Toshiba HDDs idle noise

Forums › Desktop computing › Toshiba HDDs idle noise

xpd

Geek of Coastguard
14115 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 4574

Retired Mod

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#323434 2-Dec-2025 10:59

I stripped some Dell labelled (Toshiba) SATA drives from an old server, and threw them into my home "server" for storage.

They're mostly working fine but I have noticed that if the server is effectively "idle", that some/all the drives start spinning up and sounding like they're doing massive copy jobs. The second I RDP into that box, they stop.

Is there some idle cache thing going on with these drives ? :)

XPD / Gavin

LinkTree

gehenna

8667 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 3883

Moderator

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#3439469 2-Dec-2025 11:03

Depends on your server, how it's set up, what the file system is, how it handles caching, etc etc. Lots of variables.

xpd

Geek of Coastguard
14115 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 4574

Retired Mod

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#3439481 2-Dec-2025 11:42

gehenna:

Depends on your server, how it's set up, what the file system is, how it handles caching, etc etc. Lots of variables.

Its just an old i5 desktop with Windows 10 :)

The previous drives didnt act like this.

These are enterprise drives tho, which I know generally are a bit noisier than consumer HDD's, but its really odd, not heard drives act like this before, even enterprise ones Ive had in the past :)

HDSentinel isn't reporting any issues with them, so it could end up being something I have to live with if I want to keep with free drives :D

XPD / Gavin

LinkTree

cddt

1964 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1903

#3439505 2-Dec-2025 13:11

I would be inclined to blame Windows in this case. Especially since it stops as soon as you RDP in.

My referral links: BigPipe | Mercury