Normal amount of HDD noise?

[Darkfeign]

So I've recently been replacing my Seagate drives with Western Digital drives to gain a little more reliability, at least in terms of warranty.

 

I've had new WD Red drives installed, nice and quiet, definitely too slow for OS use but work well in a RAID set up for data storage. However I just received a new WD Black drive (2TB) and the scratchy noises are ridiculous. I've heard this on a WD Blue drive before but no where to this extent, so I'm just wondering if this is a typical noise level for WD Black drives? There seems to be a lot of others experiencing the same noise but I've just received it and it's noisy as hell compared to all other drives I've owned, and Seagate Barracuda drives are fast so no idea why they would need to produce this kind of noise?

 

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbHWU2jId74

 

Any help would be great, as I'd rather get this returned as soon as possible, but I don't want to RMA it if a new one will just turn up with the same noise level.

[guas5373]

Doesn't seem bad to me. My seagate barracuda sounds similarly. Keep in mind that the Black is one of the fastest, so it is likely it will be one of the  loudest.

[Godlygamer23]

Is there a fan near the hard drive at all? Like intake fans. With my fans, I barely hear my hard drives.

[mgsstar]

I usually would hear these noises on hard drives after they have been used for a couple of years. It shouldn't be making that much sound as I don't hear any sounds on my Seagate Barracuda 1TB but it could be different for the WD Black.

[flibberdipper]

Have you heard a Momentus 5400.6 after it gets older and goes nuts trying to look for something? If you were to scale the noise up respectively with the size it would sound about the same.

[Schmarvin]

One of my black and another one of my blue drivers made loud noises for a few months when I got them. Close to the sound of a dial-up modem, lol.

But the sound went away after about 2-3 months. Not sure what happened, but I dealt with it as the drives had no malfunctions and no dead sectors and the performance wasn't suffering.

 

If you need to, just contact WD support.

[Darkfeign]

Thanks for the replies. I just find it odd that the Seagate Barracudas didn't produce any noise like this, so I don't see why the WD Black drives should, but a lot of videos on YouTube show the drives producing the same level of noise. I'll check the drives periodically for any reports of errors but I'm not too worried about the noise as long as it doesn't get worse.

[IdeaStormer]

Have you heard a Momentus 5400.6 after it gets older and goes nuts trying to look for something? If you were to scale the noise up respectively with the size it would sound about the same.

 

I have some old drives that sound like those model planes with the tiny engines that make that high pitch sound, "weeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii" but still work great, oh well.

[flibberdipper]

I have some old drives that sound like those model planes with the tiny engines that make that high pitch sound, "weeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii" but still work great, oh well.

I have one that when it still worked sounded like this (I tried to translate it the best I could)

 

MEH weeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII chk chk chk meheheheheheh

 

[IdeaStormer]

I have one that when it still worked sounded like this (I tried to translate it the best I could)

 

MEH weeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII chk chk chk meheheheheheh

 

 

"chk chk chk", is bad or so I think.

[flibberdipper]

"chk chk chk", is bad or so I think.

No on mine it was part of the drive self test. The video below is identical to the one I had, just mine was the better Bigfoot TS 19.2GB, which was top end when it came out. Mine sounds deeper, too.