Hard drive making strange noises!!

sharndowg · Jun 3, 2015

Hello,

Recently using my parents computer i noticed that the hard dri ve was very audible when in use (hdd light illuminated). It makes a kind of ticking/scratching noise in sync with HDD light. The noise falls silent when not reading/writing.

I checked the drive out and its a 1tb WD Green (wd10eadx) and used WD's drive checker. Came back a pass but im still unsure. Im aware hdd's make a noise, but this its rather off putting.

The computer is no more than two years old. Its a Pakard Bell.

Should i be worried for them?

jimmysmitty · Jun 3, 2015

No you shouldn't be worried. Some HDDs are noisier than others. I Have 2 2TB Seagates and together they make a bit of noise. The WD Greens are pretty noisy, the Blacks are worse but the Blacks are faster too.

The HDD is fine. Now if it didn't make any noise or just one loud click you would have just reason to be worried.

USAFRet · Jun 3, 2015

Drives making new noises is never a good thing.
They don't get better, they get worse.

Is this a 'new' noise, or has it always been this way?

Counteragent77 · Jun 3, 2015

if its making ticking noises you want to backup whats on there ASAP and replace it.

InvalidError · Jun 3, 2015

Use a disk monitoring tool to take a look at SMART register values and if the "reallocated sector count" is still 0, the HDD is likely still fine.

If that isn't convincing enough for you, then you always have the option of getting started on backing up any important data you may have elsewhere just in case. (You should be doing this regardless of how confident you are in your storage anyway.)

jimmysmitty · Jun 3, 2015

USAFRet :

Not so sure this is true. I have never head a silent HDD. The quietest 7200RPM I have ever seen still had a whirring noise and a slight tick noise as the head moved. The worst I ever heard was a Quantum Bigfoot. Massive drive, super noisy. All of these were new. And after installing a thousand or so new HDDs from Seagate, WD and Samsung I would think I would have noticed if there were any issues noise wise.

USAFRet · Jun 3, 2015

jimmysmitty :

USAFRet :

Not so sure this is true. I have never head a silent HDD. The quietest 7200RPM I have ever seen still had a whirring noise and a slight tick noise as the head moved. The worst I ever heard was a Quantum Bigfoot. Massive drive, super noisy. All of these were new. And after installing a thousand or so new HDDs from Seagate, WD and Samsung I would think I would have noticed if there were any issues noise wise.

Right. I probably should have said 'different noise', instead of 'new noise'.

jimmysmitty · Jun 3, 2015

USAFRet :

Ahhh didn't see the "new" in front of it. Sorry.

But it is true. If it is making a slight ticking noise when the activity LED goes it is pretty normal. If it is making loud ticking noises then it could be going bad but normally when I ran into that issue I couldn't even detect the HDD at all, it would just spin up then make a loud click and repeat again and again.

sharndowg · Jun 3, 2015

Thanks for the answers guys.

Im not sure if its a new noise or not as i dont live with them. I did mention the issue with them and they seemed unaware of it! Maybe because they've lived with it for so long and have got used to it.....or, its been like that since they got it. I will keep an eye on it. They seem keen to try another hdd. So I'll maybe grab a drive this week.

Thanks again

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Hard drive making strange noises!!

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