[SOLVED] How to tell bad hard drive noises from okay ones?

[caaalebbb]

I have a WD Easystore 12tb external hard drive I bought over a month ago that I just yesterday set up (formatted HFS+) for the first time with my Nvidia Shield to store movies (mostly 10-60gb each). It's been awhile since I've used a non SSD drive and I forgot that they make noise. (Though my WD_Black 5gb game drive doesn't seem to make this sort of noise...). It's a faint, almost dampened, fairly regularly paced clicking... though I'm not sure if "click" is the best word, since it is almost too damp or rounded – not sharp enough – to be a click. It seems to make the faint, damp click about every 1.5seconds or so when watching a movie from it, though sometimes it stops for a few seconds and starts up again. Is this bad?

Honestly, with the movie volume on, if you didn't know it was there you might not even notice it. But once you notice it, it's hard to ignore it. Is this sound probably normal, as far as the functionality of the hard drive is concerned? Or should I contact WD and say something is wrong with my HD?

The hard drive on a shelf in our TV stand now. If the sound is normal, I'm thinking of moving it in the cubby behind the TV stand, where there used to be a fireplace, and putting it in a box or trying to find some way to insulate the sound, without it getting too hot.

 

[LinuxDevice]

That noise is normal. There is a magnetic head which literally moves in to a track, performs a read or write, and then either goes to the next track or goes back to rest position. The noise depends on which track is used for the data, and how much head seeking is required to get the data. For a movie which is read in bursts you will get a certain size buffer of data, and then the head goes back to rest. A moment later, when the data is used up you will have the same thing occur again.

I have not looked up your specific hard drive, but most of these larger drives use helium fill which has a lot of advantages over nitrogen fill. Sound travels differently in helium, and so even if the heads are moving the same way a nitrogen filled drive moves the helium version will be noisier. I am guessing your drive uses helium, and thus the sound would be different than smaller drives not using helium.

EDIT: A head crash is a rather extreme condition and your system will fail if that is the case. Many signs of an older disk failing often show as data errors or boot errors, but may not even make a noise. There are extra sectors for replacing "bad sectors", and so you can often continue with a slightly failing disk (but expect the disk failure will go up rapidly over time as contaminants from previous bad sectors begin to scratch the disk).

 

[USAFRet]

Mostly, it is new noises, not just 'a noise'.

But, don't depend on the sound of a drive to tell you it is dying. By the time you notice, it is probably too late.
A good backup routine will protect your data when (not if) it dies.

 

[caaalebbb]

Thanks! (I also found some videos replicating the same sound my hard drive is making: here, here, and here. The last one is a bit louder because the phone microphone is right up against the hard drive.)

Do you have any suggestions for how I might place my drive (probably in a cubby behind the tv stand where a fireplace used to be) in order to block or dampen as much of the noise as I can without the drive being susceptible to overheating?

 

[LinuxDevice]

Thanks! (I also found some videos replicating the same sound my hard drive is making: here, here, and here. The last one is a bit louder because the phone microphone is right up against the hard drive.)

Do you have any suggestions for how I might place my drive (probably in a cubby behind the tv stand where a fireplace used to be) in order to block or dampen as much of the noise as I can without the drive being susceptible to overheating?

Just don't block cooling. There have been different people who have said cooling isn't a big deal, but others who have said it is. My experience is that heat does make for failure significantly earlier than a well cooled hard drive. Sometimes mounting on a rubber grommet helps with noise, but this can also insulate against heat transfer (which isn't a big deal if there is already air flow).

Are you building a custom enclosure? I would provide a large diameter slow rpm hydrodynamic (liquid) bearing fan to make sure there is some flow, and then mount on grommets to prevent noise transfer to the chassis.