Hard Drive Noise? Chirp, Chirp, Buzz

[mojodog333]

I am having this odd hard drive noise coming from my RAID mirror. I hear a chirp or two followed by 1 second buzz. (I'd attach a recording of it, but the forum doesn't seem to support an audio file type) It occurs very frequently; often every 5-10 seconds repeatedly and then it stops for a while. At first I thought it was one of my drives going bad, so I bought 2 new drives, and the noise is still there. I am starting to think that it is something that either the OS, BIOS, or maybe RAID Chipset is making the drives create this sound. My system also seems to hang periodically. Not always when the buzzing is occuring, but I can't help think they are related.

I also booted up with one drive disconnected from the mirror and the sound remained. (each drive had the noise)

I did do a deep scan using a bootable CD of Seatools with no errors (no odd noises either). I want to say that the noise went away for awhile, but it may have just been a coincidence.

Here are some system details:

• Z68 Extreme4 (BIOS L1.61 - It is a beta that I needed to get past some odd boot problems w/ USB. I had this problem with an earlier version of BIOS)
• i7 2600K w/ 8GB RAM
• Win7 64-bit
• OCZ Vertex 3 SSD (Boot drive)
• 2x Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003 2TB 5900 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s
• Sapphire AMD 6970

Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks,

[wazza300]

are you sure its coming from the hdd's? look in your bios for eist,c1 and c3/c6 might be under advanced cpu features or power saving features,disable them all and see if noise goes away

[mojodog333]

I'm positive it is from the drives, but I tried what you suggested. The sound is still there. Any other thoughts?

[wazza300]

is smart enabled in the bios for the drives? tried with disabled? and were they the same make/model hdd's you tried before?

[SkYWalker1726]

i think that;s the sound of your HDDS powerin ON ,
after not using the HDDs they turn themselves off , then when clicking on the Drives they turn back on ,
you can change this setting in Advance power options ( Turn off HDDs after )
and the hang might be the Miliseconds delay , that it takes to poweron

[electric bill]

I have 4 Samsung 2TB (HD204UI) drives in my network movie server (880G Pro3) and Windows Power Options is set to shut them down after 5 min of inactivity.
When I open Media Center, then the Media Browser plugin on the HTPC (970 Extreme3), the drives on the server computer start waking up one at a time - maybe 8 sec apart.
The slight amount of noise they make is like a squeak or chirp then a mini turbine whine for a sec or 2 as each drive spins up.
They make the same sound when I initiate the Windows shut down sequence.
They each spin up (staggered start) as Windows is closing, then they all shut down simultaneously as the computer shuts off.

It's my hd chorus.

Bill

[mojodog333]

The power setting turn off the drives after 15 minutes of inactivity. I would believe that it was the drives spinning back up, but the noise happens over and over regardless of if they have been shut down due to inactivity.

[bahram_alinezhad]

From the testimonies you told: Noise of hard drives and erratic hang, most likely your power supply is weak; It is either weak or has a bad voltage regulator. At first step examine your problem with a different PS.

[mojodog333]

Thanks for the PS suggestion. I was almost positive that it was the problem since it was 4 years old and my newer hardware was probably running it hard. But, I bought a brand new 850W PS and I still have the problem....

So, I've tried:

1.) New hard drives
2.) New PS
3.) BIOS settings suggested below
4.) Different ports on the RAID controller

Any other thoughts? Could it be something bad on the motherboard?



I didn't have a audio recorder app on my phone, but I was able to catch a video and cram it down into a file size that I could upload. Not the best recording, but you can hear the drives if you turn up the volume.

2011-11-29_19-58-13_771.zip

Thanks for the help.

[bahram_alinezhad]

What I hear in this file is only one sound which I never heard it from any hard drive! So, my question is that are you sure it is from hard drives and is not from other sources (i.e. motherboard small speaker)?