Seagate Expansion external HDD power supply making a very faint alarm sound

I’ve got a fairly new 14tb Seagate Expansion. It works fine, and I’ve been using it for a month and a bit.

I don’t know how long it’s been doing this, but the power supply is making a very faint alarm sound. The power supply is plugged into a Belkin surge protector powered on and with the “protected” status light lit, and it is plugged into an outlet. The HDD is currently not plugged in to a computer.

It’s not a beep or electricity. It’s a distinct weewooweewoo. I couldn’t even determine the source until I pressed my ear against it.

Googling just points me towards typical “my HDD is making a sound, how long do I have until it dies”, but nothing pointed me to the alarm sound from the power supply.

I’ll check again if it makes the alarm in other conditions, but in the meanwhile, I was hoping someone here might know something.

Thanks in advance!

synapse1278,
@synapse1278@lemmy.world avatar

You say the sound comes from the power supply and the HDD is not plugged into the computer. My diagnistic: the power-supply makes a noise when it operates at very low load (almost 0mA of current), it is probaly making the cyclic noise because of some blinking LED or another very small variation of the loaf somewhere. This is a very common symptom of cheap power-supplies, but it doesn’t necessarly mean it isn’t working normally, just an annoyance.

Appoxo,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

My monitor status LED makes a faint beeping sound when in standby.
Also the panel makes an audible whine when the content changes to a specific amount of white.

As another user already said: Probably low quality electronics.

notthebees,

It’s probably just coil whine.

ArbiterXero,

It’s not an intentional noise, it’ll be a shitty bridge rectifier.

It’s just a cheap shitty power supply.

SheeEttin,

Can you record the sound? I’ve never heard of a power supply having any kind of noisemaker. It’s probably just electrical interference or coil whine or something, where the waveform happens to produce that periodic sound. (You might even look around and find a nearby device changing its power draw with the same periodicity.)

otp,

Yeah, interesting. I’ll see if I can record it tomorrow!

scottmeme,

Check the SMART data with crystaldiskinfo

otp,

Will do, thanks. Did lots of thorough checks when I got it, so I didn’t expect there to be any issues now.

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