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Noisy External Hard Drive..need advice

glenerrolrd

glenerrolrd

Workshop Member
I am building out a RAID 5 Array with 4 Hitachi 2TB drives in a OWC Mercury Elite Pro Qx2.

The drives are exceptionally noisy ..not the exclosure fan but the actual hard drives. Since this takes for ever to build out ..do I have a bad drive? The Raid is indexing to OS X so it constant read/write . :banghead:
 
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docmoore

Subscriber and Workshop Member
Roger,

I had a failing Seagate that started a replacement binge...

Now have 3 nonEnterprise Hitachi drives... one 1Tb and 2 2Tb all internal in a Mac tower...

Almost noiseless with a little noise when index or searching.

I would sequentially remove each drive to discern if it is one drive giving you the problem...do it early and rebuild if one is bad.

My sense is Hitachi consumer drives are very quiet...not noiseless but not as you describe.

Lloyd Chambers is very positive on Hitachi drives and he reviewed the Enterprise series...I do not remember him mentioning them being noisy.

Noise in a quiet environment these days is unacceptable whatever the cause.

Bob
 
glenerrolrd

glenerrolrd

Workshop Member
Bob

These are the drives LLoyd recommends . OWC is sending me a new cabinet and 4 drives..that they are testings tonight. The noise was just short of so loud I couldn t work at all. After checking for customer reviews I found its a somewhat common problem ..but does not affect every drive(sample variation) .

The Qx2 cabinet is a winner ...supports RAID5 ...now if I can sort out the drives.
 
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docmoore

Subscriber and Workshop Member
Roger,

That kind of noise really detracts from a work environment...completely unacceptable. OWC is a good company and I know they will work this out to your satisfaction.

Raid is great but do make off site backups...blue ray about the only viable option at the present time.

Bob
 
glenerrolrd

glenerrolrd

Workshop Member
It was a bad drive or maybe two. What a difference...both in noise and performance. While it took a little more discussion that it should , OWC overnighted a new Raid5 that had been run all night (I paid the difference). Great result and thats what counts in the end.

I would highly recommend their new service where they will "burn in" your drives in overnight minimizing the early system failure risk.
 
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