SSD Noise?

[atw58]

I replaced the mechanical drive in my new Toshiba Protege laptop with a Corsair Force SSD. When the whole SSD is scanned such as HDtune or extended access occurs, I too hear a high pitched whine quieter than a hard disk and at a higher frequency. It is definitely not silent.

Hope somene has an explanation beyond it is defective and should be RMA'ed.

Thanks,

 

[tomatthe]

I had a force 3 drive in my machine and never noticed it making any sound what so ever. Same experience with their performance line, and I had that drive sitting on a desktop in a usb/sata type connector so I'm pretty sure I would have heard any sound it was making.

I would not expect an ssd to make any sound at all.

 

[Pyree]

I notice on both of my SSD. High pitch sound but you must be in a quiet room with system fan on slow to hear it.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?77207-Hearing-a-buzzing-sound-when-SSD-is-accessed

Read the 5th and last comment on the post I linked.

 

[tomatthe]

it looks like the 6th comment is advising the component may not actually be on the drive, but an issue somewhere else in the system.

Here is another post mentioning the same issue, and it looks like after listening closer the sound was not actually coming from the drive either.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/299402-30-corsair-force-noisy

It seems most likely the sound is coming from another component in the system to me.

 

[moramajama]

I notice on both of my SSD. High pitch sound but you must be in a quiet room with system fan on slow to hear it.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?77207-Hearing-a-buzzing-sound-when-SSD-is-accessed

Read the 5th and last comment on the post I linked.

Hello! New guy here. I'm having the same issue with a Samsung SSD installed. It's not super loud, but my ears are sensitive that it bothers me, especially in my apartment where it's fairly quiet and noise bounces off the walls easily. My problem is that it seems to be when I record any audio, either from an external mic or the webcam, it gets amplified big time. Any thoughts on how to proceed to get rid of the sound?

 

[Pyree]

Noise cancelling?

I don't think my mic pick them up. In fact I don't hear it unless SSD is working hard and it is very late at night and nothing is making any noise.

Are you working in a recording studio with mic that picks up everything? I mean the computer fan makes more noise than the SSD so it may not be the SSD.

Try having only the mic in the recording room and all of the computer outside.

 

[MarkOakley]

My brand new Crucial SSD M4 *definitely* makes a high-pitched whine, like the back of an old tube TV set.

I tested it by pulling the unit from the laptop it was in, putting it in a USB 2.5 hard drive enclosure with a long cord between me and a second computer and moving files back and forth from it. Yep. There's no question whatsoever. It's the SSD. The squeal is even there when it's sitting idle. It only stopped when I pulled the USB cord and power was cut off.

But many people are not going to hear this sound. It's up in the high frequency range where many people aren't sensitive. Some people couldn't hear those old TV sets whine either, but whine they certainly did!

Here's a page which offers various samples of high frequencies just on the edge of human hearing. See how sensitive you are. . .

http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2009/03/can-you-hear-this-hearing-test/

Sadly, I think SSD squeal might just be an unfortunate by-product of the technology. Sucks, because I'm seriously thinking of going back to my old spinner because of it.

I'm going to ask some other people and see if it's just some units or if it's the whole damn technology. I wonder if I can RMA a drive with Crucial because "It's like having an icicle driven into my brain!"?

 

[MarkOakley]

So I came up with a solution of sorts. . .

I worked out that the whine is about 16 Khz. As it happens, electronic whine and hum in that range is a problem in the audio engineering industry. And there are solutions.

There's a whole range of products out there for sound-proofing against electronic hums and whines of exactly the sort we're experiencing here. I looked into some of the simpler schemes and they involve wood and cellulose baffling. Long story short, paper towel is your friend.

I wrapped the Crucial SSD in about four layers of paper towel, (the thick, expensive kind), and the sound was deadened by about 80% or more. Good.

I figured a heat sink ought to be included, and I used a narrow strip of tinfoil, (about as wide as the drive and twice as long), used a bit of tape to secure it to the top of the SSD drive and wrapped paper towel around the drive. The remaining tinfoil I folded back over itself so that the little bundle was silver on one side. I used a bit of electrical tape to hold it together, and squeezed it into the drive bay of my laptop, with the tinfoil facing up where it would press up against the metal bay cover. I figured that should be heat-sink enough.

I left out the drive caddy since the bundled up SSD wasn't going to be moving around with all that padding, and closed up the unit.

Now I have a whine-free SSD-enabled laptop.

Cool.

Hope that helps people!