# Uprgaded HDD - LOUD!



## supasta (May 6, 2006)

Ok, so I upgraded my Tivo S2 DT to a 400GB Seagate HDD about 3 weeks ago. I used the WeaKnees CD and the upgrade went off flawlessly..


HOWEVER, 3 weeks down the road, the HDD is LOUD! And, it seems to be getting progressively worse as time and days go by......


I went with the seagate because right on the box it said "Designed for Video and Gaming" and "Whisper Quiet" - and It was quiet for a few days....

Any suggesions?


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## rsnaider (Apr 25, 2002)

Seagates are not as quite as they used to be. I have two 120's (approx 3 years old) in my Sony and the only way I can tell the box is on is to put my hand on it and feel for a slight vibration as the hd's seek/write.

My new 300GB drives (7200.8)'s in both my 140 and RX-20 are loud enough to hear, but not loud enough to annoy.

If they have gotten louder, then either replace them from where you bought them or have Seagate send another one. You do have a 5 year Warranty but why wait.


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## Dkerr24 (Oct 29, 2004)

Are you sure it's the drive and not the exhaust fan? Sometimes the fan is the culprit.


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## supasta (May 6, 2006)

Nope - this is definately the HDD. Sounds exactly like the HDD seeking and running, and the noise gets louder with fastforwarding a recorded show or when the tivo is recording. Definately the HDD, no doubt. I guess I will take advantage of the warranty. At first it was just loud enough to hear with nothing on (tv, etc) but now it tands out over the TV being on and loud!


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## kschauwe (Sep 17, 2003)

I tried both a Seagate 300 Gb (7200.8) and a WD 320 Gb. I went with the WD because you could set the seek to quiet. I can hardly hear it, even with a quieter temp controled fan. The Seagate is now in my file server.
I have a Seagate 160Gb (7200.7) in another Tivo, and it is quiet.


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## Devx (Jun 1, 2006)

I just recently upgraded my Tivo S2 to a Seagate 300 GB 7200.9 drive. While my Tivo menu's seem a tad faster to respond, I can "hear" them now and no I don't mean the Tivo's normal "pop" sounds. The disk access when I go to menu's and Tivo central can clearly be heard. It's louder than my computer's HDD's even. I'm tempted to try and put some rubber grommets around the HDD to stop the vibrations. 

There's no help from Seagate either. They have a FAQ that clearly states they don't have any utilities designed to set their drives to quiet, they adjust and tweak them at the factory for performance and that's that.


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## BobCamp1 (May 15, 2002)

Although they have a 5 year warranty, I don't recommend using Seagate HDDs anymore. They are too noisy. Mainly because they got sued for patent infringment on their acoustic management technology. So they are intentionally making their hard drives as loud as possible to prove they aren't infringing (exaggeration, but you get the idea).

Samsungs have a three-year warranty and can be set to quiet mode. I cannot hear my 160GB hard drive at all. Some claim to hear a high-pitch whine, but my HD doesn't have that.


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## vman41 (Jun 18, 2002)

Devx said:


> There's no help from Seagate either. They have a FAQ that clearly states they don't have any utilities designed to set their drives to quiet, they adjust and tweak them at the factory for performance and that's that.


From what I could tell on the maxtor I tweaked, quiet mode random seeks are about 20% slower than performance mode.


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## supasta (May 6, 2006)

Well, it seems to come and go now. It was almost unnoticeable until I though to myself "hmmm....the TiVo is much quieter now" and then BAM it started clanging away like a train wreck.

Curious that you brought up the fan issue though. I should have done it when I had my TiVo open to do the drive - where can I get a fan upgrade for a S2 DT? I will check the usual sources - WeaKnees, PTV, etc....


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## supasta (May 6, 2006)

Ok, I am upset now. It is definately getting louder by the hour almost.

This is why I bought the drive:

"Whisper-quiet FDB (fluid dynamic bearing) motor"
"Quiet 25dB operation"

This thing is loud as hell. I want something I cannot hear at all.

Anyone have any excellent drive recommendations and some good places to find them at good prices?


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## 1283 (Sep 8, 2000)

supasta said:


> "Whisper-quiet FDB (fluid dynamic bearing) motor"
> "Quiet 25dB operation"


Those refer to the rotational noise only, which is generally not an issue for today's drives because most (if not all) of them use FDB motors.

Seek noise is highly dependent on the access pattern, and it is definitely worse for DT units because of the additional recording stream. Seagate is the worst because there is no acoustic adjustment.

My current favorite for TiVo is OEM WD with 3-year warranty. Many people like Samsung (also 3-year warranty), but I don't like its warranty procedure. For PC, I use Seagate because of its 5-year warranty.


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## supasta (May 6, 2006)

c3 said:


> .
> 
> My current favorite for TiVo is OEM WD with 3-year warranty.


Well, I found that to be exactly the case. I have been doing quite a bit of research over the past few days, and I found that the OEM WD Drives were by far the highest rated for not only quality, but quiteness and so on. I also found that on New Egg that the WD OEM drives were very commonly rated in the Customer Reviews section on the site by users who had them in their TiVos. So, I went ahead and bought one.

New Egg currently has the WD 320 GB OEM drives on sale for $104.99 with $5.44 shipping! EXCELLENT DEAL. Much smaller drive than what I reall wanted, and a downgrase from the 400GB Seagate I have now, but I cannot stand the noise any longer.......So, Ifg anyone needs a Seagate 400GB drive for purposes other than their TiVo drop me a line.


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