All future Hitachi HDs to include "meow" feature..

Bar81 · Post by **Bar81** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 1:00 am

UGH!!! Well, they just lost a customer

Pertinent text:

"All of our 7K250 drives, as well as any future product releases will have this feature. At this time, there is no way to disable it. Anti-vibration materials will not eliminate the noise, but it may help to minimize actually hearing the noise."

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14311

replay0 · Post by **replay0** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 1:40 am

ugh... and i thought that 'meowing' or 'mooing' was just my new hard drive acting funny (until I came to this site). Oh well, it does happen frequently

Anyway, it's not annoying enough for me to hate the Hitachi or seek another brand for replacement in my quiet PC. I think this HD is pretty quiet otherwise.

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 7:03 am

That website has some kind of vendetta against IBM/Hitachi.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 7:24 am

m0002a wrote:That website has some kind of vendetta against IBM/Hitachi.

And for good reason, IMHO. As should most of the people who bought the garbage 75GXP IBM drives.

HammerSandwich · Post by **HammerSandwich** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 7:42 am

Surprisingly, I have a pair of 30GB 75GXPs that have been working just fine since the fall of 2000. They are pretty loud, though.

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 8:00 am

I had an IBM 30GB drive on a Gateway PIII 866 purchased in July 2000. It was the first ATA-100 drive available from a mainstream computer manufacturer (at least it was the only one I could find). I later found out that Gateway did not install an 80-pin cable and I was not getting Ultra DMA-5 speeds, but that is another story.

I purchased another IBM 30GB retail drive soon after I bought the Gateway computer. The original 30GB OEM drive went bad after 2 years and they replaced it under warranty with a 60GB drive. The other 30 GB drive is fine, but I noticed that it was a slightly different model, and I think it was made at a different location than the OEM drive.

I have recently isolated both drives (60GB and 30GB) in the Gateway using high-density foam (I posted a thread about this), and they very quiet now. I have two drives and use PowerQuest Drive Image to take partition backups specifically for situations like this. I actually could hear the drive going bad before it failed, so I was taking more frequent backups about that time.

erik98225 · Post by **erik98225** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 9:03 pm

From the article:

Hitachi Global Storage Technology drives have various internal procedures that verify the performance and reliability of the drive.

Early Barracuda ATA IV drives did this too (with the same sound, in fact...) and there was a utility called SMSCAN.EXE to disable it.

Has anyone been brave enough to try running SMSCAN.EXE on a Deskstar? I don't expect it to work, but it's worth a shot...

bigred · Post by **bigred** » Tue Feb 24, 2004 7:16 am

Ralf Hutter wrote:And for good reason, IMHO. As should most of the people who bought the garbage 75GXP IBM drives.

Come on man.. That problem could have happened to any one of the big HD manufacturers. The real problem there was that they dealt with the problem very very poorly. But IBM isn't even making this drive, its Hitachi!
Plus since Hitachi's drives have been rock solid and have retaken the performance crown that they held for many many years prior to the 75GXP problem.

For us this "meowing" noise is a big turn off, but for the vast majority of computer users out there, its not a problem at all. For most people I doubt it is any more than slightly audible.

erik98225 · Post by **erik98225** » Tue Feb 24, 2004 10:34 am

bigred wrote:For us this "meowing" noise is a big turn off, but for the vast majority of computer users out there, its not a problem at all. For most people I doubt it is any more than slightly audible.

I just read more about the issue on this forum. If I understand correctly, the meowing (actually more of an infernal SCREECH) is from a "random movement of the head" to prevent one spot of the disk from becoming too hot. Overheating was the cause of the 75GXP failures. If the drive sat idle for a long time, the heat build-up on the last accessed part of the disk would melt the magnetic film and demagnetize it.

If you flash your 75GXP with the new firmware, it will start meowing.

This operation is apparently necessary, but is it really necessary to move the heads so slowly as to cause this noise every 10 minutes? How about a firmware update that causes a normal seek to a random part of the disk every 10 minutes instead?

If enough 7K250 owners complain, it might happen.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Tue Feb 24, 2004 12:13 pm

bigred wrote:
Ralf Hutter wrote:And for good reason, IMHO. As should most of the people who bought the garbage 75GXP IBM drives.
Come on man.. That problem could have happened to any one of the big HD manufacturers. The real problem there was that they dealt with the problem very very poorly. But IBM isn't even making this drive, its Hitachi!

I don't know if you're aware of it but Hitachi Disk Drives are IBM drives. After the 75GXP debacle IBM sold 70% of it's Disk Drive unit to Hitachi and I think Hitachi's getting the other 30% at some point in the future.

Here's an interesting article about the deliberate deception IBM was employing during it's 75GXP fiasco.

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Tue Feb 24, 2004 1:20 pm

Ralf Hutter wrote:
m0002a wrote:That website has some kind of vendetta against IBM/Hitachi.
And for good reason, IMHO. As should most of the people who bought the garbage 75GXP IBM drives.

That's the one I have

DTLA-307075, 75.3GB, 7200RPM, Rev A00, Made in Hungary.

EDIT: http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/dtla/dtlamod.htm it's a 75GXP... a "SERVICEABLE USED PART" and deafeningly high pitched err meows? that go up and down peaking about every 5 sec. Some seek noise. As the drive runs, the meows become louder and louder (up to a point). The drive can be easily heard several rooms over - it used to make my ears ring.

I don't have a vendetta against IMB but against Dell who wouldn't replace the drive. (which was an upgrade after the computer burnt up a few days after arriving and then again a few days after being repaired - did I mention I hate Dell and got a C in computer science that semester? CS 111!) THough I was a computer engineer I had no idea how to replace a HDD and a Dell "representative" told me I would void the warranty if I had it repaired. So... I kept using it

. I'd pile laundry on top of the computer to silence it, hoping it'd overheat again but it never did - occasionally it'd shut off but never broke. I used the CPU in my current system and I think it just recently died, those PIIIs really last.

(link is fixed - I had a comma after the link for grammer

)

mas92264 · Post by **mas92264** » Tue Feb 24, 2004 1:54 pm

Trip,

Uhh, I don't think your noise is the meow. The meow is the fix for the newer drives.

davidstone28 posted a link to the meow sound (I think it's his recording) right below this thread. His meow is almost exactly like mine, err, was, as the drive is now sitting on my desk at home. While the drive was idle, it occurred every 10 minutes, almost exactly. (btw, your link is dead)

M