Since the 1Tb (Original) Hard Drive in my iMac was getting rather full and my computer was getting slower and slower as a result, I decided to replace it with a nice new 3Tb one rather than face the laborious process of doing the "weeding", ie, painstakingly deciding what to discard, a process which I have never found to be worth the time required for it, especially give the current price of hard drives.
I bought a 3Tb Seagate Baracuda from Austin Computers and created a bootable clone of my existing internal drive, then took the computer and new drive to MacWorx in Joondalup. They swapped the drive over with a minimum of fuss in about half-an-hour. They had the computer running for me when I returned to pick it up and everything seemed to be fine. When I got it home and had it running for a little while, I noticed that the fan was running flat out and was very loud. Following a little research on the net, I discovered that since about 2009, Apple has replaced the external Hard Drive temperature sensor with a proprietary firmware and uses the drive's internal sensor. Third party replacement drives do not contain the firmware to deliver temperature data on the temperature sensor cable, so because the Mac does not receive the right signal from the hard drive it runs the fan at full speed to "compensate". The normal idling speed of the fan is around 1,100 rpm. iStat Menus showed the fan speed to be around 5600 rpm, and the noise was quite disturbing. A popular solution was a little piece of software called HDD Fan Control (http://www.hddfancontrol.com), which reads the drive's internal temperature using he SMART protocol and adjusts the fan speed correctly. It installs a System Preference panel and runs quite happily in the background. I baulked a little at the price, but they offered a free download which promised an hour of peace, so I went ahead and downloaded it. The effect was immediate. As soon as I finished installing it the noise stopped. I was so grateful I immediately sent payment. At a little over $AU40.00 I still think the price is a bit steep, but the feeling of relief from the fan noise was worth it. This is software that truly does what it promises, and I have gone into this in some detail for those who are thinking of replacing their internal hard drive with a larger mechanical drive. If you get Apple themselves to do it there will be be no problem since their replacement drive will have the right firmware, but if you choose to supply your own drive then you're probably going to need something like HDD Fan Control. Peter Hinchliffe Apwin Computer Services FileMaker Pro Solutions Developer Perth, Western Australia Phone (618) 9332 6482 Mob 0403 046 948 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Mac because I prefer it -- Windows because I have to. -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>
