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Can you hear the hard drive in your 2011 iMac?

A

AppleFan360

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jan 26, 2008
2,217
735
I had a late 2009 21.5" iMac with a 500GB hard drive and I could barely hear the drive at all. The entire iMac was pretty much silent. Even the fan was whisper quiet.

My new 2011 21.5 iMac with a 1TB drive is very easy to hear. Much louder than the old one. I can hear it accessing even with ambient noise in the room.

Not a big deal but I was wondering if anyone else noticed the difference.
 
I have the same thing, 2011 21.5" w/1tb. i also have the ssd. Anyway, yes i can hear the hard drive whirring faintly, and it makes a little hard drivey noise when its accessing but nothing unusual. All very normal for my external drives as well. I think Western Digital drives are just abit noisier than Seagates, and mine is a Western Digital. Nothing to do with quality - my g5 imac ran great for 5 years and still does with it's Western Digital. That's my 2 cents. By the way, most of what I use is on the ssd and when the hard drive spins down everything really is dead silent. even with the hard drive active this thing is super super quiet compared with the old g5 imac.
 
I have a 500GB WD drive in my iMac and I can hear it make noises occasionally, usually when booting
 
Yes, its a hard drive, if it does not make noise then its dead ;)

On a more serious note, the HDD in my 2011 iMac is one of the quietest I have ever owned. It is audible on data-heavy operations, but other then that, the machine is whisper-quiet.
 
I have a seagate 1tb, and only hear it spinning up. No resonanse noises either.
 
I have a Caviar Black 1 TB in my iMac 2011. It's one of the loudest hard drive I ever had (I only had Seagate when I used to have a PC). Although my iMac is by far my quietest computer, it's not totally silent. In a quiet room you can here it easily.
 
The iMac that I just sent back sounded like a bloody dolphin with all the clicks coming from it.

Didn't even think to check the drive type, needless to say along with the Chinese eyelashes and beard hairs underneath the glass, it wasn't a keeper.
 
First Hitachi was quiet, second Segate had grumbling... They both also had quite different screens... It great how when spending such a large sum of money its a lottery to get something acceptable.
 
Hitachi 2TB in iMac 2011 is noisy!

I have 21.5'' iMac 2011 256 SSD + 2 Tb Hitachi HDD. That 2 Tb Hitachi HDD is the only source of noise in this model. And for sure this noise is well recognisable in a silent room. The read/write sounds are fine and probably better than some other drives, my problem is a constant rotational hum of this drive, which is for sure I can hear pretty well in a quiet room. People with 2 Tb HDD without SSD for sure are thinking it's a fan noise, but not. Fans in iMac 2011 are so quiet you won't hear them at all , even in a perfectly quiet room. So this 2 Tb Hitachi drive for sure has a noticeable constant rotational hum, which reminds a fan noise. But it's a drive noise. And this is the only thing I don't like in this model. I never had rotational persistent noises in my older iMacs. If somebody uses iMac 2011 in a perfectly quiet room with Hitachi 2 Tb HDD, they are welcome to comment whether they have any noise. Maybe my drive shouldn't be that noisy. Apple service does not bother, if a drive is working without errors - they don't bother. Very sad.
 
Noisy said:
I have 21.5'' iMac 2011 256 SSD + 2 Tb Hitachi HDD. That 2 Tb Hitachi HDD is the only source of noise in this model. And for sure this noise is well recognisable in a silent room. The read/write sounds are fine and probably better than some other drives, my problem is a constant rotational hum of this drive, which is for sure I can hear pretty well in a quiet room. People with 2 Tb HDD without SSD for sure are thinking it's a fan noise, but not. Fans in iMac 2011 are so quiet you won't hear them at all , even in a perfectly quiet room. So this 2 Tb Hitachi drive for sure has a noticeable constant rotational hum, which reminds a fan noise. But it's a drive noise. And this is the only thing I don't like in this model. I never had rotational persistent noises in my older iMacs. If somebody uses iMac 2011 in a perfectly quiet room with Hitachi 2 Tb HDD, they are welcome to comment whether they have any noise. Maybe my drive shouldn't be that noisy. Apple service does not bother, if a drive is working without errors - they don't bother. Very sad.
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Sorry to revisit this but I have this exact same setup and the noise although not obtrusive, is definitely bothersome. I have tried un-mounting the 2 tb Hitachi however and this does not stop the background whirring. Are you sure it's not the ssd? I am thinking of partitioning my 2 tb and using it as my startup drive just so I can un-mount the ssd to test this. Any one else tried this?
 
My Mac runs very quietly. It makes a slight amount of noise, but the pitch doesn't change when it's "working hard" or any other time. I have a mid-2011 used machine I acquired when it was a little over a year ago. So far, so good.
 
Well, after unmounting both internal drives, my fan or hard drive noise remained the same. I'm assuming unmounting the internal drive will turn off the drive completely thereby cancelling any noise that it would add, but I'm not totally sure. Either way that did not solve the problem.
 
leman said:
Yes, its a hard drive, if it does not make noise then its dead ;)
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Although too much noise from a HD can be bad also, for instance when it starts doing a death rattle. If you've worked with enough hard drive, you can telll when a drive is probably going bad by the sounds it makes.
 
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