HDD vibration/noise

Casterina · 7 Jul 2016 at 11:23

I have a 1TB 7200RPM Seagate Barracuda (storage and games) installed in a Sharkoon HDD Vibe Fixer inside my Fractal Design Define Mini case however when I download something onto the drive, I can hear the drive humming and spinning noise which I thought the Vibe Fixer would eliminate it, is there any other ways to solve this?

mickyflinn · 7 Jul 2016 at 11:36

How old is the hard drive ?

Casterina · 7 Jul 2016 at 11:41

mickyflinn said:
How old is the hard drive ?

It is 3-4 years old, I checked with Hard Disk Sentinel and it has 100% health and 312 days of power on time.

mickyflinn · 7 Jul 2016 at 11:49

Had a simmlar problem myself and whatever i tried didnt work, eventuially it started vibrating. So i bought a new one.

fobose · 7 Jul 2016 at 12:47

I have 4x WD drives in my old Antec P182 which I think has the same HDD mounting as the define mini (rubber mounts?) and they don't make any noise when read/writting that I can hear, and I am very fussy about my PC noise.

Maybe you just have a noisy HDD model?

Casterina · 7 Jul 2016 at 13:31

mickyflinn said:
Had a simmlar problem myself and whatever i tried didnt work, eventuially it started vibrating. So i bought a new one.

fobose said:
I have 4x WD drives in my old Antec P182 which I think has the same HDD mounting as the define mini (rubber mounts?) and they don't make any noise when read/writting that I can hear, and I am very fussy about my PC noise.

Maybe you just have a noisy HDD model?

Is the Seagate Barracuda HDD known to be noisy or I just got a bad one? If so which HDD brand should I go for?

Casterina · 7 Jul 2016 at 21:51

Casterina said:
Is the Seagate Barracuda HDD known to be noisy or I just got a bad one? If so which HDD brand should I go for?

Anyone?

Danny75 · 7 Jul 2016 at 22:33

Casterina said:
Anyone?

Not particularly, I'd say. Mine are quiet, so far.

Have you tried it without the vibe fixer? It may help lessen the HDD's internal noise (less "bouncing" when in use affecting internal drive parts, perhaps), even though it may add to the cage/case noise. You'd have to see whether it's better with/without.

Casterina · 7 Jul 2016 at 22:35

Danny75 said:
Not particularly, I'd say. Mine are quiet, so far.

Have you tried it without the vibe fixer? It may help lessen the HDD's internal noise (less "bouncing" when in use affecting internal drive parts, perhaps), even though it may add to the cage/case noise. You'd have to see whether it's better with/without.

I have tried it in the HDD cage before I used the Vibe Fixer but the drive still makes a humming and spinning noise when it is in use.

groovesection · 8 Jul 2016 at 05:42

Casterina said:
Is the Seagate Barracuda HDD known to be noisy or I just got a bad one? If so which HDD brand should I go for?

I used a 500GB Seagate Barracuda as a video capture drive for my HVR, purchased from OCUK
I used it for 5 years constantly writing to and deleting recordings, it got hammered every day and was on 24/7.
The drive is still perfect but has been retired and currently holds 500GB of videos as a back-up
It never once had any audible noise (unlike my WD Green 1TB which was the same age and started clicking 6 months ago, a sign it was dying)

The WD black series are quality drives with 5 year warranty's

fobose · 8 Jul 2016 at 08:56

Casterina said:
Is the Seagate Barracuda HDD known to be noisy or I just got a bad one? If so which HDD brand should I go for?

I've had a lot of the seagate barracuda's over the years and some have been noisy (120GB models IIRC), most were completely silent. My WD drives are quite old (5-7 years I believe) so I couldn't recommend any thing thats out at the moment but I do like the WD brand with my current experience.

Casterina · 8 Jul 2016 at 17:14

groovesection said:
I used a 500GB Seagate Barracuda as a video capture drive for my HVR, purchased from OCUK
I used it for 5 years constantly writing to and deleting recordings, it got hammered every day and was on 24/7.
The drive is still perfect but has been retired and currently holds 500GB of videos as a back-up
It never once had any audible noise (unlike my WD Green 1TB which was the same age and started clicking 6 months ago, a sign it was dying)

The WD black series are quality drives with 5 year warranty's

The WD Black seems to be a performance drive which will probably be louder than others so I'm between the WD Blue or Seagate Barracuda.

fobose · 8 Jul 2016 at 19:00

I use the WD green drives. I know they are the eco ones but they are fast enough for me. I use one of my 1.5TB ones as a game drive - although it was originally a storage drive.

I've also had WD blacks and blues in the past and all of them have been really quiet for me (2x 640GB Blacks, 5x 500GB Blues and 2x 320GB Blues).

P.S I used to run my 640GB Blacks in RAID 1, so they would run simultaneously and they really were dead quiet drives. Very fast too for my OS before I moved over to an SSD.