[thumperr]

I installed a 750GB Seagate SATA drive yesterday, and the drive is making a ticking noise. There is no discernable pattern to noise. It almost sounds like the drive is caching and then writing to disk and makes the noise when writing. I never heard this with the original drive or the 160GB SATA drives in my PC. Was wondering if anyone else has had a similar issue with an eSATA add on or a swap? Thanks.

I did on occasion hear the spinning of the original drive in the hr20, just no ticking.

 

[Marshall]

I have the exact same drive and it ticks to.

Been using it for over a week and absolutely no problems.

 

[Earl Bonovich]

It could be the design of the drive.

I had been following some threads over at TCF in the TiVo series 3 forums, and it seems that the current 750gb drive from Seagate is a little loud.

They had just released one for a premium price, that is supposidly a lot "quieter"

 

[cybrsurfer]

I installed a 750GB Seagate SATA drive yesterday, and the drive is making a ticking noise. There is no discernable pattern to noise. It almost sounds like the drive is caching and then writing to disk and makes the noise when writing. I never heard this with the original drive or the 160GB SATA drives in my PC. Was wondering if anyone else has had a similar issue with an eSATA add on or a swap? Thanks.

I did on occasion hear the spinning of the original drive in the hr20, just no ticking.

Did you connect the drive as external or internally replace the factory drive?

 

[Marshall]

I mounted in one of those aluminum EATA enclosures and jumpered it for 1.5gb.

All my equipment is located in a closed cabinet so I can't hear the noise.

 

[thumperr]

I did the internal replacement.

Earl, thanks for the information from over at TCF. never thought to look there.

I'm thinking I need to go with an external device, so that I can place it in one of my side cabinets. the HR20 is on an exposed shelf above the TV.

 

[jsevinsk]

I'm curious, how big is the drive that comes with the HR20?

 

[wmschultz]

300GB

 

[yamaham]

Go here, select Idle Noise, click Sort button. This will give you an idea on idle noise levels when you're looking to buy a HD. Granted, this will not apply to the 'ticking' noises you're hearing during access, by generally a quiet drive at idle will also be quieter during access.

Another theory is that a drive with a louder spindle motor, making a constant noise, will often drown out some of the access noises a drive makes. So if the drive has a super quiet spindle motor, you're going to hear more from the read/write process.

 

[flipper2006]

This is just a guess so dont 'shoot'. The Seagate eSATA 750g internal drive is a 'perpendicular drive'. I have had this running for about 1 month without any problem but since last wednesday night, able to take advantage of the full 750g and ticking noise you just 'get used to' but i think it's WAY quieter then the drive that comes inside the HR20, that was clicking and beeping.

But back to what I said, it's a new type of technology built for speed, so maybe that speed first, sound second. Seagate has a whole movie on perpendicular drives on thier web site if you want to watch the animated cute movie.

FYI - other then occasional stutters and picture flickers from MPEG4 issues, no other problems at all. My box has not locked up (knocking on wood) in about 6 or 7 weeks at least, maybe more. (back then, i used to reboot 4 times a week or more). I use the trick play all the time, and LOVE LOVE LOVE the new 30 second thing!

 

[yamaham]

Perpendicular recording technology (initially developed in the '70s) is designed to increase capacity using existing physical storage media. Speed, on the other hand, is directly related to the spindle rotation. And a better seek time gives a snappy quickness but doesn't affect overall transfer speeds.

 

[Neil Derryberry]

I use those 750gb drives in place of tape media.. they have been rock-solid as far as drives go.

I've noticed that SATA drives do seem to make different noises than their ATA counterparts.. not sure why.

 

[yamaham]

I use those 750gb drives in place of tape media.. they have been rock-solid as far as drives go.

I've noticed that SATA drives do seem to make different noises than their ATA counterparts.. not sure why.

Only recently are SATA drives being manufactured somewhat different from their PATA counterparts. Previously the only difference has been the circuit boards, which are swappable in some models. Now we have the WD Raptor 150 and a few other SATA-only designs. However, even these differ only *slightly* in internal design as they are still based on the same principles. We're talking magnet thickness, spindle motor rotational speed, slight variation of the HDA design, etc.

More than likely you're not noticing that SATA drives make different noises, but that newer drives sound different from older drives. It has nothing to do with interface specification (SATA vs PATA).