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WD My Book 8TB (WD80EZZX) quiet ticking/chirping?

fleshconsumed

fleshconsumed

Diamond Member
I'm trying to troubleshoot my fileserver that is having sporadic problems. I'm suspecting that one of my 4TB Seagate hard drives may be on its way out, so I decided to replace it with 8TB. The cheapest way to do it was shucking 8TB WD, bonus you can actually do it without breaking tabs so there will be no evidence it was ever shucked if I ever need to RMA it! So I shucked it, got WD80EZZX drive inside which some people say is actually 5400RPM HGST He8 drive, and not a RED.

The problem is I'm a little apprehensive about the WD80EZZX drive I just received a few days ago. Whenever it's idle it keeps quietly ticking/chirping about once every second. The ticking/chirping is very very quiet, I can only hear it if I put my head towards the drive, but it's definitely there. I know it's not head parking because Load Cycle Count is not increasing like crazy when I check SMART, and it's not seeking because once every 5-10 seconds the hard drive does make a seeking sound too which is also strange

So the new WD80EZZX quiet ticking/chirping sounds every second or so, and a seek sound every 5-10 seconds whenever it's idle. If I access the drive the ticking/chirping sounds stop. It doesn't matter if the hard drive is in enclosure or shucked, sounds stay the same.

Does anyone have any idea if that's normal or not? I don't want to go through the trouble of putting a hard drive about to die in a new server while I'm still within my return period to newegg.


EDIT: Seems like my drive may indeed be a HGST 5400RPM? I got the same CMD ERROR as Shonk_ guy from reddit when running wdidle3 command trying to disable head parking on my drive. Also found another reference to people hearing the same kind of sound on new He8 HGST drives. Any input?
 
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Shucked drive.. I'd beat the hell out of it with disk tests. If the sound gets worse or you start seeing SMART errors send it back.
 
Some modern drives pre-emptively seek across the drive, a sort of physical wear-levelling feasture. It may be surface-scanning in the background too.
 
I seem to recall from threads by Captain_WD that these My Book drives have automatic hardware encryption. Could it be that the drive is trying to find it?
 
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Small update. Got another external WD My Book 8TB, it makes exact same noises. I have to presume this is normal. Time will tell how long these drives last.

P.S. as I said in the first post shucking these is actually very easy and unlike Seagate/Toshiba drives you can do it without breaking the tabs if you ever need to RMA the drive. Best value for large drive right now IMO.
 
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