New WD Black grinding noise on shutdown

[theninja35]

I received a brand new WD Black 2TB for Christmas and it's making a very apparent grinding or whining noise when I turn the computer off. It hasn't had any data put on it and has only been turned on about a dozen times.

 

I was wondering if anyone had dealt with this issue before and how you fixed it, or if the sound is normal. I've looked up other threads regarding this issue and so far I've come to the conclusion that this is not supposed to happen and an RMA is the only solution, but I don't know anything about hard drives. I've already contacted WD about this issue and they've given me some things to try but none of them worked. I've tried replacing the cables, moving the drive, and isolating it to make sure the drive is causing the noise.

 

Here's a short video of the sound: https://imgur.com/a/RQaNlJI (I apologize for the horrific cable management)

[BondiBlue]

As far as I'm aware that is normal for those drives. It's been discussed all over the internet, and IIRC the noise is caused by the drive using some sort of platter brake to keep the platters from spinning while off. That's the best I could find when I last looked into that problem. 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Can you record the sound?

[BondiBlue]

Just now, Helpful Tech Wiard said:

Can you record the sound?

They posted a link with a video. You can find plenty of other examples of the same noise on YouTube.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

53 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

They posted a link with a video. You can find plenty of other examples of the same noise on YouTube.

Oh, for some reason that was just acting like a photo

[theninja35]

5 hours ago, BondiBlue said:

As far as I'm aware that is normal for those drives. It's been discussed all over the internet, and IIRC the noise is caused by the drive using some sort of platter brake to keep the platters from spinning while off. That's the best I could find when I last looked into that problem. 

Alright, thanks for your reply. I know there's a lot of discussion out there so I'd hope they wouldn't release that many drives that are defective and over such a long period of time. My only concern is that I found one post in which someone RMA'd theirs twice after both made that sound, and upon receiving the third one, there was no sound. How ironic would it be if they walked themselves into a defective drive lol

[theninja35]

On 12/30/2021 at 3:38 PM, BondiBlue said:

They posted a link with a video. You can find plenty of other examples of the same noise on YouTube.

I received an email back from WD after sending them that video and they told me the hard drive is, "facing exertion while rotating, resulting in a faulty drive..." Do you know what this means? Do you think I should return it? I'm just a little bit concerned that since not every drive does it, it might not be normal. I just can't imagine that they'd send out so many broken ones, though.