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Samsung hard drives - don't buy them unless you like subliminal mental torture

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nudone:
I've not noticed any loud seeking type noise - BUT I do have two Raptor drives (RAID0) which I think are the noisiest seeking drives I've heard (maybe old scsi drives are louder), so maybe I've just not realised where the noise is really coming from.

To be truly honest. I'm not even sure if the old Samsung drive is any less annoying than the new one. It seems that since I've had to rebuild my machine a couple of weeks back, the drives are now annoying no matter where I put them in the case.

Edvard:
I just had a thought...

Knowing what I do about acoustics (just enough to get me into trouble...), I'm thinking what you might be hearing is the harmonic content from intermod distortion.
That is, normally sub-audible noise naturally produced by hardware in your computer case can go from "barely-noticeable" to "dear God, make it stop" because the  frequencies can mix together in such a way as to generate very-audible harmonics that, due to phasing effects and other factors, seem to come and go.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodulation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_%28acoustics%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additive_synthesis

This would also explain why others have similar symptoms and some don't, and why Samsung can't find a problem.
I'd be curious if those who did have these symptoms also have similar hardware configurations (SCSI or other drives sharing the box, number and rotational speed of cooling fans, etc.)
If this is the case, why just the new drives? Maybe it has something to do with new Samsung drives in the way they radiate vibrational energy that is conducive to the generation of these types of noise under certain real-world conditions.
I have personally experienced something like this with my wife's computer, which is normally very quiet but can sometimes wake me up at night with a pulsing "WUB WUB WUB" type noise that fades up over the course of a few minutes, then back into silence again for a few days.
I know it's just the cooling fans' frequencies drifting around until it creates an audible "beat" overtone.
I dunno, just a thought...

Anyway, I agree that putting your box in another room is probably your best bet, with hanging the drives on string being my suggestion for a close second. :p

40hz:
@Edvard - that's an interesting thought, intermod distortion. Especially when you get a 'beat modulation' (ex: a note simultaneously sounding with the flat immediately beneath it) on many very close frequencies. Which is a potential scenario with multiple disk drives.

That wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh sound would be enough to drive anybody crazy.  :tellme:

 8)

nudone:
Intermod distortion makes perfect sense to me. I've become slightly perplexed by what's going on between the old and the new drives - I "believe" it could be a combination of them both spinning at the same time.

The annoying noise occurs with either drive placed outside of the case (the cables are just long enough to try this). Placing a single drive on foam rubber does not reduce the noise enough - and it seems not to matter which drive is on the foam bed. Placing both drives on a soft surface does reduce the noise by a significant amount (as I mentioned above, I believe the noise has gone).

So, in conclusion, it appears that the noise comes from having both drives powered on and at least one touching a hard surface connected to the case (even if that hard surface is the floor under the case). It also explains why either drive seems to cause the problem AND/OR not cause the problem - like some kind of weird quantum mechanical connection across spacetime. Maybe the machine is about to fall into a Worm Hole that is on the verge of forming between the two drives - gyroscopes are funny things aren't they and I think the disks could be behaving similar to that giant machine from Sagan's Contact (in the film, at least).



Epilogue:
The machine used to be very quiet. But its hardware contents were slightly different back then. I was using controllers to make four internal fans spin slower than normal and the newest 1TB drive used to be a 250GB Samsung drive. In other words, the hardware seems similar now to what it was but there are lots of rotating (vibrating) elements that are spinning differently since I put the new drive in - and no doubt creating a whole new range of waves of possible harmonic distortion.

I am beginning to feel a lot less angry with Samsung now. It is the machine itself that is annoying - I confess. I may still dangle the drives from string though; I'd already considered this but the little foam beds I've used instead were the quickest option (and are working quite well).

Edvard, thank you for making sense of the problem and giving it a name.

Carol Haynes:
The biggest problem I find is that fans get noisier over time (and it doesn't seem to take that long).

I was SO impressed with how quiet my new computer was when I built it that my old one sounded rather like a washing machine on spin cycle.

Now my new machine has entered my consciousness - esp. the case fans!

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