HARDDRIVE HUMMING NOISE

P_P

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Jan 15, 2011
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18,510
Hi:

I have a Western Digital Cavier green 1 TB hard drive. I notice this very light thumping sound when it spins, during download of files to this drive , playing a media file from this drive, etc. The sound is a soft thump, it is not a sharp click or clunk sound, it is a soft (barely hear it ) thumping sound (not a continuous sound but occurs every 5, 6 seconds , cyclic).

Have checked the harddrive mountings, secure and stable. Can feel the thumping inside the hard drive. Is not a resonant sound with fans etc, it is from the inside of the harddrive.
 

KBentley57

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Nov 13, 2008
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have you ran checkdisk on it?

In the command prompt, (as administrator) use this command:

chkdsk (drive letter): /B

It will scan the drive for bad sectors and what not. Also try the diagnostic tool form WD: Data Life Guard. It can be found here:

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=608&sid=3&lang=en

It has a quick test, extended test, and can be used to write a drive over with zeros.

The quick test will take only a few minutes if the drive is fine, the long test will take somewhere on the order of 3~4 hours, and writing a drive with zeros will take about 3 hours as well.

If it passes chkdsk with no bad sectors, the quick and extended tests from data life guard, then you can be sure your hard drive is fine.
 

P_P

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Jan 15, 2011
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Hi, thanks for the reply.

I have not used chkdsk , but used the disk diagnostics utility from Western Digital site. It passed the quick test twice; have not done any extended test. I am still downloading files to this hard drive, no problem so far. I am just not comfortable with the noise, is it a syndrome of a failing drive?? I just started to use this new drive recently though I got it for a while.

I also looked through the list of acceptable and failing drive noises from Western Digital site, the list does not say anything about the noise that I am experiencing.