Whining Hard Drive - Strange But True. Options

[Podfather]

Not sure if anyone else has come accross this.

Mac spec

Powermac G5 dual 2.7ghz
2 gb ram
250gb serial ata
ati radeon 9650
RME Fireface 800
Logic Pro 7.1
Reason 3

Whenever I start Logic my hard drive starts a failry high pitch whining noise. If I then add Reason via Rewire - it gets worse? Has anyone else come accross this?

[td3k]

Typically when a drive makes a high pitched 'whine', it is eventually going to fail.
What you are probably hearing is the spindle of the drive generating friction. When the drive gets heated, the metal expands, and a spindle that is getting worn generates that high piched whine. Perhaps when you are running Logic, the drive is spinning up to full speed and you hear that noise. I have seen drives go on like this for as long as year or two, but eventually they go south. If the computer is still under warrwanty I would give Apple a call (although they will typically not do a repair unless the drive is failed.) (And of course, please back up all of your data files.)

Good Luck,
TD

[Podfather]

thanks for the reply. have you any ideas why it only does this on Logic?

[gdoubleyou]

Because it's constanly being accessed and stressed when you are using Logic.

[ourmanflinty]

do any of the settings in 'hardware and drivers' affect the noise...you have a few to play with ie
reducung the number of tracks? more friendly disk handling or not? buffer size?
try lowering your maximum recording time in the 'set audio record path' dialog?

How about moving your logic samples /audo files / exs instruments etc to an external drive to take some load off the internal. Same goes for your refils etc.

Use disk utility in the utilities folder to run repairs on your drive then see what happens ( you'll need to boot from an install cd / dvd to run all options on your internal drive, run 'disk utility' from the menu rather than doing an install ).

Have you found 'activity monitor' yet? when you run this it reports on all operations going on in your mac, it's useful information and may give you clues as to what's happening.

If you can prove the drive is functioning out of specification, and they have a decibel spec, then surely you've got a better chance of getting some applecare?

[The Guitar God]

My old G3 did this. It eventually gave up the ghost and stopped working. You should back up all of your important files to DVD etc. Mine was 7 years old though, so it had good reason. That seems a bit new to give up now.

[citypigeon]

are you sure its the drive? seems funny that reason would affect drive operation like that... i've noticed on my dual 2.0 that there is a quiet wine coming from the computer which changes tone depending on what the processor is up to at the time - its very quiet and doesn't bother me since the computer is too far away for it to interfere with music but it sounds like maybe you have a more extreme case of this going on in your 2.7 .... i'm fairly certain its its not my harddrive causing this though

cp

[ourmanflinty]

ah yes..it could be the fans spinning up to cope with the extra load...remember the fans in g5's are dynamic in that they will change the airflow rate dependant on the heat being generated.

[TheKid]

Not necessarily the fans. If allow nap is checked, uncheck it. It may be a frequency being generated due to the nap mode. I have that problem on my dual 2 Ghz.

Later -- Jeff

[editbrain]

the noise is generated by the lack of power to the processors. i most models of the Dual G5 there is a power supply problem.
the nap fix should not be considered a fix. a work around maybe, but not a fix.