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Forum Discussion
Ultra 6 hard disk constant cyclic noise
Hi,
I've been setting up my new Ultra 6 over the last few days, and have got most things sorted. One annoyance I've run into is a regular, repeating hard disk noise.
I found this threads that describe a similar problem:
http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=58648&p=329824
Here's what it sounds like to me:
1. For around 15-20 seconds there are a couple of sounds overlaid - a constant cricket like sound, and also a pulsing 'buzz' around twice a second.
2. After 15-20 seconds, there is a brief HDD access rattle (also the LED on the front of the case flashes), then silence from the hard disks for half a second. Then the whole process repeats.
Luckily the hard disks are very quiet, but I'm concerned that this repeated access will shorten the life of the disks. I only noticed this problem a couple of days after configuring my NAS. Initially I tested 3 HDD, but then decided on a 2x HDD configuration, so I did a factory reset and removed one of the disks.
For a couple of days after the reset, this cyclic sound wasn't present. But it's reappeared again since yesterday evening.
The only thing I've enabled in the last day is an NFS mount to my linux machine. Not sure if this is related, or just a coincidence. I tried removing the disks and the noise stopped - so I can't see that it's a fan noise.
This hard disk access doesn't make sense for several reasons;
- although the cyclic HDD noise is almost constant, the only time the tiny HDD LED on the front flashes is during step (2.) described above. Why not most of the time?
- I've tried setting the NAS to spin down the hard disks after 5 mins inactivity. If the disk is constantly/regularly being accessed (confirmed by the LED, and my ears) surely the disks would never spin down - but they do!
The sound is somewhat similar to when the NAS box is re-syncing, if that helps.
Any help/suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.
System details:
RAIDiator 4.2.19 (updated)
2x Seagate ST2000DL003 2TB drives
I've been setting up my new Ultra 6 over the last few days, and have got most things sorted. One annoyance I've run into is a regular, repeating hard disk noise.
I found this threads that describe a similar problem:
http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=58648&p=329824
Here's what it sounds like to me:
1. For around 15-20 seconds there are a couple of sounds overlaid - a constant cricket like sound, and also a pulsing 'buzz' around twice a second.
2. After 15-20 seconds, there is a brief HDD access rattle (also the LED on the front of the case flashes), then silence from the hard disks for half a second. Then the whole process repeats.
Luckily the hard disks are very quiet, but I'm concerned that this repeated access will shorten the life of the disks. I only noticed this problem a couple of days after configuring my NAS. Initially I tested 3 HDD, but then decided on a 2x HDD configuration, so I did a factory reset and removed one of the disks.
For a couple of days after the reset, this cyclic sound wasn't present. But it's reappeared again since yesterday evening.
The only thing I've enabled in the last day is an NFS mount to my linux machine. Not sure if this is related, or just a coincidence. I tried removing the disks and the noise stopped - so I can't see that it's a fan noise.
This hard disk access doesn't make sense for several reasons;
- although the cyclic HDD noise is almost constant, the only time the tiny HDD LED on the front flashes is during step (2.) described above. Why not most of the time?
- I've tried setting the NAS to spin down the hard disks after 5 mins inactivity. If the disk is constantly/regularly being accessed (confirmed by the LED, and my ears) surely the disks would never spin down - but they do!
The sound is somewhat similar to when the NAS box is re-syncing, if that helps.
Any help/suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.
System details:
RAIDiator 4.2.19 (updated)
2x Seagate ST2000DL003 2TB drives
1 Reply
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
- Update: The sound might be caused by Seagate's 'Directed offline scanning'.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article611-page1.html
"We were a little concerned about Directed Offline Scan, which "runs diagnostics when storage access is not required". This poses an obvious question to for low noise enthusiasts: Are the diagnostics audible? A disc-wide scan in particular could produce seek noise when the drive should otherwise be idling.
To answer this question, we contacted Michael Hall at Seagate, who responded that the feature did not affect drive noise. Furthermore, the feature has been included on Seagate drives for about four years, which means his claim is quite simple to confirm. Unfortunately, a number of SPCR forum dwellers have noticed this feature making noise in the past, describing the sound as a buzz that occurs when after the drive has been idle for a while."
[2006-05-30]
also here:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=23810
http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=23671
All this fits what I'm hearing. The Ultra 6 is reading/writing to the disks for very brief periods, then less than a second after the disk has been accessed, the drives go back to doing this (annoying) directed offline scanning.
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