Question Grinding sound when accessing new (very large) Hard Drive

HWright001

Distinguished
Jun 30, 2011
36
2
18,535
I just got a new WD Red Plus 14 TB Hard Drive for my external hard drive bay. I put it in, formatted it and everything went ok. However, I am noticing a louder than average grinding/clicking noise briefly when accessing the drive and also after transferring large folders to the drive (10GB+ ) The odd thing is, the drive is damn near silent during write operations. I do not notice the noise during the file/folder transfer at all. As stated, the sound is mostly coming in when I access a large folder full of files and also after I transfer a large folder full of files. What do you guys think? Should I be worried about the drive or do larger drives like this usually have some interesting sounds? I have several other (smaller) drives and none sound quite like this one after accessing the drive. The files I have transferred themselves do not seem to have any issues.
 

Ralston18

Titan
Moderator
I would worry about the drive.

That said I am not sure I understand what is happening.

When you transfer large folders/ files to the WD Red Plus you are writing to the drive.

When you transfer large large folders/from the WD Red Plus you are reading from the drive.

In any case, which ever operation causes the noise my thought is that the drive is directly faulty in some manner or becomes so once it gets warmed up/ heated up during large file transfers.

Ensure that all important data is backed up elsewhere and proven recoverable and readable.

Run WD's diagnostic software on the drive before doing a large folder/file transfer either way. Drive hopefully being "cool".

Then do a typical transfer(s) and immediate run diagnostic software again with the drive likely being "warm".

Look for reported errors and problems and compare "cool" and "warm".

Overall a noisy drive - especially with grinds and clicks - is not a good sign.

Beyond that I will defer to those using WD Red Plus drives with respect to specific "interesting sounds".
 

HWright001

Distinguished
Jun 30, 2011
36
2
18,535
I would worry about the drive.

That said I am not sure I understand what is happening.

When you transfer large folders/ files to the WD Red Plus you are writing to the drive.

When you transfer large large folders/from the WD Red Plus you are reading from the drive.

In any case, which ever operation causes the noise my thought is that the drive is directly faulty in some manner or becomes so once it gets warmed up/ heated up during large file transfers.

Ensure that all important data is backed up elsewhere and proven recoverable and readable.

Run WD's diagnostic software on the drive before doing a large folder/file transfer either way. Drive hopefully being "cool".

Then do a typical transfer(s) and immediate run diagnostic software again with the drive likely being "warm".

Look for reported errors and problems and compare "cool" and "warm".

Overall a noisy drive - especially with grinds and clicks - is not a good sign.

Beyond that I will defer to those using WD Red Plus drives with respect to specific "interesting sounds".

The situation is indeed a bit strange and hard to explain. The sound is not coming from the drive on either read or write operations. It happening mostly during 'idle' time after a read or write operation has occurred or just plain nothing going on. I'm not taking any chances and think I am going to just refund/replace. Such a pain, because 5400 RPM hard drives are really hard to get right now it seems.
 
Some drives are very near silent in small reads/writes, some you can hear across the room during a batch of long reads/writes spread around the drive's assorted platters....

I'm not sure I'd return it just because you can 'hear it' if it otherwise is performing fine, but no errors shown in CrystalDiskInfo, no overly long waits for reads, etc...

(I'd guess if the replacement model does the same thing, at least then you could semi-comfortably assume it's likely normal after all..)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ralston18

HWright001

Distinguished
Jun 30, 2011
36
2
18,535
(I'd guess if the replacement model does the same thing, at least then you could semi-comfortably assume it's likely normal after all..)

I just received the replacement drive and it's making the exact same noise during the exact same timeframes. (Silent during read/write and grinding sound occasionally during idle.) I guess it's safe to assume it's just the nature of the drive's model?