New WD 3TB HDD Knocking on wake

[gbaker200]

Is knocking ever "normal" for a hard drive?

I have a new internal HDD (WD Caviar Green) that has passed SMART and disk check, but knocks a couple of times upon waking from sleep. I have another 1 TB of the same model that has never made a sound, so I'm a bit concerned that something might be wrong with this drive. It is currently my boot drive, but I was planning to reformat my SSD as the boot drive (this is a new system and the SSD was the boot drive in my old system) and use this new HDD as a backup. Having just lost eight years of work to a dropped drive, I'm skittish about keeping this one.

Any advice?

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, gbaker200.

Well this might be the head of the drive. It always parks when the drive is idle or off and when it spins up if the sounds are like 2 small clicks, this is probably it and you shouldn't worry about it. However, just to be on the safe side, you could download DLG (Data Lifeguard Diagnostics), if you haven't done so already and run the Quick Test (if you've used a different program before) and the Full Test as well, to see if they find anything alarming. Here's how to do that: How to test a drive for problems using Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Windows. Let me know what are the results of the tests. You could also try the drive with a different SATA port an different cables to see if the same thing happens.
Note that it's not considered a backup if the files are on a different drive but in the same system. In order for your data to be safer, I'd suggest that you have at least 2 copies of your important files on separate locations (e.g. external drive, cloud service, different computer, etc).

Hope that helps. Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[gbaker200]

Yeah, everything reported as fine with the Data Lifeguard, so I'll see if the "twin" to this drive that I bought for my data recovery restoration drive does the same thing when I get it back and installed.

I have an exterior enclosure I can use for the backup drive, but I'm curious why a separate internal drive in the same system isn't considered a backup. Is that because it's vulnerable to corruption?

After learning the very expensive lesson of "your backup is no longer a backup when it's the only copy, even if only for an hour or two," I plan to have backups in the cloud, backups on external drives, backups in caves and safety deposit boxes, printed out copies of everything stacked up in an airport hangar...just whatever it takes to make sure I keep a handle on my stuff!

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Yes. That's because if the data is in one system, even though it's on two separate drives, it's still vulnerable to whatever might cause corruption/damage to the other drive: e.g. viruses, fires, floods, physical damage (computer case falling), failing PSU, power outages and whatever you can think of that can affect all of the components in a system.