WD Caviar Black noisy?

[Christopher]

I purchased two WD Caviar Black drives a few months ago, at the time I had a 32-Bit version of Windows 7 (7100) installed, and the machine was quieter than quiet.

Since installing my 64-Bit RTM it seems like the drives "clicks" at lot now when it is "working" ... what could cause that? I know that I am not crazy.

What diagnostic tools can I use to determine if the drive is still stable etc?

I am very tech savvy but have never really paid close attention to storage until recently.

 

[DarkXeno]

I would head to WD website and pull down their daig tools for the drive.
It would be the best place to start looking at the manufactors website.

 

[Christopher]

I was on their site, but I didn't see it in the downloads section.

 

[Christopher]

Found it, nevermind.

 

[SquonkSC]

I purchased two WD Caviar Black drives a few months ago, at the time I had a 32-Bit version of Windows 7 (7100) installed, and the machine was quieter than quiet.

Since installing my 64-Bit RTM it seems like the drives "clicks" at lot now when it is "working" ... what could cause that? I know that I am not crazy.

What diagnostic tools can I use to determine if the drive is still stable etc?

I am very tech savvy but have never really paid close attention to storage until recently.

Hi Christopher.

I have many years experience with harddrive failures.

I have grown very familiar with the different sounds they make and what it means.

Clicks are a bad sign.
They are a sign the drive is going fail completely soon.

The servo is misdirecting the arm that holds the head,
and it quite violently bangs into the landing zone.
A head crash is imminent.

Make sure you backup your files to another disk a.s.a.p. !

Luckily you still have warranty on the disk.
Go to your supplier and tell him what's going on.
If they know their business they will either send the drive away and give you a new, or refurbished one.

If they send you home telling you shouldn't worry,
you can just keep using the drive until it fails.
(just make sure you duplicate any files on there to another drive.)

At least you warned them in an early stage, and they won't be able to write it of as your own fault.

Good luck

 

[Antman]

Diagnostic complete. Clicks are very, very bad. RMA the drive.

 

[Christopher]

Alright, what does a "click" consist of? I ask because I am not sure if it is just normal hard drive activity or excessive noise. Whenever my hard drives one it makes noise that I can hear from sitting 6ft away if I am paying attention.

I have everything backed-up on an external drive, so no worry there.

I ran the WD diagnostics on the drive it passed. I then did a complete chkdsk in Windows for the drive as well as fixing errors if there were any. As far as I can see it reports thing funny.

Maybe I am being picky? I could have sworn the drive was much quieter before.

 

[SquonkSC]

Alright, what does a "click" consist of? I ask because I am not sure if it is just normal hard drive activity or excessive noise. Whenever my hard drives one it makes noise that I can hear from sitting 6ft away if I am paying attention.

I have everything backed-up on an external drive, so no worry there.

I ran the WD diagnostics on the drive it passed. I then did a complete chkdsk in Windows for the drive as well as fixing errors if there were any. As far as I can see it reports thing funny.

Maybe I am being picky? I could have sworn the drive was much quieter before.

Well, ofcourse I can't hear what you hear, but a disk should rattle and hum a little, but clicks are bad like I explained in my previous post.

Not finding errors is logical, because there is not yet any thing wrong with the platters surface.

It's the servo controller that is not functioning properly, which will inevitably lead to a head crash one day.

When this will be is hard to predict.
Could take a few months, could be tomorrow.

Good luck

 

[Christopher]

Ok, I will RMA it before it is "too late." Thanks a lot!

Looks like it's time for SSD, now I have an excuse!

 

[Corpsecrank]

Some WD drives make a nice grind when they read and write. Both of my raptor x drives have been loud during activity since I bought them however my caviar blue sitting right in front of my keyboard on this desk plugged in using a kit to convert sata to usb is so quiet that I never even notice it's on.

I would think that the caviar blue and caviar black are pretty similar and if I can have one sitting right in front of me on my desk and not even notice it then your drive might actually have an issue.

I also have no faith in the caviar line either. I have noticed a steady decline in the quality of that particular line over the last couple of years. Seems like they are more focused on trying to sell us the more extreme lines like the raptors then to actually provide an affordable storage solution.

 

[poin2]

The Caviar Blacks aren't known for their utter silence and reviews have commented on that.

If you're downloading or something and you're hearing it writing perhaps once every second, that's normal. For that matter it could be doing the search indexing that's normal after fresh installs (assuming you didn't disable it).

Sort of depends on if you're truly hearing "clicking" or just the normal writing / activity sound.

Don't know that an immediate RMA is necessary. You might give it another day or two and see if it's indeed something like search indexing that just needs to die down.

 

[SquonkSC]

WD's are noisy, although the latest models show some improvement.

But no matter how much noise it makes, clicks are a bad sign.
They are not normal operating sounds.

Like I stated, it might run for months with the clicks getting more frequent,
although it's more likely to end very soon.

Good luck

 

[Christopher]

I suppose that it is closer to a grind noise, rather than a definitive "click."

Like normal, or at least I think normal, HD grind noise ... I am just surprised because I didn't here it before. Perhaps it is my indexing, I do recall having it disabled before, but I haven't on this system ... could that be the cause???

 

[SquonkSC]

I suppose that it is closer to a grind noise, rather than a definitive "click."

Like normal, or at least I think normal, HD grind noise ... I am just surprised because I didn't here it before. Perhaps it is my indexing, I do recall having it disabled before, but I haven't on this system ... could that be the cause???

Nope.

It is like it is. Clicks don't belong to normal operation sounds.

Grinding, rattling, purring like a kitten, even a high pitch tone are all common sounds.
(although not all disks make all these mentioned sounds)

The sounds that tell you the disk is in trouble are:

clicks: head-arm controller malfunctions briefly.
By it's self not a problem, but it briefly loses control of the arm and smashes it into the left side of the disk, which eventually will lead to damage to the arm.
A twist or bend of a few microns is enough to cause a head crash.

A pattern of repetitive little burst of purring noise:
Normally the purring is random and continues during drive operation.
When you detect a pattern, that's bad news.
It means there are a cluster of bad sectors, and they are in a place the drive wants to access.
The drive is trying to read it over and over again.
If you are lucky they will be marked as bad, and not accessed again.
But you should realize that if the sectors are physically damaged there might be surface particles flying around, that when they come in contact with the head will ultimately lead to disaster.


Awful squeak, like nails on a blackboard:
This tells you particles indeed have come in contact with the head and it is scratching your disk.
More and more particles are scraped off the surface.
When this happens it's often to late to rescue all the data.
Don't shutdown the PC!! , and try to save what you can to another disk.

The reason you shouldn't boot when this happens, is that the damage might be at some sectors that contain files necessary to boot the OS.

I will try to create the different sounds and make a tutorial about this.

Good luck.

 

[Christopher]

Thanks very much!

+1

 

[Icarus]

I've been having my 1TB WD Cavair Black making some horrible noises too.
It sounds like a seek gone bad. Med-Higher pitch squelching especially when booting the OS. It lasts 5-10 seconds at times, usually about 3-7 sec. Sometimes with lower pitched light clicks at the end of the 'squelch.' I can easily hear these noises sitting 5ft from the computer, especially the squelching noise. Out of the 10 or so HDDs I've used in the past 5-6 years, I've never heard one this loud (seeks) nor have one make these kind of noises (though, I've heard some awful noises when I dropped my laptop once and had to replace the HDD in it )
I've contacted WD about it and their 1.17 diag doesn't work on Win7 64bit (code 11 about the sata cable.) I put the drive in an xp computer and it passed all tests fine. I didn't have it in the other computer real long, but it did seem quieter in it. I put it back in and it was fine for a few days or so, but now it's back making the noises.
WD have said to RMA the drive to exclude it as a possibilty. I'm in the process of that and just waiting for the new one in hopes it works...

I have a feeling its either the Win 7 64bit OS thats causing this or the motherboard interface perhaps (P55 here,) causing this, not the drive itself though?