Intermittent noise on 2010 Mac Pro

[scott94]

Hopefully one of you guys can tell me what might be causing this. I've had 2 identical machines - 2010, 3.2 Ghz Quad. The first was refurbished, the current one, brand new (as of early Feb). Both machines have this identical, periodic noise. It's a short (1/2 second or so) 'whine' / 'spinning down' sound. I originally thought it was a drive going bad, but found that not to be the issue. My only other guess is that it might be a fan? At this point, troubleshooting has consisted of swapping drives and resetting the PRAM.
Any help greatly appreciated!

 

[biker joe]

I don't have an answer for you but can sympathize. Mine makes the exact same noise. Very annoying. I would be interested to know what is causing it. It has got to be a HD or a fan.

 

[scott94]

After disconnecting several of the easy-to-get-to fans individually, I came to the conclusion that they were not the cause. Next, I removed the superdrive. Again, the noise persisted. This brought me back to the drives.

When I first received this machine, I set the 'Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible' option in Sys Prefs > Energy Saver to off (unchecked). I left the 'Computer Sleep' setting at the default. As an attempt to alleviate this noise, I set 'Computer Sleep' to 'Never'. Gladly, today makes one week without noise!

With the previous settings, I'm guessing the machine was repeatedly attempting to enter sleep mode and would begin a spin-down of the drives (which I now believe to be the cause of the noise). However, as the drives were set to never sleep, the machine was also not allowed to sleep.

For anyone interested, I have the stock WD 1 TB (WD1001FALS) and a WD 2 TB (WD2001FASS).

 

[Johnf1285]

Yeah thats definitely the sound of a disk spinning down, or attempting to. Good to hear you solved the problem. I personally set the energy pref's to the follow:

 

[handheldgames]

Noisy drive says "I'm gonna fail soon". Grab a copy of disk radar and take a look.