iMac G3/500 Annoying disk spinning noise

[Enric]

Someone gave my an iMAC G3/500 (2000). It is working fine but the hard drive make an annoying spinning noise. The noise is regular, nothing to do with the read/write operations.
The disk model/brand is 93073U4 Maxtor 30.7 Gb. I am wondering whether this noise is due to the disk ageing, or maybe this is normal for this model ?
I have another iMACG3/600 (2001) which is almost silent as it runs.

 

[eyoungren]

I highly doubt it's normal. And if this is the original hard drive then you have to question the noise coming from a 14-15 year old hard drive as impending drive failure.

Even if the drive is NOT the original hard drive, noises like that are not normal and are a pretty good sign of a hard drive going bad. I wouldn't trust it with anything valuable and replace it when you can.

 

[Enric]

That makes sense, I could not imagine that Apple sold such a noisy mac... I'll change it.

 

[MagicBoy]

Difficult to be certain without hearing it, but most likely the drive bearings. 5400rpm drives of that era didn't have fluid bearings and tend to get vocal as they get old.

The high pitched grating sound on this video is typical of it :

 

[abundantmussel]

Recently got a g4 and when I powered it up the noise of the 20GB original hard drive was pretty bad, even the sound of it seeking was very noisy. Threw in another 80GB drive I had lying around the noise difference is something else.