Savvio, Cheetah, and Constellation Enterprise Server & Storage (SCSI/FC/SAS/SATA) drives

[jentech_mst]

Our first Cheetah 15K.6 drive causes a knocking sound in idle mode.

We are not sure if this is normal (perhaps the Background Media Scan or Media Pre-Scan).

All tests with Seatools are OK.

We checked a second drive, same noise. I never heard this.

Has anyone noticed such a sound ?

Regards,

Michael.

[Oireen]

Hi Jentech, I'm experiencing the same "knocking sounds" in my computer using two Cheetah 15K.6 hard drives in RAID 0.

It seems like some sort of activities are performed in background by the SAS controller, in my case, a Marvell 63xx.

Those strange clicking sounds can be heard immediately after drive spin up, early before the OS boot. I hope somebody at Seagate will look out this thread and tell us if those sounds are to be considered "normal"...

Have a nice day!

OireeN

[jentech_mst]

Hi Oireen,

In the meantime, I talked to Mr. Atzkern from Seagate Germany.

But I didn't ask for the screeching noise after spinup (only one time,

<> a little bit like a cheetah, I don't know the correct word in English).

I'm sure, this is a normal calibration of the drive.

My problem was the knocking noise all the time in idle mode. These are

indeed the Media Pre-Scan  and the Background Media Scan (also normal,

details are described in the product manual).  It turned out a little bit loud by this drive.

Regards,

Michael. 

[Oireen]

Thank you jentech for your answer !

It seems like the background media scanning causes some troubles while playing games on my PC.

I'd like to know if there's a way to disable this functionality.

Since the data stored in the Cheetah Hard disks isn't "mission critical" I don't really need a background media scan undergoing while playin' games (WoW keeps on freezing while BMS is performed and it doesn't freeze at all when the discs are "normally idling")..

Thank you in advance,

Oireen

[jeng1111]

I'm so glad you posted this!

When I got my new Dell server with 4x 146GB 15K SAS drives (Cheetah ST3146356SS), I immediately called Dell and told them the drives were bad. I couldn't imagine that such a noise would be normal. (I described it as a "rattling" noise.) And it's exactly as you describe - only when the drives are inactive do they make the noise. When they are active (LEDs flashing) they're fine (although louder during read/writes than I'm used to). Dell couldn't accept that all four drives would be bad, they thought it was the chassis or fans or something. Since it was the last day I could get a replacement server they sent me a whole new one - and the Cheetah 15K.6 drives in that one sounded just the same: rattling, knocking while idle.

So I'm going to proceed under the assumption that this is normal, although I can't imagine how/why Seagate would make drives the make such an alarming noise under normal circumstances.

UPDATE:  I think once the drives warm up they don't "knock" as much.  If anyone else can confirm, please let us know.

[CroneSecure]

I have 4x 3TB constalllation es2 in a raid5 on a adaptec 6805 raid card. I have the same problem with  a "knocking" sound in idle. I hope there will be an firmware update soon that would fix the problem.

What about seatool with a adaptec host adapter, can i fix the issue there?? 

Johan

CroneSecure