Hitachi - loudness = bad?

FatRakoon

FatRakoon

FatRakoon

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I just bought a Hitachi 80GB SATA Drive as I hear they are fairly nippy.

Its a bit loud, and already the 2 x 200GB Sata drives in that PC are loud enough, but this takes the biscuit.

Anyway, *** volume of the drives does not bother me, as the Raptors are loud enough in my main box, but this is the first Hitachi drive I have had since the IBM DeathStar, and I have heard good reviews about them, but this is concerning me.

Ok, you get the whirly clicky sound when its accessing right... Thats not a problem. I am all go on that.

What I also get if I listen to the drive is the odd little click now and then... every second or two - Is it supposed to do that or not?

Its not the Maxtor kind of Click of death.. No! its a much quieter click, but its still a definite click that quite honestly is concerning me a little.

Can anyone verify this.
 
Thats perfectly normal i believe.
People used to describe it as sounding like a cat's meow but i find its just a little click on mine. I have only heard it a couple of times tho.
Hitachi said:
The occasional 'sound' you are hearing is the Idle Time
Function that has been introduced on our latest drive designs as a
reliability enhancement. You need not be alarmed by this,

This "sound" is due to a brief but deliberate head arm movement every so
often. This has been added to maximise the reliability of our disk drive
products.

This function is invoked if an extended period of inactivity is detected,
so has no impact on active performance. [It is bad to leave the heads
hovering over the same data track unnecessarily].

Even after a period of time of activity the Idle Time Function can be
implemented as the Idle Time Function is a cumulative function.

The level of sound emitted may vary from one drive to another and as such
this should not give rise to concern or be considered an impending failure.

Please be assured that this drive design is one of the quietest drives, at
this data density, in the industry.

I trust this information will be of use and help you to resolve your
problem.


Regards

Catrin Schoening

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies
Click to expand...
If its happening a lot then it may be something else...
 
Last edited:
Well, I did feel a little reassured by what I read, but then you said if it happens more often, then it could be bad, but the thing is, that its happening every second or two.... So...

Ahem.

Still, its like a day old, I will use it and if it goes doo-lal, then thats fine, I will RMA it then.

Its only on a P4 3.6 so its not like it a good PC, its just a mess about PC for now.

Cheers for the reply mate... Much appreciated.
 
Sorry for the delay in replying... I was waiting for an Email to confirm I had replies, but got none, so I thought no one replied.

Ok, I already have the Hitachi software, but will also DL what at the link to be sure.

I had Win XP64 on it for a short while but all of a sudden, I had a few issues where the directories were corrupt and even though I got it back up & running, Windows would not work 100% as it should do... I ran CHKDSK etc and it recovered from tons of errors, but it didnt say that the disk itself had any bad sectors?

Now, I had run System Machanic 4 on it, and I also know that SM4 is not fully compatible with XP64, and also that it had removed a lot of files that it quite possibly should not have, so I am putting it down to that for now.

I have put Win MCE back on cos thats the OS that came with it originally and so far, its running fine, and no bad sectors have come up as of yet, just that this crackling / grinding sound is very scary... Its making my raptors sound like a mouse scratching a box compared to a bull in a china shop.

Right, I will run the program and see what gives yeah?

I have just had a thought, but the Mobo has a SATA option where it slows the HD down to keep it quiet??? - I will have a look at that to be sure, just in case I am talking rubbish... Its just occured to me you see.

Thanks for the info lads... update later.
 
Hmm, I have an Hitachi Deskstar 250GB SATAII and its very quiet - even when it is busy. In fact I normally dont hear it over the sound of my case fans which aren't overly loud in their own right.

SiriusB
 
I recently purchased a Hitachi T7K250 and although I can't hear it much when up close, if I go into the room downstairs it makes a very noticeable humming noise.
 
Its not the standard noises you would expect from even a noisy HD though!

Its got a Grinding sound that isnt really a nice soudn at all....

I mean, it seems to be ok, but, at the same time, I dont want to accept the noise, only to use it fully and find out one day that my data is all gone, as it was with my previous DeathStar, btu also I dont want to take it back moaning about it, only to find that the noise is perfectly normal with this model, making myself look bit of a prat.
 
If you can hear it over your case fans [assuming theyre not ultra quiet] then I might be a little worried. Yes mine makes clicking noises but its by far one of the quietest drives Ive used as of late.

SiriusB
 
Nah mate... The Fans I am using are fairly quiet... Akasa 80mm adjustable, at lowest setting.

If it wasnt for the clicking, sure, it would be nice and quiet, but its louder than the Raptors by a fair bit.

Quick Drive though to be fair... Shame its in the P4 3.6 cos while thats a very fast CPU... ( About on par with my newcastle 3000 @ 2.4 ) the Motherboard is a dire pile of plonk and makes the whole system very unresponsive compared to any of my AMDs... Even the Socket A systems kill it for responsiveness and shuffling betwen many apps on the desktop, but hey ho, thats the way it goes eh!

anyway, tonight, I am going to be swapping over some drives, so that this hitachi will not be my C: and instead will be my F: and that will at least mean ,that should anythign go wrong,. it wont be takign out any data that I care about. ( F: will be a simple file for file copy of F: on my main box )
 
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