[SOLVED] HDD Beeping (2 drives)

[historymarche]

Right, it is finally time for me to take action. Namely, the HDDs on my workstation "beep" in a pattern, as if it's some kind of an alert. It's not an actual "beeping" sound, like it would be from a speaker, but I can't describe it. Both drives are in a HD Dock, not inside the PC case itself, so there's no question that the sound is coming from the drives.

Here's the exact recording of it:

View: https://youtu.be/PZPCUAunvxg


Does anyone have a clue what's going on? What's with the beeping?

More about the symptoms

• Beeping didn't happen upon purchasing the drives (which was in February 2019). It started happening with regular ocurrence about 2 months ago.
• Beeps happen only when the HDD is idle. But when it's doing something consistently, read/write, the beeping stops and only the usual sound of the HDD "doing its' thing" can be heard.
• Sometimes individual beeps are longer, but they're usually in a pattern of equally long beeps, followed by equally long pauses between beeps.
• Since both HDDs are in the HD DOCK, there is no question that the sound is coming from the drives.
• I've tried plugging just one in the dock (since the other is a backup), but the same thing happens.
• Both drives beep, either when they're both in the dock or solo. However, when both are in the dock only one would beep (I think?)
• Beeping doesn't happen always. Sometimes I would turn my PC on and work for hours without any beeping, but sometimes it starts right after I turn ON the computer.
• Beeping also sometimes stops out of the blue.
• Turning off the HD Dock or unplugging the drive and leaving it to "cool off" a bit tends to fix the beeping for either a short while or a bit longer.
• The drives don't see too hot. I've owned a small chain of net gaming cafes in the past and have frequently dealt with hardware; and my beeping drives are not any hotter than the PCs that used to run 24/7 in any of my cafes.
• For instance, today I woke up and started working at 4:30AM, the beeping started around 6:00AM without any heavy prior workload (I mostly replied to emails, and handled Word documents, invoices, research texts, etc.), and the beeping lasted until 12:30PM, at which point it just stopped out of the blue - thing to remember, the beeping happens while the HDD is on idle. But under load the HDD behaves normally, no clicking, no beeping, no nothing but the usual HDD noise of read/write.
• A few times (under 10) over the past year it happened that the HD Dock is "unplugged", just like when you unplug a USB drive and plug it back in, and the PC "finds a drive". Well the same thing happens here, during normal work the drives went offline and back online. Note, this happened less than 10 times total.
• There is no other noise ever happening. The drives either work normally, or there is this beeping sound. Performance-wise they work as advertised, no hiccups.
• Both drives are mainly used for storage of assets (they're exact duplicates, one is the main storage drive, the other is a backup). They're not used intensively. Most of the heavy lifting is done by the M.2 drives (see below). I do animation and some heavy graphics, all of which is handled by the M.2 drives.
• I do backups manually every day or whenever a project has progressed a lot. This is the only time when some prolonged read/write happens. I sometimes handle big files, but the cache files are never stored on the HDDs.

Key PC components:
These are the HDDs I use, they're both in the HD Dock, and my PSU. I provided links for the PSU, HDDs, and HD Dock, though the PSU link is sort of redundant since the HD Dock has its' own power supply:

HDD1 - Western Digital Red PRO 8TB (model WD8003FFBX) NAS Drive https://shop.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-red-pro-sata-hdd#WD8003FFBX
HDD2 - Western Digital Red PRO 8TB (model WD8003FFBX) NAS Drive https://shop.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-red-pro-sata-hdd#WD8003FFBX
HD DOCK - LC Dock U3-4B https://www.lc-power.com/en/product/accessories/hdd-docking-station/lc-dock-u3-4b/
PSU - Cooler Master V1200 (1200W) http://us.coolermaster.com/product/Detail/powersupply/v-series-psu/v1200.html

Both of the drives are in the HD Dock, either together or separately, and I've tried all 4 slots.

Rest of the PC components and OS:
Case - Cooler master H500 mesh (I use its' front two big fans as intake)
CPU - i9 9900k
CPU Cooling - NZXT Kraken x72 (radiator is mounted at the front as intake)
Case fans - Noctua NF-A14-PWM (on the back, as exhaust), 3 x Noctua NF-A12x25-PWM (on the top, as exhaust)
MB - Gigabyte Aorus Master Z390
RAM - 64GB TridentZ 3200mhz
GPU - 2080ti Asus ROG Strix
M.2 - Samsung 970 PRO 1TB (got 2 installed)
Operating System - Windows 10 Pro, fully updated

Should I be alarmed by the sound the drives are making? Needless to say, priceless data is stored on them, essentially my entire livelihood, should I purchase a RAID rack or try out a different HD Dock? Should I purchase another drive just to be safe and have 2 backup drives?

What other advice can you give?

Thank you in advance!

 

[Ralston18]

First ensure that you do have additional backups that are proven recoverable and readable.

Anything you do or try could cause loss of data. Or some catastrophic failure occurs.

My first thought was power but the HDD Dock does have its own external power adapter per the link you provided.

However, consider that the power adapter is faulty in some manner - heat related perhaps.

Another consideration is the power outlet serving the HDD Dock's power adapter. Is the power adapter plugged directly into a wall outlet or perhaps some power strip outlet that also serves other peripheral devices?

Change to a known stable power source (outlet) and try that. Try another HDD Dock with its own power adapter.

Key is to narrow down and eliminate possibilities.

As for RAID - unless there are specific reasons for a RAID configuration I would not do so. However, I will defer to those more knowledgeable about RAID configurations and implementation.

 

[Grobe]

From what I read, I believe this can be due to mechanical resonance. So if the hdd is made in such a way that there is a scheduled task it performs when it idle, that sound transfer to the outer case and kind of amplifies.
If that is the case, then using another HDD brand/type should diminish the sound.

Somebody that have a better understanding of the mechanic of HDD should correct me here if I thaught this wrong, but I wonder if the periodicity of the sound may be caused by a SMR drive dumping temporarly data from cache into the disk platters.

It can also be coil whine. I haven't seen the internal of the hdd enclosure, but if there is a voltage regulator inside, that can explain the sound too.
If that is the case, then you should hear the sound regarless of the HDD brand or model you put into it.

 

[historymarche]

However, consider that the power adapter is faulty in some manner - heat related perhaps.

Another consideration is the power outlet serving the HDD Dock's power adapter. Is the power adapter plugged directly into a wall outlet or perhaps some power strip outlet that also serves other peripheral devices?

Change to a known stable power source (outlet) and try that.

Try another HDD Dock with its own power adapter.

Key is to narrow down and eliminate possibilities.

Power source should be OK, the workstation, along with key peripherals, is hooked onto a 8 x socket APC thingy that had a fancy price tag, with stuff like surge protection, checking if all of the sockets have enough power coming to them, etc.
That said, I hear ya. Will try to hook up the HD Dock directly to a wall socket.

Definitely will try another HDD Dock. But, as of writing my original post earlier today (roughly 5 hours ago), the hard drive hasn't beeped once. Go figure...

From what I read, I believe this can be due to mechanical resonance. So if the hdd is made in such a way that there is a scheduled task it performs when it idle, that sound transfer to the outer case and kind of amplifies.
If that is the case, then using another HDD brand/type should diminish the sound.

Holy s**t! I checked the linked you provided, that's some terrifying info. Perhaps I should've mentioned that the HDD Dock is designed to have the Hard Drives stand upright. So basically they're plugged in from the top, with the connectors facing downwards.
I've read in a thousand places that the position of the more modern drives won't affect their performance and mileage, but could it be that because they stand upright, instead of horizontally, that they might've been damaged?

Somebody that have a better understanding of the mechanic of HDD should correct me here if I thaught this wrong, but I wonder if the periodicity of the sound may be caused by a SMR drive dumping temporarly data from cache into the disk platters.

As mentioned just above in the answer to Ralston18, the drive hasn't made a beeping sound in the past 5 hours. It's funny though that, after turn on the PC, it beeped for 5-7 hours when idle and then stopped, and it's been 5 hours since the beeping. Are these NAS drives somehow different when it comes to dumping temp data?
Another reason for asking this is that both HDDs beep, then go quiet. I mean, lighting doesn't strike twice? Could it be working as intented?

It can also be coil whine. I haven't seen the internal of the hdd enclosure, but if there is a voltage regulator inside, that can explain the sound too.
If that is the case, then you should hear the sound regarless of the HDD brand or model you put into it.

Hm, I have an old 1.5TB Samsung drive, but I haven't used it enough to test for beeping or weird sounds.

 

[Grobe]

As mentioned just above in the answer to Ralston18, the drive hasn't made a beeping sound in the past 5 hours. It's funny though that, after turn on the PC, it beeped for 5-7 hours when idle and then stopped, and it's been 5 hours since the beeping. Are these NAS drives somehow different when it comes to dumping temp data?
Another reason for asking this is that both HDDs beep, then go quiet. I mean, lighting doesn't strike twice? Could it be working as intented?

I think the information you ask for here is only known by the manufacturer of the HDD, possible the manufacturer of the HDD enclosure too unless the OS is in direct control of each HDD.

 

[Ralston18]

Going back to "two months ago":

Noted that you are running Windows 10 Pro.

Take a look in Task Scheduler to see if there are any drive related "tasks". It may be difficult to identify everything that is going on within Task Scheduler per se but there is no harm in looking and researching anything that is not identifiable.

You might also find some error codes, warnings, or perhaps informational events via Reliability History.

Look for any entries that correspond with the beeps starting or stopping.

No need to take any immediate actions: just look and read.

Remember that you can right-click on any given entry for more information.

 

[historymarche]

Hm, good idea. Didn't think about doing that. Will definitely check it out ASAP.

Though, ironically, for the past 24 hours there was no beeping at all.