Trying to force hard drive to spin at speed

[ahmadof]

I didn't know how else to title this. I just had a hard drive failure in a macbook. I replaced the HD. Old HD was 5400RPM Hitachi, new one is 7200RPM Hitachi. Works fine, (don't notice much of a speed difference), but on startup, i notice a metallic sound from the HD. It only occurs on startup and is exacerbated by moving the macbook around at that time, almost like a gyroscopic effect. I think it must be related to the speed of the new HD. I would like to see if I can reproduce it any other time than startup. So, I would like to see if there is a way to make the HD spin at max speed. I don't even know if there are "speeds", maybe it always spins at 7200rpm. If I only hear the sound at startup, I can live with it. I tried copying large files over a network, I tried duplicating those files when they were on the laptop.
any other ides are appreciated

 

[varmit]

I didn't know how else to title this. I just had a hard drive failure in a macbook. I replaced the HD. Old HD was 5400RPM Hitachi, new one is 7200RPM Hitachi. Works fine, (don't notice much of a speed difference), but on startup, i notice a metallic sound from the HD. It only occurs on startup and is exacerbated by moving the macbook around at that time, almost like a gyroscopic effect. I think it must be related to the speed of the new HD. I would like to see if I can reproduce it any other time than startup. So, I would like to see if there is a way to make the HD spin at max speed. I don't even know if there are "speeds", maybe it always spins at 7200rpm. If I only hear the sound at startup, I can live with it. I tried copying large files over a network, I tried duplicating those files when they were on the laptop.
any other ides are appreciated

And when you say Metallic, is it a click, a grind, a clank? Well, that might be the drive spinning up and getting up to the 7200 RPM. A way to get the drive to spin up again while using the computer is to set the drive to go to sleep when not in use. So when the drive isn't in use it will stop, then when you access it after a long period of no use the drive will spin up again. System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> put a check next to "Put the hard disks to sleep when possible". See if there is the same sounds.

 

[Makosuke]

It always spins at 7200RPM, so what you're hearing definitely isn't related to it spinning any faster at startup. The only drive model I've ever heard even claim to spin at variable speeds is the WD "green" series, and even with those end-user tests show that they're actually fixed at about 5400RPM so far as anybody can tell.

Try putting the computer to sleep and waking it up--if it doesn't make the noise then, then you're either hearing the heavy disk access during boot, or the sound is something else in the computer.