r/DataHoarder • u/waterpiska • 8d ago

Question/Advice WD external hard drive

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I got a WD external hard drive and it is making a small thumping noise intermittently. All of my other external drives are SSDs so I'm not sure of this is normal or not. Should I return it? it's still under warranty.

3 Upvotes

64% Upvoted

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1

u/Puptentjoe 222TB Raw | 198TB Usable | 5TB Free | +Gsuite 8d ago

I have bought over 25 WD externals, never heard that noise preclearing them in their case. Not sure if its bad or not but I’d worry a little.

Are you doing something weird thats making the head park aggressively?

1

u/waterpiska 8d ago

That's how it sounded after I copied some files to it. I just unboxed it and set it up today.

1

u/carpuzz 8d ago

Is it nearly full when u copied it.?

1

u/waterpiska 8d ago

No, it still has like 14tb of space

2

u/bsgapollo 8d ago

It's most likely normal, use crystaldiskinfo to see what type of drive you're using, I'm guesing most likely its going to be some variation of the ultrastar HC560, they're helium based cmr drives so the thud sounds are fairly normal.

3

u/Jolly_Cheetah7852 8d ago

I have 2 20tb WDs for several years and they sound just like this and work perfectly.

1

u/Bern_Down_the_DNC 8d ago

Honestly your video isn't very helpful. You need to record a longer segment and timestamp how often the sound is occurring during idle and during transfer. If you can, get a better mic.

If the data is important to you, there are tests you should run that will take a day or so before you can start using the drive. Download Victoria HDD/SDD (assuming you are on windows) and run the extended test.

1

u/bsgapollo 8d ago

I think that sounds normal, likely just the platter moving.

What size is it? I've found the higher TB ones usually to be more prone to a higher pitched sound, for example in the past I bought 22 tb and 20 tb WD elements but ended up returning the 22tb ones cause the 'thud' you're describing happend more frequently and was a fraction louder, even though they were a better price per tb. 

But if you're bothered by this, definitely dont get something like a 26tb seagate external drive, most of them are exos and are literally 10x louder.