Hard drive makes a slight vibration...

[Sarg1010]

I just got a new WD Black 2 TB hard drive about a month and a half ago, and it's been doing fine, up until about two weeks or so ago. Upon startup, it'll start making this slight vibration tic every few seconds (about 5-6 second intervals). It's a pretty strong, noticeable vibration, as I can feel it going through my desk. I've usually just started up a game to make the disk start spinning, in hopes of getting it to stop, and that usually works, but it's getting annoying now...

I'm hoping it's just an annoying inconvenience and not something serious... Help?

 

[Saga Lout]

If nothing else, it's a warning sign to rescue or copy all your data from it to an external place of safety. This shouldn't make a difference but is it fixed firmly and either perfectly horizontal or vertical?

Hopefully, one of our Guest W.D. representative will be along soon.

 

[urbanrider]

This is generally not a good sign. If you can you should back up the data on the drive.

Western Digital makes a disk utility that can test the disk and see if its failing…if you’re on windows I think this is the one you want.
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=810&sid=3&lang=en

Follow the instructions on the page and run a Quick Test and an Extended Test (if nothing shows up in the first one). If there’s an issue you should get it replaced under warranty (I highly recommend the expedited RMA, they will send you the new disk first so you can transfer your data with no down time then you return the faulty disk)

If nothing shows up…well that’s when it gets tricky. I’d recommend installing a disk monitoring software that’ll notify you if things start getting worse. I use CrystalDiskInfo, but there are others out there as well.

 

[g90814]

Good think about WD Black drives, they have a 5 year warranty.

Check it out with the utility suggested, and get it replaced if it's faulty.

 

[Sarg1010]

Thank you for the replies. I'll try that out, and hopefully it's fine. I did the quick test, and am starting the extended test now (it'll be about three or so hours until it's finished.) When the disk spun up upon starting the test, it definitely didn't sound good (sounded like a lot of grinding, but I've never really heard the disk spin up very quickly before, so maybe that's just how it sounds all of the time...?) We shall see.

Also, it's fixed horizontally in a Rosewill THOR case.

 

[Sarg1010]

Well the tests didn't say anything was wrong. :\ Maybe something is just off balance inside of it?

Another thing I should mention is that it only has a few steam games on it (other HDD got full), and it goes away (for at least a few hours) whenever I start up one of the games.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey, Sarg1010!

I'm very sorry to hear about your issues with the WD Black.
The other guys are right, this is not a good sign. This clicking/vibration might be an indication of a physical damage on the drive.
I strongly recommend you to contact our tech support and send out an RMA request to get a replacement HDD.
This must pretty annoying, so I don't think you should put up with it.
You can get in touch with the WD tech support either by phone or by e-mail: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=J8UBtS
Here are some other useful links that can shed some light on the procedure:
How to RMA your product: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=GZoiXm
WD RMA policy, turnaround time, packing instructions, shipping addresses and services: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=FICFtH

Hope this helps! Keep me posted if you have any questions!
P.S. Thank you for the reference, @Saga Lout!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Saga Lout]

You're welcome and it's nice to see a manufacturer so readily accept responsibility. Matter of interest, are the purchaser's systemn and data safe when the disk is RMAd and would it be cloned to the replacement?

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hello again, Saga Lout!

Unfortunately, no, Western Digital does not perform data recovery on hard drives.
This is exactly why we advise customers to always keep backups of their data on several separate locations.
In case they don't have that, they need to send their drive to a professional data recovery company first, before shipping the product to us for RMA. Here's a link from WD's knowledge base that explains this policy of ours: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=B0ud4V

SuperSoph_WD