My formerly quiet WD HDD is now loud.

[pelikan]

It's a 40GB 8MB cache Western Digital, about three months old. Now I can hear it during seeks for the first time. It's the typical hdd sound that you get when opening programs, but just not quiet any more. Before I could barely hear it over my Panaflo L1A's, now I can hear it clearly. There's no ticking or "bad" noises. Anybody else had this happen? Should I be worried?
Thanks.

 

[Jeff7181]

Do you have any new programs installed that may be HDD intensive? Have you defragged so it doesn't have to search all over the disk to find data?

 

[pelikan]

I havn't installed anything new, and I defrag regularly.

 

[Jeff7181]

Might be time to backup data you need and look for a new hard drive =)

Circuit City around here has a sale this week... WD1200JB for $80 after rebates... VERY good price.

 

[pelikan]

Thanks for your advice.

 

[RickH]

That great advice Jeff--tell him about a good deal on a larger version of the same drive that is giving him trouble. R

 

[DannyBoy]

Originally posted by: RickH
That great advice Jeff--tell him about a good deal on a larger version of the same drive that is giving him trouble. R

PMSL!

I personally choose Seagate over WD

i have 2 seagate barracuda's and i havnt had the slightest problem with them

 

[GnomeCop]

Backing up is always a good idea, but a lot of WD JB drives get loud after awhile... doesn't always mean its going to break down. You might not have to buy a whole new drive.

RMA ... maybe you'll get one that wont do that again.

 

[Compddd]

Same thing happened with my WD, I will never buy a WD again. Maxtor or Seagate for me always now

 

[pelikan]

Originally posted by: GnomeCop
Backing up is always a good idea, but a lot of WD JB drives get loud after awhile... doesn't always mean its going to break down. You might not have to buy a whole new drive.

RMA ... maybe you'll get one that wont do that again.

I thought I had read someone else having a WD JB that got loud after awhile. Thanks for mentioning that.

At some point I want to get a Seagate for their quietness. I'm trying to wait until there is a good deal on a SATA drive. Hopefully Seagate will come out with something like the WD Raptor but quieter.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

You can allways download WD's Data lifeguard utilities to test your drive to see if it is going bad.
Data Lifeguard tools.

Same thing happened with my WD, I will never buy a WD again.

Sorry to hear that.. I personally have had great luck with using/suggesting WD drives. Heck, I have a 2 1/2 year-old IBM 20G 75GXP that still runs like a champ. :Q

 

[GnomeCop]

yeah when I first got my WD1200JB drives they were dead silent... then after about 9 months they started to make a high pitched whining sound. Working or idle that sound was present. The seek noises never got lod but the whine was pretty bad. Reminded me of when I had an all scsi system.

I got a couple enclosures designed to silence noisy HDs and put them inside them. The enclosures made the drives get really hot, heh especially since I had no case fans (didn't need them before). The high pitched whine could even be heard when the drives were INSIDE the enclosures, thats how bad it was, but it was a lot more bearable than before.

after about 2-3 months of the WDs baking inside the enclosures... the sound stopped, weird. Also I was very impressed they did not bake to death. I installed some fans recently and now, incredibly, the drives seem to stay quite cool in their enclosures. I dare not take them out because I'm scared they will start making noises again, but for now they are dead silent again.

WD drives have pretty good performance, but they need to work on their noise levels