PX716a - Cat Meow Sounds - what gives?

A while back I thought I read of strange cat meow sounds coming from this drive. It seemed that this was limited to the initial 1.00 & 1.01 revisions. I purchased my drive a while later (in february) and ended up with a rev 1.03.
Long story short, I am now getting such sounds coming from my drive. It happens quite randomly and often while the drive is empty and resting (ie. no drive searching going on)

Am I in store for a dead drive or is this simply something I have to live with? Any known fixes?

Thanks.

...must resist...
....must resist...

Argh, I can't hold on much longer....erk...

Your drive is haunted!!!

Damn, it just spilled out, sorry...

OK, seriously ... are you absolutely sure it's the PX716? I've heard both power supply fans and CPU fans making every noise from screeching to groaning and every sound in between. This behaviour can start when a PC is less than a year old, particularly when the case is open a lot or has open holes in the card slot area. Dust gets inside and slowly fouls the fan bearings.

An ODD isn't actually doing anything at all, nothing moving inside, when there's no disc inserted. All it's doing is waiting for commands via the ASPI layer or for your to press the eject button. You could test this theory by removing the PX716 and listening for the same sounds.

Please report back because I think this one's a first!

Cat Meow Sound - A common complaint from owners of Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 SATA harddrives, caused when the drive does its self-calibration adjustments or some such operation.

I was just thinking the same. I can't say my T7K250s do this (they are 'zalmanned'), but the IBM/HGST gxp180-series I used certainly do this thermo-self-calibration at least once a day. Nice 'mew' indeed.

Now it is making sense. I now have 2 Hitachi/IBM drives in my system. The original one is in a "Silent Drive" black box so I can't hear what it's doing. Just about 1 week ago I added an IBM but this IBM is installed in a external case w/ USB connection. It must be the culprit. I confirmed this by turning off the external HD and walla! the ghost is gone!

You guys have successfully exorcised my Plextor and revealed the real ghost, IBM!

Thanks for the help

Just in case: Place a dead mouse or a bird in front of your computer. Might be worth a try.

Hitachi now, methinks.

Glad to hear the problem is identified. The Hitachi mewling is a harmless symptom of the drive doing its thing. Your patience may vary. A google on "Hitachi cat meow" may yield a workaround.

Here's an email someone got in response to their Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 80Gb SATA making a meowing sound every 10 mins and a load/unload sound every 24 hrs:

"Regarding your enquiry relating to the brief sound that emanates from our
drives.

I suspect that the occasional 'sound' you are hearing is the Idle Time
Function that has been introduced on our latest drive designs as a
reliability enhancement. You need not be alarmed by this,

This "sound" is due to a brief but deliberate head arm movement every so
often. This has been added to maximise the reliability of our disk drive
products.

This function is invoked if an extended period of inactivity is detected,
so has no impact on active performance. [It is bad to leave the heads
hovering over the same data track unnecessarily].

Even after a period of time of activity the Idle Time Function can be
implemented as the Idle Time Function is a cumulative function.

The level of sound emitted may vary from one drive to another and as such
this should not give rise to concern or be considered an impending failure.

Please be assured that this drive design is one of the quietest drives, at
this data density, in the industry.

I trust this information will be of use and help you to resolve your
problem.


Regards

Catrin Schoening

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies"

Bad Pussy Cat!

Yeah, but wasn't this series of HDs also known as "IBM DEATHstars"? I believe there was also a class-action lawsuit about them.

No, that was the 75gxp model: http://www.ibmdeskstar75gxplitigation.com/
There was a period where they really had quality problems. I think the 60gxp series was affected too. At least i had a IC35L040AVER07 die on me with similar symptoms to the deathstar

Fortunately recent HGST stuff is A-OK.

Right, thanks for the correction. It's probably not logical, but when it comes to nasty hardware failures, I'm a once-bitten-twice-shy-to-buy consumer. Did you get that, Maxtor?

RMA quick!

Missing a cat lately!

This is all kind of greek to me, but I don't own a Hitachi anything as far as I know, and my computer still meows. I caused a complete crash, losing everything, and when we reinstalled everything, we also seemed to have reinstalled a cat. Like the first poster, the meow, which sounds VERY real by the way, is random, whether I'm working on the computer or not. It might meow 3 or four times within minutes, or once every day or two. I don't mind it meowing, as long as it's not eating up the inside of my computer. I have a Gateway, have had it for years, had our own Windows software and most things to replace the old, tho did have to reinstall some drivers from the site, and now... it meows. I wish I knew if my question was answered above, but I don't recognize anything anyone is saying. Oh woe. I'm really not stupid, just am not familiar with the components you're talking about... can someone clarify? Thanks

The talking is about hard disk drives manufactured by Hitachi (formerly IBM) that are causing such sounds in normal operation.

Could one of the fans inside your machine have contact with one of the leads?