HDD beeping while Folding

[Emanuil Georgiev]

Hi All,

 

I'm having a weird issue. My HDD seems to be beeping (sounds more like a short beep than a mechanical wurr) while Folding@Home is working.

Some time ago I changed my broken GPU and installed a new HDD - WD Blue WDC WD40EZRZ (slow RPM)

Since then whenever I crank up the Folding@Home I start hearing beeping from time to time.

 

Previously I had a WD Black 1TB and a Samsung SSD 850 Evo 500GB (still installed)

The new 4TB Blue drive is just for archive storage on my PC, movies, pictures etc. The Black and the SSD is for Games and Windows. 

 

The issue only occurs with Folding@Home, heavy copy/pasting, Torrent Read/Write does nothing, just wen there is active Folding.

 

The drive is still in warranty, should I return it?

Why is Folding@Home causing this problem?

 

What would you recommend to test the drive with?

 

Edit: Edited the post because it's definitely the new WD 4TB Blue drive.

[Emanuil Georgiev]

No one?

[BorisTSR]

I've never heard of something like this. If I was experiencing this I would start looking at the case temperature and rule that out quickly, then I would start looking at potential power problems.

 

Things to look at for power:

 - Do you get random crashes or reboots?

 - Does the problem persist if you turn down the folding power slider?

 - Does the problem persist if you remove a different hard drive or other non-essential part?

 

Edit:

A quick google says it may be faulty. I'd still check to ensure it's getting enough power, since you have already identified it's only when folding. But otherwise, it may be worth replacing.

 

https://www.dataanalyzers.com/blogs/external-hard-drive-western-digital-makes-beeping-noise/

Edited March 24, 2020 by BorisTSR
More information

[Emanuil Georgiev]

- No random crashes, not while folding and not while playing the new DOOM Eternal.

- I'll test the slider.

- I'll test with the WD Blue ON and WD Black off, and we will see. 

 

It's not a temperature problem. The case is not the best, but there is a fan intake with cool air right in front the HDD drives, and they were not warm to the touch. Also the problem starts almost immediately when max folding starts.

 

Also: unfortunately my GPU is too big to fit on the first slot (with this quarantine I may bust out the dremmel and fix that :D), and also blocks some of my SATA 6Gb/s ports, so the problematic WD Blue is connected to a SATA 3Gb/s port.

[BorisTSR]

You've ruled out temperature and you said it begins as soon as folding hits maximum work load . That to me indicates it's probably a power issue.

 

See how you go removing those hard drives. If that works you could underclock your GPU or get a new PSU. If it doesn't work I'd look at returning the drive.

 

Hope you get it solved.

[Spotty]

On 3/23/2020 at 10:21 PM, Emanuil Georgiev said:

Since then whenever I crank up the Folding@Home I start hearing beeping from time to time.

You didn't happen to start using some hardware monitoring software such as HWInfo64 when you started folding, did you?

[Fooferbob]

A beeping hdd is a sign of imminent failure.

It may be that your computer is doing enough page filing to reveal this already developing problem that had previously gone unnoticed. 

[Emanuil Georgiev]

So I just started my PC, and then the FAH (I turned off the autostart somehow). It's on Medium, and almost immediately it started making the noise. 

 

Yesterday I noticed it got really bad when I started watching a movie from that hard drive. I Paused FAH, watched without problems.

Also all the torrents are on that drive, and right now on FULL and all torrents stopped - no sound. 

 

Only movie - no issue.

Only torrents and movie - no issue.

Torrents and FAH - noise.

 

Power?

I have: Power Supply: Cooler Master Thunder 600W - RS-600-ACAB-D3

ROG-STRIX-RX580-O8G-GAMING 

Intel Core i5-4670 @3.40GHz

1 SSD, 1HDD WD Black and this new WD Blue.

and 2 fairly low RPM fans.

 

BUT the WD Black and the WD Blue are on the same cable (goes through the Blue and then to the Black)

 

I'll open up the case to see if I have a separate cable for each HDD.

On 3/25/2020 at 4:40 PM, Spotty said:

You didn't happen to start using some hardware monitoring software such as HWInfo64 when you started folding, did you?

I do not have a HW monitor running at the moment. I have only ASUS AI Suite 3, but I had this one forever.

 

I now remembered that this sound stared when I was trying to OC the GPU. I stopped the ASUS ROG software from running, so to use only the Radeon Software to OC. 

But because the beeping was worrying to me I'm currently using the Default settings. 

 

 

 

[Emanuil Georgiev]

Unfortunately I do not have a third power cable for the SATA. One goes to the SSD and one goes to the two HDDs. I have a free Molex, maybe I can find an adapter?

Not sure if this will fix the issue.

[BorisTSR]

Changing the power cable probably won't fix it. For testing remove one of the hard drives. It should lower power usage in the computer. Then start folding and watch a movie or play a game. If it doesn't start beeping after a while, I'd say it's power. At that point you are likely up for a new PSU. While 600w *should* be enough for most PCs, they sometimes advertise their peak output, not their average sustained output, and they can drop in efficiency over time.