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Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: SadisticSid on December 29, 2005, 04:54:51 am

Title: External hard drive idle noise
Post by: SadisticSid on December 29, 2005, 04:54:51 am

I got a new Seagate external drive for Christmas. The trouble is, when the drive's idle for more than a minute, it starts making this annoying noise that I guess must be the SMART monitoring doing its checks. Either that or the manufacturers just like to piss off users. If there's either an uncached read or write to the disk within that minute, however, it never occurs. Does anyone know how to stop this? Preferably I'd rather stop it all together so I can sleep when the drive's still turned on, but I suppose a program that reads and writes to the disk every so often wouldn't hurt either.

Title: Re: External hard drive idle noise
Post by: kasperl on December 29, 2005, 05:57:48 am

Quote from: SadisticSid on December 29, 2005, 04:54:51 am

but I suppose a program that reads and writes to the disk every so often wouldn't hurt either.

Visit some dodgy warez sites with your virus and adware scanners off :p

Seriously, is there anything in the manual about it? Also, look at the energy managment settings (in the control panel), you might be able to change something there.

Title: Re: External hard drive idle noise
Post by: SadisticSid on December 29, 2005, 09:47:52 am

Heh, well if push comes to shove I could always code a little something myself...

It's not something that can be fixed through a software setting I think, as even when the PC's off or it's unplugged from the USB port it'll still do the same thing.

Title: Re: External hard drive idle noise
Post by: ZmaN on December 29, 2005, 11:12:03 am

wierd....

check seagates website and see if theres a knowledge base solution to it....

Title: Re: External hard drive idle noise
Post by: Descenterace on December 31, 2005, 06:31:31 am

:nervous:

OMG t3h V1rus H4Z 1Nfe<t3d j00r Ds1k!!!

Someone was going to do it.

Title: Re: External hard drive idle noise
Post by: Flipside on December 31, 2005, 06:47:33 am

I always turn SMART off, apparently it causes a slight performance hit and, quite frankly, the only time SMART ever bothered to tell me that it thinks theres a problem was actually after my Hard Drive had failed and was practically unreadable.

Title: Re: External hard drive idle noise
Post by: SadisticSid on December 31, 2005, 08:53:01 am

It's normal behaviour, apparently. That doesn't make it any less annoying.

Flip, I've looked through all the utilities but there doesn't seem to be anything included apart from being able to back up your internal drive and a SMART monitoring tool - there isn't anything to actually set anything on the drive.

Title: Re: External hard drive idle noise
Post by: Flipside on December 31, 2005, 10:23:14 am

IIRC, you can set SMART on or off from the BIOS if needed. I've personally only ever needed scandisk except for once, and by then, it was too late ;)

Title: Re: External hard drive idle noise
Post by: Descenterace on December 31, 2005, 12:29:06 pm

Yeah, the BIOS only controls internal drives though.

Title: Re: External hard drive idle noise
Post by: Flipside on December 31, 2005, 12:34:04 pm

Ahhhh... didn't know that :) My mistake.