Sky+ whining noise

[peeveen]

Got Sky+ in just before Xmas. Within half an hour, I become acutely aware of an extremely high-pitched dog-whistle noise that it was emitting. It is intermittent, cutting out and coming back every few seconds, at various volumes. After a google, it seems I'm not alone, and most people seem to reckon it's the "bearings" in the HDD, so I've phoned Sky bloke to come back and have a look at it. He's coming out on Tuesday, but told me that it was "probably the fan". I'm no stranger to noisy devices (I own a 360), but I can't abide this ... it's like a needle into my brain.

I get the feeling he's going to try to tell me that I'll just have to put up with it, so I wanted to ask here whether anyone else with Sky+ gets this problem.

[kernow]

I've noticed mine is pretty damn noisy too, every so often while in standby you can hear it reboot too, I just think they are noisy by default really.

[VR46]

Our V+ box is quite quiet on the whole but sometimes when accessing the hard-drive it can make a right old racket. No annoying whistling sounds or anything though.

[peeveen]

I don't mind a clicky HDD now and then, or a constant hum from a fan or something, but this on/off whining is like some kind of Guantanamo torture device.

[chopemon]

Mine makes various working sounds while it is on and for a little bit after it is turned off but no high pitched whining.

[egparadigm]

We have Sky+ - you definitely know when it's on (you can hear it), but there's no whining noise. I would suspect it's just the particular make of Sky+ box.

[anephric]

I've swapped several different CE HDDs in and out of my Pace Sky+ box, and the noise that the Seagate drives emit (which get stuck in the Amstrad boxes, I think, and maybe the Thomsons) are godawful loud. Whiny, and clicky like a bag of marbles. The acoustic management, or what's left of it after Seagate stripped it out, is awful in those drives.

[davidcotton]

I had the same problem (amstrad box) as the original poster. Had to have the tv up about half way to cover it up, and people could hear the whine outside the room with the door closed sometimes. Sods law by the time the sky "engineers" had come round it had settled down quite a bit but they still quite happily swopped it for a pace box, since then its been fine and dandy (this was a few years ago that I had it installed).

[concretesnail]

iv e just had my sky+ box changed as my last on failed. the one that died was whisper quiet but the new one makes a right din. if you listen you can hear it through background tv sound. the odd thing is that when i asked about it the guy offered to swap it but they all make the noise.

[anephric]

My Pace box is an ancient V1 and the drive in that is a Maxtor, and it's dead quiet compared to the boxes my mates have, even the Pace V3s. What you really want is to stick in something like a Samsung Spinpoint CE and then use a fan controller to sort out the fan noise (even if you stick in a CE drive, sometimes the fans have a conniption and stay on all the time).