Hard disk noise under linux gets smaller when partitioned

I just bought a Toshiba X300 8TB 7500r hard disk.

At first I used the whole disk as a partition, the noise is really intolerable.

Then I tried to use a small partition of 1TB or 2TB, the noise is much smaller.

But 4TB still produces a large noise.

Can anybody give me some hint? Why partition size affects noise level?

Thank you very much!

Update:

A more recent test shows that, the partition size may not be the key reason for the noise.

The noise is generated when the ext4 performs [ext4lazyinit] at a speed of 5MB/s.

After I remount the disk with init_itable=0 option, the [ext4lazyinit] can perform at a speed about 100MB/s, the noise is gone!

Answer

The linux default filesystem, ext4, spreads files as far apart as it can to help against fragmentation (so you don't need to defragment so often). The side effect is that your HDD heads will travel a lot. You could try another file system like exFAT if that's acceptable.

For more information, see Do ext4 filesystems need to be defragmented?