I'm going to try and keep this as short as possible ... It all started about a month ago when my 1 year old WD blue drive begin to act weird ... for unknown reasons it went from being the quietest part of my PC to the loudest and to top that off it begin vibrating so much to a point that that I could feel the vibrations in my desk if I placed my hands on the keyboard or mouse (its mounted on rubber mounts in a Define R4 so the case wasn't the issue). So I called WD and spoke to tech support who then confirmed that my HDD was coming close to failing. The replaced it for free but the replacement drive they sent was D.O.A., after spending a few more hours on the phone they said they would replace the replacement with another WD blue 1TB but if that had issues they would launch an investigation and upgrade my drive "to something better". Oddly enough the 2nd replacement drive they sent was a WD Black 1.5TB and so I was happy. I formatted the old drive hooked the new drive up and noticed it was making grinding sounds when reading or writing from/to the disk hoping it would go away I re installed windows and all my old programs but its still there.
So I took to the interwebs and a quick search brought up hundreds of forum posts and youtube videos about this same problem .... SO my question is should I call WD and get yet another drive (probably a Black) ... Do all Black drives have this issue? Or are their WD Blacks that don't have this issue? Because for a "reliable" drive this problem seems quite common ....
I should also add that temps are higher than any drive I've ever used (never used a Black though) averaging at around 50C regardless of idle or heavy use and even though its summer in Texas my other components are quite cool with my cpu (FX-6300 OC'ed a bit on air) at around 20C idle gpu (hg 7770 single fan) at 30C and another 1TB HDD peaking at 30C when transferring and copying file from it simultaneously but even that Idles at around 20C
I have several WD drives, one from 2003 that's been running continuously, and it's still runs cool. And quiet, as do the others. Mine are at around 40c with a 120mm fan blowing over the four of them. Every product has lemons. Also, they do sell many, many drives. A few hundred vocal ones is just a drop in the barrel of those that work fine. But that's just my observation.
I agree as I have WD drives still running in other computers on IDE back when XP first dropped .... So 50C isn't hot even though the drive 6cm below it is 30C? And my main question was is the grinding sound a problem in most WD Black drives? As this will determine whether or not I call WD again and request yet another drive.
Its no longer making that sound? I guess I'll just wait it out ... But what about temps? can you tell me what yours are? Even in CrystalDisk my secondary HDD is at 30C and the temp is in a green box where as the Black drive running at 51C is in a orange box implying I'm getting close to dangerous temps?
WD Blacks run warmer are they spin faster and not all HDD's are the same. Some run warmer while others run slower. I just had to replace 2 WD Blacks. One that was 6 years old and one that was 4. I would say contact WD again. But keep using it unless they offer to replace it. It depends on how long you have left on the warrenty of your WD Blue. WD replaces failing drives with refurbished drives and the warrenty is not extended.
If you still have some time left on your warrenty, You could just continue using it and wait to see if it fails. But if you dont hav elong left then I would ask if they can replace it with a new, not refurbished drive. WD drives have a low fail rate but when you get a refurbished drive, that goes up a lot in chance of failure.
Sorry about your issues. I stick by WD though. WD drives tend to be great drives but every now and then you do get a bad drive like with all other brands of drives. Its just less common.
So the grinding noise isn't normal for WD Black Drives? As for warranty I have a year left and yeah I spoke to them about not receiving a refurbished drive and they said that my drive was "re certified" or that it didn't sell and is now sitting in their warehouse.
As i said, You have 2 options, Try and get another replacement or just run untill it fails. You could easily run it for a month, if it dosent fail but you still want a replacement then say its not functioning as intended. and get another replacement.
I know this is an old thread, but I’m wondering how you’re holding up. I just purchased a WD Black 4TB HDD and am facing the same issue as you did. Did you get a replacement or has the sound gone away?
Hey man, I got an email notification for this and in truth I haven’t been to these forums since back when it was still the TekSyndicate days and I was i high school
The world changes a bunch in 6, going on 7, years.
But to answer your question, I ended up RMAing the 1.5TB Black Drive they gave me and got another Blue drive in return, I then used that for another 2 years before having to RMA it for similar reasons.
That final drive is still in the computer I’m typing this on. Granted the processor and RAM and Mobo has changed 3 times since and the GPU once, this HDD is still spinning. I also picked up an SSD around 2016 and put Windows on there so the 1TB drive became a “large applications and games” drive for most of its years.
Whatever drive sounds I was complaining about in this thread never reappeared. I have since built literal dozens of servers and I found certain types of hard drives in certain types of cases depending on vibrations through the case and noise canceling foam will have varying levels of “sound”.
Sometimes you get lucky and you cant here the drive at all. If the drive is distinctly “clicking” I would RMA it, why risk your data. Drives have come a long ways in 6+ years and in the hundreds of drives I’ve purchased for clients ranging from blues to reds to 10tb helium sealed drives I never had the clicking issue again.
I’ve also gotten a lot more comfortable with various kinds of tools like Hard Disk Sentinel.. It isn’t perfect since it relies on S.M.A.R.T. data but I’ve caught many a failing spinning HDD before it happened because of it.
If you’re interested here’s what my HD Sentinel reads after 5 years of pretty hard usage of the drive. If you’re drive reports anything other than 100% health, I’d return or RMA the drive. And in the future if you do need bigger sized drives, I’ve found WD Reds and Seagate Ironwolfs to be much better reliability wise. I don’t even think WD makes Black drives outside of its SSD branding anymore
I hope some part of this super long response helps.
