WD 7500 blue makes a humming sound

[kouroubel]

My WD 7500 blue is making a loud, annoying humming sound (similar to a worn out fan) even when idle.

I am certain the sound comes from the HD because when I put it to sleep from the windows power options, the PC is quiet like a sleeping baby.

Is it normal?

Is there a way to fix this?

 

[Hawkeye22]

If it just recently started making this sound, you may want to make a backup of your data as the drive may be on it's way out. You can always get a free utility like speedfan that can read the SMART values from the drive in order to check the condition of the drive. Note that SMART can't predict hardware errors such as the motor dying so even if everything looks ok, there may still be something mechanically wrong with the drive.

 

[kouroubel]

An interesting thing is that when speedfan is on, the HD is turned off because of the windows power options and then on again the next second.....

 

[Hawkeye22]

Unless you have some extreme power settings configured, the drive shouldn't turn off/sleep within a few seconds. The default power settings is 5 minutes or longer if I remember correctly. Possibly another indication something might be wrong with the drive. Are the SMART values normal? Speedfan even has a nice perform an in-depth anaylsis of hard disk button that comes in handy.

 

[inzone]

Any humming noise coming from a hdd is usually the motor spinning the platters and that's not a good thing. How long have you had this drive and is there still any warranty left? If you go into disk management does it say that the drive is still healthy? If it is then you do want to make a backup of your data just in case.

 

[kouroubel]

Unless you have some extreme power settings configured, the drive shouldn't turn off/sleep within a few seconds. The default power settings is 5 minutes or longer if I remember correctly. Possibly another indication something might be wrong with the drive. Are the SMART values normal? Speedfan even has a nice perform an in-depth anaylsis of hard disk button that comes in handy.

The default power setting was 20 minutes and I changed it to 1 minute. In-depth analysis does not show something alarming

All of the attributes of your hard disk have normal values. This is good.

The overall fitness for this drive is 94%.
The overall performance for this drive is 98%.

Any humming noise coming from a hdd is usually the motor spinning the platters and that's not a good thing. How long have you had this drive and is there still any warranty left? If you go into disk management does it say that the drive is still healthy? If it is then you do want to make a backup of your data just in case.

The drive is less than a week old so it is within warranty. Disk management reports it is healthy though

 

[inzone]

Since it is less than a week old then you should have no trouble getting a RMA.

 

[Hawkeye22]

As I said, even if SMART shows ok, it doesn't detect physical errors such as the motor. I'd at the very least make sure I have a backup of the data on that drive.

Also, why have the drives spin down so fast? That's got to be annoying when trying to read web pages or documents and everytime you click to read the next page you have to wait for the drive to spin back up so the browser can cache the page.

 

[kouroubel]

As I said, even if SMART shows ok, it doesn't detect physical errors such as the motor. I'd at the very least make sure I have a backup of the data on that drive.

Also, why have the drives spin down so fast? That's got to be annoying when trying to read web pages or documents and everytime you click to read the next page you have to wait for the drive to spin back up so the browser can cache the page.

As shown from the Disk Manager sshot, this is my storage drive. Everyday applications are installed in the SSD

I already talked to the supplier and I am probably RMAing the drive (if I can convince them this is not normal)......

 

[Rockdpm]

Well i have had a similar noise on both of my 750 GB WD blck caviar HDD and none have failed yet

 

[Hawkeye22]

I have WD blacks in 250gig and 1TB sizes and they don't make noises, at least not loud ones.

 

[inzone]

As shown from the Disk Manager sshot, this is my storage drive. Everyday applications are installed in the SSD

I already talked to the supplier and I am probably RMAing the drive (if I can convince them this is not normal)......

I can't imagine a loud humming noise being normal for a hard drive. I have had several different Hdd's from a laptop 5400 rpm to the Seagate Cheatah 15,000 rpm and have not heard any humming. Right now I have a WD Velociraptor that spins at 10,000 rpm and there isn't any noise and I have water cooling so there isn't a lot of fan noise in my computer and it sits on top of the desk right next to the monitor.

 

[Maxor1]

My WD 7500 blue is making a loud, annoying humming sound (similar to a worn out fan) even when idle.

I am certain the sound comes from the HD because when I put it to sleep from the windows power options, the PC is quiet like a sleeping baby.

Is it normal?

Is there a way to fix this?

Lots of older high rpm drives used to hum a bit when they were reading or writing at high speed but this hasn't been normal for 3 to 5 years at least. I would ensure that you have the drive tight as one that is clipped but not correctly into a no screw installation or one with loose side screws could be vibrating as it is spinning causing the humming. If after reseating and ensuring correct installation you still have the loud hum return it.

 

[StellarPhoenixS]

hard drive unfortunately is not fixable. you will have to buy a new one or keep using till it fail completely...but make sure you back-up