Caviar Black Noise

[halfblazed]

Up until recently I have had good luck with HDD. A few months ago my SeaGate Barracuda completely sh*t the bed (died) so I replaced it with a Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB drive.

The drive ran great for a few months but now I can hear it making noise already.

I only have Steam games on this drive and I rarely move anything around on it. It basically just loads and saves games.

Is there anything I can do at this point in time to remedy the noise I am hearing?

Is this an indication that the drive is failing?

Does the orientation of the drive matter? I have it mounted vertical rather than horizontal. I have posted a picture below.

The drive didn't make any noise (as far as I could tell) before it was mounted in this fashion. I've put my hand on it after regular use and it doesn't seem to be really hot.



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[DarkSable]

What sort of clicking is it doing? There's a good chance it's just normal read/write cycles.

(Also, side note, what case is that? If I ever decide to go back to non-SFF computers, that looks like it has some very nice features.)

 

[halfblazed]

What sort of clicking is it doing? There's a good chance it's just normal read/write cycles.

(Also, side note, what case is that? If I ever decide to go back to non-SFF computers, that looks like it has some very nice features.)

Its difficult to say, it only really does it when it starts loading a game.

I'm only concerned because I'm hearing it all of the sudden and I don't recall it making any noise before it was in its current orientation.

The case is CaseLabs Merlin SM8 or as I call it "My Smate."

Heres a Link to my Merlin SM8 thread:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/281251-29-caselabs-merlin-build

Its a fantastic case. CaseLabs is unrivaled when it comes to enthusiast PC cases.