Mechanical drive on its way out?

Guest2

Guest2

Guest2

Soldato
Joined
6 May 2009
Posts
20,450
Every so ofter I am hearing a noise that sounds like one of my mechanical drives it on its last legs. Its a sort of a slight 'clunk' sort of sound if that makes sense.

Strange thing is, I have ran a full error scan with HD tune on all drivers and there are no bad blocks. Other that disconnecting drives one by one to see when it stops, is there another tool that would check for anything else? Maybe its not a bad block but something in the making that software cannot detect

I have 2x SSD and 3x mechanical drives;

120Gb Samsung EVO 850 (OS)
128GB Crucial M4 (games)
1Tb WD Black (games, software, general)
3TB WD Green (media)
150GB Velociraptor (OS backup)
 
Could be 'power saving' kicking in and that 'clunk' is the head going into rest position. I'm sure I read something about the WD Green being quite aggressive with this although it might have been a different brand.
 
I've had this on 2 identical Maxtor drives, they would do a clunk like the heads were parking, this was in use however. The drives kept working for years fine however.
 
Hey there, Guest2.

Since all the drives have passed the tests, I'd go for one of the drive's mechanical arm being parked or the other way around as an explanation. This is a normal sound if this is the case, so I'm with @lsg1r on this one. As for the WD Green drives, I wouldn't say that they are aggressive about it, but their power saving feature does indeed make them park the mechanical arm with the head faster than regular drives if not being used.

You could also download DLG (Data Lifeguard) and run the Quick and Extended tests on those drives, just to double-check, if you want. Here's how to do it: How to test a drive for problems using Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Windows.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD
 
Cheers Boogieman. All quick checks past, i will run an extended check on the 3tb media drive tomorrow as it will take some time. It does sound like it could be the WD green though (judging by the sound of the start of the quick test)
 
If this is the case, the tool, which @gothic_hobbit is referring to is WD Idle. However, it is only recommended to be used for specific drive models (you'd be able to find them listed in the link). It has been reported to have worked with other WD drives, such as the WD Green HDDs, even though it's only recommended for different models, so if you decide to give it a try, please do so at your own discretion.
 
As much as I like the WDC drive in general, the issue with aggressive head parking on greens and various reds has been a real annoyance. In the past it meant disconnecting all other drives from a system, setting the bios of IDE mode and then setting it to disable or 5 minutes instead of the ridiculous 8 seconds default.

I appreciate this gives lower power use but should be far easier to do. With reds the factory setting has varied between model and when manufactured as well. The issue isn't just excessive load and unload cycles, but the delay it causes when needing to access data.

The noise is not usually that loud, however on the first green drives where I didn't reduce the parking I did find it louder after a while. That is what started me checking the SMART data and realising about the excessive park issue on some WDC drives.

What is your load/unload counter like for the green in the SMART data?
 
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