Hard Drives Sound Different

[guptasa1]

Know I've made a lot of posts lately, but bear with me as I'm in my "upgrade" and "PC checkup" phase. LOL.

Here's the situation. I think everything's alright, but want some more opinions. I have two VERY similar hard drives, both 100 GB IDE 7200 RPM Western Digital hard drives. Only difference is the master is the SE version (8 MB cache) and the slave is the regular version (4 MB cache). As far as I know, besides that, they're identical.

What concerns me is, recently I've noticed the primary hard drive has a slightly...tinny...sound to it when it accesses/writes, which I don't remember before, whereas the secondary drive sounds like I'm used to...more pronounced sound, but less tinny. There are no loud noises or anything in particular to alarm me.

I've run Disk Checker and Defrag and all that a few times on the drive, and it seems to perform just fine as far as I can tell. Performance has been fine (though after SP2 and my upgrades, I plan to reformat since XP has various quirks right now, but I don't feel they're HDD related).

I also should note I've been working inside the case a lot lately and moving things around, etc. In fact, the drive bay right above where the 1st HDD is is now vacant (was an Audigy drive). Though I do think I noticed this before it was empty, I'm not certain.

My case is aluminum, so my thought is, the drive's just...reverberating...a bit differently because its position and that everything fine.

Any thoughts?

I may try and make sure it's secured next time I open it up.

 

[pallmall]

My opinion is it's because the case is working as a speaker harmonized with the master drive spindle.
You may use some leather rings for the screws to reduce the sound transfer to the case.

Connected to the mb ide sockets and smart disk enabled in the bios, the hard disk physical condition can be checked by speedfan.

 

[guptasa1]

Thanks much for your very helpful reply!

I concur with your assessment that the sound is transferring to the case. Glad I'm not alone in thinking this. I'll consider the leather ring idea. It's not so much the sound actually bothering me as wanting to make sure it wasn't a problem.

I went ahead and ran SpeedFan and got all green lights for S.M.A.R.T. - thanks for the tip! Both drive's fitness and performance are quite high on the scale (though not completely maxed...close to it). Actually, my second drive is a notch lower as far as fitness, but I think that's probably due to it being used more (I had it first), it being the slave drive, and it not having the SE cache.

But overall, if I understand it right, I'd say the drives are both in good shape.

(BTW, should I keep S.M.A.R.T. enabled all of the time? Apparently it is enabled, and I didn't think it was. Not sure how much this affects performance.)

 

[CaptainFizz]

Originally posted by: guptasa1(BTW, should I keep S.M.A.R.T. enabled all of the time? Apparently it is enabled, and I didn't think it was. Not sure how much this affects performance.)

It will have no impact on performance, having SMART enabled or disabled.

But you can then read the SMART chips on the HDD's.

So leave enabled.

 

[guptasa1]

Thanks. Looks like I'm fine then. Appreciate all the help =o)

 

[Navid]

To commpare apples with apples, copy a large file (2GB) from somewhere to a folder on one of the drives. Then, copy the same file to the other drive. Do they still sound different?

I am thinking that the type of access for OS may have been different than the type of access to your other drive and that may have contributed to the difference in sound.

 

[guptasa1]

Tried that actually the other night. (Not exactly, but similar). Still sounds a bit different to me, but less so. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[Jeff7181]

Your slave has a 2 MB cache, not 4... for the record. Also, your Caviar SE may be an older version that doesn't have a Fluid Dynamic Bearing yet... the 2 MB cache drives have had them for some time now. I know with the 2 MB cache drives, the FDB is denotated in the model number with an LB rather than a BB... like... WD1600LB is a 2 MB cache 160 GB 7200 RPM drive with a FDB. I'm not sure if the Caviar SE line has a different model number for ones that use a FDB. A quick check of your serial number on WD's website should provide the info. But a Ball Bearing vs. a Fluid Dynamic Bearing would definately be noticeable as far as noise goes.

 

[guptasa1]

Ahaaaa. Thanks for the clarification. You're right about the 2MB vs. 8 MB - forgot about that. I can check as to ball bearings. =o)

 

[guptasa1]

Both drives are listed as BB.