2

Hard Drive Information:

Make: Western Digital
Model Number: WD5000BPKT
What the non-computer-fellas call it: Western Digital Scorpio Black
Age: About 2 to 3 months old.
Power On Hours: 127 Hours
Load-Unload Cycles: 777
Unsafe Shut Down Count: 8 (I am dumb)

So, of late, my HDD makes a sound. A click-like sound.
I have been bothering the community members in the chat with this question and they have been extremely patient with it.
So, after digging a lot into the architecture of the hard drive, I have come across the following conclusion:

  • The click is actually the sound of load-unload cycle

    • "... WD thought it would be a great feature to build a timer in their firmware to autopark the heads after 8 seconds so to reduce energy"

    I found this on NCIX forums about WD GREEN drives but I guess it makes sense to have it in a black drive, too.
    So how could you be sure that this is indeed a sound of the head park?
    I hear it every time the laptop shuts down.

    So what's your point?

  • Is my observation correct or do I need to RMA it asap?
    • fixer1234
    • 28,064
    An SO User
    • 448

    1 Answers1

    1

    I've just bought a WD7500BPKX drive (750GB WD Scorpio Black) and I have the same clicking problem.

    The symptoms are the following: 8 seconds after the last activity, it does a soft click and the counter increases. Then while I keep it idle, it soft clicks once in each minute. If any activity occurrs the cycle is restarted, 8s - 60s - 60s - ...

    I've used the WDIDLE3 utility to change the idle timer of the drive. It is usually used for the WD Green drives because of the same problem, so I gave it a try. With the /R option, it reported that the timer is 8 seconds as default, this matches with my experiences above.

    I've changed the setting /S option. Here are my experiences:

    • /S300 - no soft click after 8 sec, but a LOUD hard click after two minutes and the counter increases.
    • /S90 - same as above, hard clicks after 2 minutes.
    • /S60 - no soft click and no hard click

    So the /S60 seems the best setting for this drive.

    csadam
    • 185