What is the crunchy sound you are hearing when a hard drive is reading and writing data?

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What is the crunchy sound you are hearing when a hard drive is reading and writing data?

In: Technology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Inside a hard drive specifically (hdd not ssd), is a little disc, beneath an arm kinda like a record player if you think about it.

So when something says that it’s writing, that information is being recorded on tiny moving parts (correct me if someone knows this is wrong, it’s just how I was taught). This is what makes the scratchy noise.

This is also why hdds are much more common to fault, as opposed to solid state drives (ssd) that have no moving parts

Anonymous 0 Comments

Take a look at this diagram of a hard drive. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/computers/tips-and-solutions/anatomy-hard-drive

The hard drive consists of spinning metal platters, a read head that overs over those platters and an arm that moves the head into position.

The crunching sound you’re hearing is the arm moving the read head into various positions very quickly. That’s why you hear it more when doing lots of small reads or writes. If you’re reading or writing data sequentially then the arm doesn’t have to move so much and you don’t hear the sound.