Apparently me and one other person online have this problem, but if anyone else experiences their PS5's disc drive making a persistent, incredibly high pitched, loud whining noise: the only thing you can do is contact Sony and ask for a repair.

Just trying to save y'all a few hours I spent trying to troubleshoot what isn't even a known-issue at this moment.

Update: And just like that...it vanished...I have never been more tense about good news. I left the thing in "Rest" mode for a few hours and came back to glorious silence, I don't know if that's what fixed it, if something just slid into place, or if it reacted badly to my trying to still use it while it downloaded all of my PS4's data. I'll update again if anything changes.

Good to know. Going by the earlier teardown video that looks like an easy replacement. Hopefully you'll get a quick RMA

Not trying to commandeer the thread, but just making sure it's not the same problem:

Mine doesn't whine per se, but it does periodically kick into overdrive seemingly randomly... Just sometimes mid game, it starts to sound like a launch ps4 as the disc just starts spinning like crazy.... That's not the same though right? Does yours sound more like a coil whine or something?

@noboners: By ALL means! Here's what would happen exactly: I'd turn the thing on and it'd be completely silent. I'd start a game up, and it would stay silent until the MOMENT I could control the game in a menu, then abruptly a high-pitched whine (audible from across the room, not one of these "If I shove my mic directly into the system, you can TOTALLY hear it) would start. It would end THE MOMENT I went to the PSN top menu. It didn't spin up or down, it started instantly and stopped instantly.

As I updated above: it also resolved completely without explanation. Here's to hoping it doesn't come back.

Sure it was the disc drive? Coil whine is pretty common on the PC, at least with graphics cards. Mine whines like crazy if I'm in a game that does not cap the framerate for menu-stuff. As far as I can tell, it's annoying, but does not necessarily signify any damaged parts.

So your issue could be something like that, but in your case it seems to whine as soon as there is any load on the gpu.

But hey, if it solved itself and it does not return, good for you. I'm still trying to get a PS5, but due to the hillarious preorder situation and bots buying everything, I guess I'll wait.

The way it's been described makes it sound like a software fix could've sorted it. If the drive wasn't spinning, it probably wasn't down to the mechanics of the drive.

@shindig:I thought this might be it, but at that point I figured tech support would tell me it was a known issue and they were working on a fix.

@superfriend:I got SO VERY lucky, I hit "refresh" on Amazon and just-so-happened to grab one. Good luck, and thanks. I'm going to post someone who had the EXACT same problem's video so that the "whine" can be properly heard.

Video of the exact noise in question (not mine, but someone who had the same problem)

(Noise begins at 00:23)

@undeadpool: yikes dude that's brutal.

Yeah, that's a system beep rather than the drive spin.

Yeah, I knew after tuning out the sound of my PS4 trying to achieve VTOL for so many years that this was something else entirely.

So just an OS glitch?? I thought as well that it sounded like old PC noises before things like Sound Blaster and other audio hardware/software were standardized.