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80g WD special ATA100 high pitch noise

N

nicebutt

Member
I have a question with ata 66 and ata 100 hard drives. Both my Maxtor and Western Digital drives produce a high pitch frequency. Does anybody have this problem too? Or does anyone know how to get rid of this high freg.
I am running a Gigabyte 8ihxp 850e chipset, Intel 2.4b processor, win2k operating system. Something I have to do yet is download sp2 from windows to update dma mode. Don't know if this is going to help but have to anyways to activate the ultra dma mode in windows.
Also what benchmarks software can I get to check my system out?

 
You just have to live with it. The WD Special Edition hard drives are known to be loud.

You should download SP3 for win2k so you can get your drive to run in ATA100 mode, however it's not going to do anything about the noise.
 
How old is your drive? There was a thread about this a while back and some evidence that earlier batches of the SE were noisy. Mine are only a couple months old and I can barely hear them spin up.

Sisoft Sandra for benchmarks.
 
Yeah, I just bought an 80g WD SE with the 8mb cache a few days ago, and it's one of the most quiet drives I've used to date. On par with my 72k WD 60g and my two 72k WD 40g's. No complaints about it so far.

By the way, CompUSA (where I got mine) has this model on sale for only $79.99 after instant and mail-in rebates. I believe the sale ends this weekend though.
 
My 80gb WD SE isn't very loud either, bought it a couple of months ago too. For benchmarking you can try MadOnion's Sysmark tool.
 
No HDD is totally silent, though the Seagate Baracuda ATA IV is pretty darned close from what I hear. It is just something that you will have to live with.
 
I installed an 80GB WD SE yesterday and so far everything is very quiet. I can't hear the idle whine at all unless I move close to the case and listen carefully. Hopefully things remain this way. I upgraded from a 60GB IBM 120GXP which crapped out after 1 week with shot bearings. The high-pitched whine that produced could be heard from 2 rooms away with the doors closed. After that, pretty much anything seems quiet.
 
Originally posted by: Andros
I installed an 80GB WD SE yesterday and so far everything is very quiet. I can't hear the idle whine at all unless I move close to the case and listen carefully. Hopefully things remain this way. I upgraded from a 60GB IBM 120GXP which crapped out after 1 week with shot bearings. The high-pitched whine that produced could be heard from 2 rooms away with the doors closed. After that, pretty much anything seems quiet.
Click to expand...
My WD 160 GB "SE" drive was dead silent for the first week. However, it has developed the "whine" as several people have described. I can hear the "whine" about 15 - 20 feet away from my PC. This is totally frustrating. 🙁

I guess I'll have to get in contact with WD to see what they have to say about the issue.
 
Originally posted by: wje
Originally posted by: Andros
I installed an 80GB WD SE yesterday and so far everything is very quiet. I can't hear the idle whine at all unless I move close to the case and listen carefully. Hopefully things remain this way. I upgraded from a 60GB IBM 120GXP which crapped out after 1 week with shot bearings. The high-pitched whine that produced could be heard from 2 rooms away with the doors closed. After that, pretty much anything seems quiet.
Click to expand...
My WD 160 GB "SE" drive was dead silent for the first week. However, it has developed the "whine" as several people have described. I can hear the "whine" about 15 - 20 feet away from my PC. This is totally frustrating. 🙁

I guess I'll have to get in contact with WD to see what they have to say about the issue.
Click to expand...
The more that I've given this some thought, the madder I've gotten. 🙁 Here's the deal:

1) 1 of my 160 GB WD drives was purchased from CompUSA. I'm beyond the 14-day return policy, so no-go as far being able to return the drive back to the store.
2) The drive is less than 30 days old, and now it's already demonstrating these problems?
3) Clearly, if WD would attempt to rectify my situation, they would more than likely send me a refurbished drive.
4) Who's to say that the replacement drive won't demonstrate these same issues after a period of time?
5) Now, I'm even more pissed. 🙁
6) I'm calling them tomorrow and suggest to them that they buy this drive back from me. If they don't I'll have to take them to court because I feel that if the problem goes on much longer, I'll suffer from a hearing loss. The high-pitched sound is a bit unbearable.

I'll post an update tomorrow after I have finished talking to them. Hopefully, the new Maxtor 8MB cache, ATA-133 drives are quieter and more reliable.

Oh, for anyone who doubts that WD will buy this drive back from me, I have a good record of doing battle with companies who sell P.O.S. equipment. Sony purchased a 19" Trinitron back from me after their attempts to repair it and replace it only demonstrated that the product I was dealing with was complete junk. Again, at $550, I couldn't settle for the issues that I experienced. Also, Sony reimbursed me for all of the shipping costs that I had to soak up through the problematic time. Then, there was the issue with my Kodak DC-240 camera. Kodak hosed it so badly within the first 30 days of ownership -- and then held it for too long at their repair depot that I couldn't return it to Buy.Com. Finally, Kodak understood the situation that I was under and sent me a refund check -- along with reimbursement for the shipping expenses. If you thought Ralph Nader had some balls when going up against various issues and companies, well let me tell you, Ralph is not nearly as prepared to do battles as I am. 😉
 
Sometimes bearings to bad and can produce a high pitched sound, I"ve experianced that myself although the drive operates fine to this day, but I expect it to die sooner than later.
 
Originally posted by: everman
Sometimes bearings to bad and can produce a high pitched sound, I"ve experianced that myself although the drive operates fine to this day, but I expect it to die sooner than later.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it seems to be a bearing issue. However, on a drive that was $299 at the time - and $329 today at CompUSA, they better start putting some better quality into their products. Look at the image that IBM currently has after the 60GXP issues -- some people have had great luck with them, but many, many others have not.

With the exception of the "SE" drives and some of the higher-end Maxtor drives, I can clearly see why manufacturers are going to 1-year warranties on their drives. If their products were truly reliable, then they could keep supplying the 3-year warranty because people wouldn't need to make claims if a device never failed. However, I do believe that drive manufacturers have had to do more warranty work on their products than they would admit to - which is probably the main reson for dropping back to 1-year warranties on several of their offerings. 🙁
 
I have used (2) 800JB's & (1)1200JB in both of my rigs, and all three of them were too noisy IMHO. They all emitted an audible "whine" that was annoying not only to me, but my GF as well.
 
I just completed the process of submitted my request to Western Digital to get them to purchase this drive back. Below, you will find the link to the on-line template where I filled out my request along with my formal request to Western Digital:

On-Line Assistance Form For Western Digital

My request that I made:

I purchased a 160 GB WD drive on 11/2/2002 from CompUSA for $299.99 plus tax. After owning the drive for two weeks, a high-pitched squeal has started to develop. This sound is very, very annoying and be heard as far as 20 feet away from my computer. Needless to say, CompUSA will not help me out since it is now beyond their 14-day return policy. However, I've done a bit of research and it appears quite a few people are reporting this same problem with your "SE" series of drives. For me to get a replacement/refurbished drive under warranty is completely unacceptable to me. This product is not even three weeks old yet. I think it's now Western Digital's responsibility to reimburse me for the purchase price that I paid and I will send the drive back to you if you can provide me with complete instructions.

I keep very, very critical data on my computer. Having a drive that is this prone to issues and failures has led me to purchase a more reliable drive from one of your competitors.

Please provide me with complete insructions on how we can complete this process of having WD purchase this unreliable drive and providing me with a sufficient refund to cover the $313.49 that I paid for the drive on November 2nd, 2002.

Thank you,

Wayne J. Ernst
E-Mail: wjernst@cox.net

*End of note

I'll provide updates in this thread as I receive them from WD.
 
I hate my WD too, stupid 5400 RPM produces more heat than my other 7200 rpm HDs combined and produces the loudest, most annoying whine than anything else in my comp.
 
Here's the latest update regarding my sqealing sound of my WD 160 GB hard drive.

1) I contacted WD's returns & RMA group. They could only replace the drive with a new drive because there are not any refurbished drives in the 160, 180 & 200 GB class available. They would not offer me a refund. So, I took it higher.

2) I was provided the name of one of their customer service managers. I left him a voice mail message about 5 hours ago and just received a call back from him. This person was very, very professional and was very willing to work with me. He basically gave me a couple of options:

Option #1: I could turn the drive and and he would initiate the check request process. He indicated that this could be a timely process and could potentially take a month to complete. Plus, a few have been rejected or turned down before, then the process had to be re-initiated.

Option #2: He would send me a new, sealed "SE" drive and start the 3 year warranty over from the day I received it. I would then have a chance to copy my data over to the new drive and send the old 160 GB drive back with the provided shipping container and mailing labels.

Needless to say, I chose option #2. Should any issues develop with this 2nd drive, the case regarding the first hard drive is highly documented - so, it wouldn't be hard to prove my point a 2nd time - if the situation warranted it. The new drive should arrive in about a week.

During the process of speaking with this individual, I learned some very good information. He was very proud of their current technology that is utilized within the drives thought the issues were quite rare regarding incidents with this drive. I did tell him that there have been a few threads on some of the various message boards where people are reporting the same issue, so I became slightly paranoid at leaving my critical data on a device that may not be free from defects and failures. According to this individual, the issue with the squealing is that somewhere along the line, the drive was dropped during shipping. One of the bearings inside received a small nick in it which is essentially causing the squealing sound. Again, this person was very professional and really wanted to resolve my situation.

Should any of you be experiencing any problems with your WD "SE" drives, please contact WD to see how they'll resolve your situation for you. If you're not happy with the first answer, then keep on pushing up the chain of command until your issue gets properly resolved.
 
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