WD Caviar Black noisy?

Christopher said:

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

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

Christopher said:

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