HDD Noise - normal?

Technology and Gaming Help and Support
#1

Last week, I bought a Western Digital caviar black of 1 terabyte (64mb cache, sata 3).

It’s pretty noisy, and I’ve read reviews that say that it isn’t exacly quiet, but I am worrying if the noise I’m experimenting is normal or something I should worry about. The noise I’m talking about happens at the same time that the disk activity light on my case lights up.

Also, it’s the first time I have an HDD so big, so I don’t know what to expect as ‘normal’.

I can return it to the store if I want to, but I’ve already loaded lots of files and I have no means of backing it up except for burning lots and lots of DVD’s, so I’d rather avoid that.

Has anyone else here have this model or something similar? could you share your experiences regarding noise? Thanks in advance.

EDIT: I’ve run seatools and western digital’s diagnostics and they have both given good results and no errors.

#2

Is it a ticking type noise or just a chugging. As ticking is bad, chugging is the drive doing its thing. I also have WD black 1TB (the only drives I will ever buy now) and the thing is quieter than my WD blue 1tb.

#3

I have 1 TB Caviar Black. I can’t remember what size the cache was on that thing.
I’d say it’s as loud as every other HDD I’ve used. I haven’t been paying much attention to it. I have been running my computer with side panel off for few weeks, since I’m too lazy to put it back on. At least mine doesn’t sound too bad for me to close my case to muffle the noise.

This is all from memory though. I’ll listen to it more carefully when I get home. But anyhow, sure it makes some clicking noise, or maybe my older HDD does that, but nothing excessive that would’ve gotten me worried.

#4

I guess you could describe it as chugging, but I’ll let you listen to it to see what you think.

Recording quality is not the best, but you can hear it clearly from 0:25 onwards.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/12557044/1018_00-31%2005%202011.wav

#5

well that’s the same noise my WD blue makes. It should be fine.

If you want it to quiet down get some rubber washers (or shock mounted rubber spacers) and see if you can add them into your case. Even a little bit should help as it will stop the surrounding case from amplifying the noise.

#6

Will check that out. Thanks, man!

#7

Sound is normal for a HD. Just needles/headers/ whatervers inside moving back and forth reading info from the platters.

#8

I have a WD caviar green 640gb and it’s quieter than any other HDD I’ve got, including my samsung spinpoint 5400RPM 500GB

#9

You can not compare different versions of the same drive (ie black vs green), they might sound nothing like each other.

About the noise, if performance isn’t that important you can adjust the drives AAM settings. it will make it much more silent in cost of access time.

#10

Your fine I have the same hard drive and it’s been making the same noise since I got it six months ago.

#11

My fine?!

#12

If you want, download speedfan, go to the “SMART” tab, and do the long test, if there´s a physical problem with the HDD this should detect it.

#13

I’ve already done SMART tests with other utilities.

#14

sound is normal… stop worrying

#15

If the HD is very fragmented it might cause it to search more than normal for files. Rule of thumb is 10% it’s time to defrag the drive.

#16

I already stopped. Like 5 posts ago.

EDIT: ninja’d

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