WD Black WD6003FZBX 6TB Noises

Toffee_Bear · May 18, 2018

Hi, so I found this video that has a drive making similar sounds to mine, which I only put in my system 2 days ago. BTW I'm not worried about the noise of the arm moving rapidly, rather the 'electrical buzz' sound towards the end of the video (prominently heard at 0:24).

A few things to note:

- At idle the drive is more or less quiet (except the click at 4 or 5 second intervals these are apparently famous for).

- I did a large copy & paste from the previous drive which was failing.

- Runs games fine.

- Passes S.M.A.R.T / D.S.T / other tests fine.

- Electrical sounding buzz is not a regular occurrence and it's only briefly, but it's not rare.

- I monitor the temperature with 'open hardware monitor' and it has never exceeded 40 - 42 degrees C.

Any advice would be very welcome as I've already had to return 2 seagate drives before switching to this, so I don't want to have to RMA the drive unless I have to.

Thanks in advance

Quick question I just thought of that I'm less worried about... every other interval of the intervals mentioned above on the point about idling, I can hear a 'shhh' sound as the drive reads (barely audible). Should I be worried?

EDIT: FYI my drive is mounted vertically with the SATA ports facing downwards.

Qwright10 · May 18, 2018

I don't know much about hard drives but I have two theories (but they're likely wrong).

Something is imbalanced and is vibrating
For some reason, your read/write head crashed into the platter (disk) (which is called a head crash) and that's why it's failing

Ryujin2003 · May 18, 2018

Holy hell, it sounds like someone is trying to send a FAX through a Taun Taun.

I have a 4TB WD Black, and it sounds nothing like this. That is insane. No idea what is causing that. In my yesterday as a tech, never had a drive come to me sounding like today.

Following in hopes of learning something.

Toffee_Bear · May 18, 2018

21 minutes ago, Qwright10 said:

I don't know much about hard drives but I have two theories (but they're likely wrong).

Something is imbalanced and is vibrating

For some reason, your read/write head crashed into the platter (disk) (which is called a head crash) and that's why it's failing

I'm not sure about (1) but wouldn't (2) result in data loss? I haven't experienced anything like that.

8 minutes ago, Ryujin2003 said:

Holy hell, it sounds like someone is trying to send a FAX through a Taun Taun.

I have a 4TB WD Black, and it sounds nothing like this. That is insane. No idea what is causing that. In my yesterday as a tech, never had a drive come to me sounding like today.

Following in hopes of learning something.

IKR, I'm surprised you say that because I've read a lot of forum posts saying WD Black is a noisy HDD.

Oh and a pleasure to be of service

Any possibility of a defragment fixing this like the comment on the video says?

Qwright10 · May 18, 2018

1 minute ago, Toffee_Bear said:

I'm not sure about (1) but wouldn't (2) result in data loss? I haven't experienced anything like that.

IKR, I'm surprised you say that because I've read a lot of forum posts saying WD Black is a noisy HDD.

Oh and a pleasure to be of service

Any possibility of a defragment fixing this like the comment on the video says?

Defragmenting your hard drive doesn't really change the hard driver, per se, but it moves data that is fragmented (spread between different sectors or just spread across the drive). It likely won't do anything, but it won't hurt to try.