Strange sound coming from WD 1.4 TB HDD

[Sharccc]

I've recently noticed that when I put my head to my case right where my HDD is, I can hear this strange bassy-grumbling. It almost sounds like the disk read/writer is scraping against the platter, is my drive failing on me?

I know it's not the case fan, as I don't have one in that side of the case (Front panel has pretty much zero ventilation, so there's no point, plus it's a low-end temporary computer.)

It doesn't sound like the tell-tale "clicking" of a dying drive, and it's quiet. But it also doesn't sound like normal drive operation.

 

 

Specifications: 1397GB Western Digital WDC WD15EARS-22MVWB0 (SATA) {Not sure if this helps, but it's running at around room temperature, 26 degrees celcius.}

Also not sure if this helps, as I'm not too savvy about mechanical drives, but it only has about 120 Gigabytes left, is this something that just happens when the drive is nearing maximum capacity?

Edited November 26, 2020 by Sharccc
Clarified noise.

[Ruffleduffle]

3 minutes ago, Sharccc said:

I've recently noticed that when I put my head to my case right where my HDD is, I can hear this strange bassy-grumbling. It almost sounds like the disk read/writer is scraping against the platter, is my drive failing on me?

I know it's not the case fan, as I don't have one in that side of the case (Front panel has pretty much zero ventilation, so there's no point, plus it's a low-end temporary computer.)

It doesn't sound like the tell-tale "clicking" of a dying drive, and it's quiet. But it also doesn't sound like normal drive operation.

 

 

Specifications: 1397GB Western Digital WDC WD15EARS-22MVWB0 (SATA) {Not sure if this helps, but it's running at around room temperature, 26 degrees celcius.}

Also not sure if this helps, as I'm not too savvy about mechanical drives, but it only has about 120 Gigabytes left, is this something that just happens when the drive is nearing maximum capacity?

if the heads are indeed scratching against the platter it wont be long until it fails. I would recommend you backup your data IMMEDIATELY and have a replacement handy if it fails

[Sharccc]

1 minute ago, Ruffleduffle said:

if the heads are indeed scratching against the platter it wont be long until it fails. I would recommend you backup your data IMMEDIATELY and have a replacement handy if it fails

Thing is, I'm not sure IF that's actually what's happening, like I said, I don't know much about HDDs. I'll try and make a backup if I've got a spare drive laying around. Thanks.

[Ruffleduffle]

Just now, Sharccc said:

Thing is, I'm not sure IF that's actually what's happening, like I said, I don't know much about HDDs. I'll try and make a backup if I've got a spare drive laying around. Thanks.

i would recommend to not spin up the drive until you could backup the important bits

[Sharccc]

Well that's a bit of a problem considering it's my only drive in this PC. I'll try and back it up right now actually.