Author Topic: External hard drive idle noise  (Read 880 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

External hard drive idle noise
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.

 
Re: External hard drive idle noise
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.
just another newbie without any modding, FREDding or real programming experience

you haven't learned masochism until you've tried to read a Microsoft help file.  -- Goober5000
I've got 2 drug-addict syblings and one alcoholic whore. And I'm a ****ing sociopath --an0n
You cannot defeat Windows through strength alone. Only patience, a lot of good luck, and a sledgehammer will do the job. --StratComm

 
Re: External hard drive idle noise
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.

 

Offline ZmaN

  • 28
Re: External hard drive idle noise
wierd....

check seagates website and see if theres a knowledge base solution to it....
Well what do I do now?  Well Jack, you seem to have an act for blowing things up....

www.underoath777.com  <---  The BEST BAND EVER!

My Rig:
NZXT Apollo Case, with the insides painted black, and refinished side panels
Cooler Master Real Power Pro 750 watt PSU
Intel Xeon E3110 (e8400) OC'd to 3.6ghz
Xigmatek S1283 HDT Cooler
Biostar TPower I45 Motherboard
2 x 2GB's Crucial Ballistx DDR2-800 RAM
XFX Geforce 8800GTX GPU
Onboard sound
3 x 36GB Raptors in RAID 0
1 x Western Digital 640GB stand-alone

Matthew 1:1-2  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.

 
Re: External hard drive idle noise
:nervous:

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

Someone was going to do it.
« Last Edit: December 31, 2005, 06:35:15 am by Descenterace »
'And anyway, I agree - no sig images means more post, less pictures. It's annoying to sit through 40 different sigs telling about how cool, deadly, or assassin like a person is.' --Unknown Target

"You know what they say about the simplest solution."
"Bill Gates avoids it at every possible opportunity?"
-- Nuke and Colonol Drekker

 

Offline Flipside

  • əp!sd!l£
  • 212
Re: External hard drive idle noise
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.

 
Re: External hard drive idle noise
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.

  

Offline Flipside

  • əp!sd!l£
  • 212
Re: External hard drive idle noise
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 ;)

 
Re: External hard drive idle noise
Yeah, the BIOS only controls internal drives though.
'And anyway, I agree - no sig images means more post, less pictures. It's annoying to sit through 40 different sigs telling about how cool, deadly, or assassin like a person is.' --Unknown Target

"You know what they say about the simplest solution."
"Bill Gates avoids it at every possible opportunity?"
-- Nuke and Colonol Drekker

 

Offline Flipside

  • əp!sd!l£
  • 212
Re: External hard drive idle noise
Ahhhh... didn't know that :) My mistake.