time IMHO sorry....

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Mainframeguy

Oh - and welcome to OSNN - enjoy your stay!

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Geffy

i had an old ibm drive which made some really evil (head digging into platter) types of noises.
personally i would rma it even if it was singing the greatest song in the world.... yeah

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Zedric

That's the good old "idle seek" sound of the IBM Deskstars. Completely normal, but scares the **** out of me everytime I hear it.

That Seagate though, I'd RMA it, that doesn't sound like it's supposed to be there.

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dreamliner77

Yeah, my two seagates are whisper quiet.

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D.G.

Thanks for the input. I saw a thread from a couple of weeks ago, some people saying how quiet saegates were. And that was certainly my experience with my first seagate. I thought it sounded like something was wrong, I just didn’t want to look like a dufus taking back a hard drive if there was nothing wrong with it. So I appreciate the feed back. And thanks for the welcome.

Elektro Slime

yup u shud be concerned, chirping sounds prolly means a bad head (not ut head the one in the HD). r you sure its chirping, if its actually a whoosing sound then thats prolly cuz ur disk is spinning very fast, try slowing it down and see if u still have the problem. if it continues IMO RETURN THE DAMN THING!!

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