Do you own a 27" iMac with Seagate's ST31000528ASQ HD?

Yes, I have one. I have an i5.

It has none of the problems you mentioned.

Yes, I have one in my i7 and have none of the problems listed. It's quiet and fast!

Same here on an i7. So far no problems and I really don't expect any. Relax.

Have an i7 and it is quiet; no clicking.

I have an i5 - and it is so loud it's distracting. You don't hear it if there is music on - but if you turn it down you can hear it clearly. It's like the iMac's stomach is constantly growling. Impossible to focus.

I have a replacement i7 coming Friday - hoping it has a different drive in it or that they've fixed the problems by now.

To answer your other questions there dont appear to be any problems with performance. Apple ran some diagnostics and nothing came back - but determined it was a hardware issue anyway. One tech told me he thought it was the fans..but if you can sit in front of it it's clearly not.

See this thread if you need any additional info..

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/806850/

If mine (i7 iMac 1TB) has a noisy drive I think I'll buy me a 2TB to replace it, along with the bluray drive I'm going to fit. Just need to order my glass suckers!

thiagos said:

I want to know from people's experience who own an iMac with a Seagate drive?
I hate Seagate as a hard drive manufacturer and with my luck I received my iMac i7 today with a Seagate ST31000528ASQ Drive.

I have read horrible reviews about loud clicking noises and people's hard drive failing.

Do you own one?

1. Has your drive failed?

2. Does it make loud clicking noises?

3.Do you get long pauses and the beach ball every once in a while or when loading an application?

4. Do you get errors when transferring data?

Click to expand...

1. No
2. No
3. No
4. No

Just silent and fast.

Also perfect here.

thiagos said:

I hate Seagate as a hard drive manufacturer and with my luck I received my iMac i7 today with a Seagate ST31000528ASQ Drive.

Click to expand...

Unluckily there are few other manufacturers left. All of which I can easily find problems with.

Do you own one?

Click to expand...

Yes, in an i7 iMac.

1. Has your drive failed?

2. Does it make loud clicking noises?

3.Do you get long pauses and the beach ball every once in a while or when loading an application?

4. Do you get errors when transferring data?

Click to expand...

No
Yes
No
No.

Let me be clear with 'loud clicking' - it is the same loudness as the 320GB consumer Seagates in my server. However, I have those set on the loudest/fastest acoustic setting. I've been unable to find a way to set the acoustics on the iMac and I really don't want to open the machine to put the disk in a Linux box to do it.

It is much louder than my 20" iMac during seeks.

Have received 3 i7's now, one of them in November and the other two were christmas gifts. All three of them have the Seagate drives with non of the problems listed.

All silent ans very fast.

Three home runs !

how do I know which drive my iMac has?

thiagos said:

If I replace the hard drive, will it void Apple's warranty?

Click to expand...

Yes

No problems on 2 27" iMacs here

2 of these hard drives in 2 machines at work. The posts you read on forums are weighted because that is where people go who have problems. These hard drives are no more likely to fail than others, nor do these iMacs seem to have more issues than other machines from HP, Dell, etc. 3 years ago I got a new HP Pavilion and the motherboard died after 80 days (90 day warranty!) and they replaced it for free. There is always a percentage of machines that will have problems, hardware or software/firmware-wise. Same as any new car (or any other product) you buy could have a defect. Apple has sold 1 or 2 million of these, there are no widespread problems. Like someone else said in this thread, relax. There is always a chance that something could be wrong and it is highly unlikely, but you have a warranty. Yes, I know some percentage of people have issues with products and that is a pain (I have been one of them) but that is life.

Fa7mac said:

how do I know which drive my iMac has?

Click to expand...

> About this Mac >

Go to Hardware > Serial-ATA and look under Chipset, you will see info like this:

ST31000528ASQ:

Capacity: 1 TB (1,000,204,886,016 bytes)
Model: ST31000528ASQ
Revision: AP24
Serial Number: REMOVED
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Rotational Rate: 7200
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
Macintosh HD:
Capacity: 999.86 GB (999,860,912,128 bytes)
Available: 917.13 GB (917,125,931,008 bytes)
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /

My Seagate is perfect, very silent.

I do have this hard drive in my 27" i5, and it is loud with clicking,grinding noises--but all Seagate drive's I've ever had have been loud. It still works fine and I have no plans to return just because of this. Still, though, it can be annoying in a quiet room.

Steve

lexvo said:

My Seagate is perfect, very silent.

Click to expand...

Ditto

Yes I have the ST HD. My first 27" i7 had the HD fail after 4 days. Replacement has the same HD and absolutely no problems... very quiet and fast.

Nope, I can't even hear it.
I mean I can sometimes, but only when I'm transferring large data from/to an external HDD.
My Mac is in a very quiet environment, so if anything I would have definitely heard something.

Definitely have none of the problems you listed.

my imac is an i7. it did make that annoying hard drive noise... for about a day. it is obviously present only while the hard drive is doing something. after my imac had done whatever it had to - i'm going to guess it was the spotlight index - it stopped making noise.


stop whinging about harddrive noise. unless something's not working, leave it. after like a day it'll stop.

Trust me, as someone who's had the issue - it's not something you can just forget about. If you have this noise, you'll know it. It is a constant distraction. Mine clicks when the display is asleep and nothing is going on.

my i5 makes the grumbling noise when surfing the internet or opening applications. Can not hear it when music is playing or when the tv is on. Coming from my G5 where the fans were loud all the time, the grumbling is just annoying. It makes me wonder if the HD is going to fail sometime soon. Thank goodness for applecare and my time capsule.