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My WD 120GB SE is making a moderately high pitched whining sound.....

M

MrCraphead

Platinum Member
I came back to my dorm from Thanksgiving break, fired up my computer after having it off for 5 days, and I immediately noticed a somewhat high pitched whining noise from my computer. Through the process of elimination, I found that it came from my WD 120GB Special Edition drive.

Knowing this is not what it sounded like before, (and I'm sure of it) I loaded the WD diagnostic programs on a floppy and ran the drive through the quick test, with no errors showing up. The drive performance still works fine, nothing out of the ordinary, but the sound is getting on my nerves.

Is there something wrong with my drive? Why did the sound just start? Is there something I can do to fix it? Thanks in advance!
 
I have a quantum fireball drive that used to make a high pitched noise also. The drive was virtually silent when I bought it but it became louder as time passed. It was driving me nuts so I took it out and noticed most of the noise was comming from the bottom of the drive. I stuffed a dishtowel under it and haven't thought of it again untill now. I probably should have put the towel in a static bag to protect the drive but I was hoping it would die so I would have an excuse to get a new one. Not a very technical solution... but effective.
 
Heard of several other people with the WDSE drives having these problems. Couple of them have RMA'd them for new drives.
 
Yes, by all means RMA it. I've had two of them start doing this on me. The noise was bad enough to engender a headache in anyone who stayed in the room with the offending drives. I wound up replacing them with 120 gig Maxtors, not that I really suspect that one company is better than the other. But what I've seen over the past couple of years with respect to drives makes me think that there are definitely specific lines made by practically all makers that are just not able to cut the mustard.

- prosaic

Edit --> BTW, both of my drives passed the WD diagnostics suite. Nonetheless, both drives were confirmed to be dead. One by the OEM that sold it to me in a pre-built video editing system and the other by WD themselves.
 
I remember the times when HDD's were very noisy then quietened down with use. Long live the 20 meg HDD 🙂
 
Originally posted by: CurtCold
Heard of several other people with the WDSE drives having these problems. Couple of them have RMA'd them for new drives.
Click to expand...

what he said
 
Doesn't there have to be some sort of error code, or have the diagnostic program return an error code in order to get an RMA? What happens if I file for an RMA, send the drive back, and they test the drive as being perfectly fine? 😕
 
Originally posted by: CurtCold
Heard of several other people with the WDSE drives having these problems. Couple of them have RMA'd them for new drives.
Click to expand...

I have owned (3) WD SE drives and ALL of them had a high pitch whine....suck!
 
RMA it. There seem to be a problem with their bearings. The whinning WILL NOT go away and it'll only get worse. Believe me. There's a computer that's whinning in the hall and it's driving me nuts by the days.
 
For some reason I thought my HD would last longer than this. 🙁

If I put in the warranty today, do you think I would receive the new drive by next Friday (12/13)at the latest? I'm leaving the country on the 16th and wont' be back for a month, so I wouldn't want them to send me the HD, only to have it arrive after I left. Then they'd be charging my credit card for it. 🙁

How fast is their service? anyone know?
 
I think they have this cross shipping policy where you can give them your CC number and they will send you a new one overnightly. You have to send in your old one once it comes in though. You can try asking.
 
Yeah, I saw that on their site. The only thing that refers to shipping is: "Our current turnaround time for an Advance RMA is 3 to 5 business days." I don't know precisely what that means, hopefully they'll get me my replacement in 3-5 bus. days. :\

EDIT: Oh, and another thing, if I send in my hard drive, and there's nothing wrong with it, what will they do? Charge me for a new drive? or do they not care of it's working or not? :\
 
Originally posted by: MrCraphead
Yeah, I saw that on their site. The only thing that refers to shipping is: "Our current turnaround time for an Advance RMA is 3 to 5 business days." I don't know precisely what that means, hopefully they'll get me my replacement in 3-5 bus. days. :\

EDIT: Oh, and another thing, if I send in my hard drive, and there's nothing wrong with it, what will they do? Charge me for a new drive? or do they not care of it's working or not? :\
Click to expand...

I've had two experiences with RMAs, and generally they give you a number, and that number is tied to your account, which should state why your drive's fubared. After they receive your drive, i'm pretty sure they'd check your account information. Just talk to them about it 🙂
 
I should've stuck with maxtor, all that I had were never this annoying. Mine started this damn noise today. It goes away for a bit then gets louder, goes away then back again. I have 8 fans so I went through the trouble of being sure it wasn't any of them and it is for sure this nice new "best of the best" wd se hard drive.
 
Originally posted by: erikiksaz


I've had two experiences with RMAs, and generally they give you a number, and that number is tied to your account, which should state why your drive's fubared. After they receive your drive, i'm pretty sure they'd check your account information. Just talk to them about it 🙂
Click to expand...

Well, they have like a cross-ship thing where you can request a RMA and then they'll send you the drive immediately, and you send your drive back to them.

My question is how long will their initial shipment of the new HD take?
 
Alright, I'm sending the RMA in, I hope that I get it before I leave on Monday the 16th. 🙁 I don't know how fast WD is about shipping out HD's.....
 
Originally posted by: Elcs
I remember the times when HDD's were very noisy then quietened down with use. Long live the 20 meg HDD 🙂
Click to expand...

Ahhh yes 20mb, so useful even to this day, why you could store 7 mp3's on one of those if you wanted to!
 
My drive sorta makes a high pitched sound not real bad though, and kinda on and off, I just got it today, my friend said that sometimes this happens on new drives and once the bearings get broken in it fades away, is this true, or does this just happen to be an attribute of all Western Digital 120GB SE's? Lol i returned my maxtor 120Gb for this one cuz the maxtor had an annoying clicking for seeking. Damn HD companies should focus on quiet then speed. Do u think if i simply used some sound dampening material i could rid myself of the quiet high pitched whine i here?

-Mark
 
My drive is the JB version, the special edition w/ 8 MB of cache.

Originally posted by: wetcat007
My drive sorta makes a high pitched sound not real bad though, and kinda on and off, I just got it today, my friend said that sometimes this happens on new drives and once the bearings get broken in it fades away, is this true, or does this just happen to be an attribute of all Western Digital 120GB SE's? Lol i returned my maxtor 120Gb for this one cuz the maxtor had an annoying clicking for seeking. Damn HD companies should focus on quiet then speed. Do u think if i simply used some sound dampening material i could rid myself of the quiet high pitched whine i here?

-Mark
Click to expand...

No, I think you should send in your drive to WD for a replacement if your drive is still under warranty. It's not supposed to be making any whining noises at all.....
 
Originally posted by: rpbri2886
Originally posted by: Elcs
I remember the times when HDD's were very noisy then quietened down with use. Long live the 20 meg HDD 🙂
Click to expand...

Ahhh yes 20mb, so useful even to this day, why you could store 7 mp3's on one of those if you wanted to!
Click to expand...

Not a very good idea 🙁

Id use it as a Webspace partition.... I have 30 meg webspace so a 20 meg drive containing a website would give me plenty leyway online 🙂
 
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