WD 320/5400 clicking

I just got a WD 320gb / 5400 drive. One reason I chose it was that the drive is advertised as being silent. Alas, it makes a bit of a clicking noise whenever it is reading or writing. Not loud or grinding, but audible.

Should I try exchanging for the same model? Try the Samsung? Some other option?

 

Dont worry about it, every harddrive makes noise since every drive is mechanical.
I hope the 320Gb drive gave you a nice performance boost.

Post up an HDTUNE benchmark if you can.

K-TRON

 

Clicks are normal sounds to be heard from hard drives; it may be the read/write heads searching across the platter for data, or it could be the read/write heads parking when not searching for data.

 

It's noisier than the half dozen Hitachis I have strewn about.

 

I think the 320s out now use 3 platters instead of the traditional 2, so the number of R/W heads will increase accordingly, which in turn will = more noise.

 

That is some very nice performance you have there. 52Mb per second is very good. The fastest in the industry.

I hope the noise does not bother you all that much. I have two drives in my laptop, and I dont ever hear them. I leave the fans on full as to avoid overheating.

If you really want a quieter drive, you can get the Samsung, but all of the hassle in doing that will most likely not be worth the extra decibel.

Here is what I recommend you do.
First go out to the hardware store and get some small rubber grommets.
Take your harddrive out of the laptop, and insert small rubber grommets between your harddrive and the harddrive caddy.
Do this for all four of the screws which hold the harddrive in.
You should be able to do this.
If the grommets will not fit, bend the harddrive caddy a bit, and make the grommets fit.
This will help cut vibrations and quiet the harddrive.

If there is no room for rubber grommets there, I also suggest gluing rubber grommets to the bottom and top of the harddrive caddy. this will help cradle the harddrive and prevent vibrations.

This should quiet your drive a few decibels.

You can also put a thick rubber sheet behind the harddrive caddy cover, so that no noise can escape through the gap between the cover and the rest of the chassis.
Make sure the rubber is slightly bigger than the cover, so that no noise gets out.

I hope this helps

K-TRON

 

Won't adding this rubber insulate the drive causing it to operate at higher temperatures?

 

No, the rubber will only be used to dampen vibration around the mounting screws.
If rubber is used as flashing behind the cover, it will not increase temperatures since the cover is solid anyways.

K-TRON

 

The drive is held in place (cradled) by two rubber pieces which cover the long sides. It's a standard feature of the Thinkpad x61s.

Performance is very good, perhaps because I've only installed XP and a few apps.

Is the Samsung likely to be quieter than the WD? From prior research, the WD seemed to have less noise issues. I'm probably more sensitive to noise than most, and would trade a bit of performance for quiet.

 

All of the other ideas are pretty good. One other thing you can try as a first shot is running the Western Digital diagnostic utilities on the drive to see what they say. The utilities can be d/l'ed from here.

I had a similar experience with 120GB WD that I bought a few months ago - it made a very low, but still noticeable, ticking noise when it was running. The noise never sounded "bad" - like a scrape or a drag - but I'm guessing that it was an indication that something inside was hitting the platters. In my case, when I ran the diagnostics on it, I found that it had a growing number of bad sectors (it was already out of spec for bad sectors and they were growing a little too rapidly given that the drive was almost brand-new). Of course, my experience might not translate over to your drive since it's a newer model; nonetheless, it never hurts to keep an eye on the health of your drives.

If the drive diagnostics come out clean, then it's probably just noise associated with operating, in which case K-TRON's idea to use the rubber grommets between the drive and the drive caddy sounds like a good idea. You might also see if that idea could be applied to the connections between the caddy/drive unit and the case of the notebook itself - it's possible that the caddy is securely fastened to the drive, but not to the case itself.

 

I know that sound does not travel well through liquids.
You can waterpoof the laptop harddrive bay and fill it with oil

You should try putting some rubber around the edges of the harddrive cover, so that less sound is emitted.

According to Western Digital, the Acoustics of the 320gb drive are:
Idle Mode 24 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 0 26 dBA (average)

The Samsung 320Gb drive has these acoustic values:
Acoustics Idle 24 decibel
Random Read 26 decibel
Random Write 26 decibel

The noise is the same, so do not worry about swapping drives

K-TRON

 

According to Newegg:

"Quiet - In a notebook drive, silence is golden. WD's exclusive WhisperDrive combines state-of-the-art seeking algorithms to yield one of the quietest 2.5-inch hard drives on the market."

 

24-26 db is not that loud.
I cannot comprehend how loud the drive is, but you can use software to tune the noise, the speed of the harddrive and you can physically dampen the noise.

You are not going to get a much quieter drive.

Whisper-quiet means whisper quiet. A whisper by definition is 24db, which happens to be the same db rating as the harddrive.

K-TRON

 

Enable acoustic management if an option. It will cause a slight performance hit but hey. Now when you have these issues do you actually press your ear against the notebook or sit back 3 feet like the rest of us? Are you in a "clean room"? I mean I am just guessing you might be way too sensitive/unrealistic/demanding/unreasonable unless a defect things are what they are.

 

I have the WD2500BEVS and the noise is quite acceptable - much less than the average Hitachi HDD. I doubt if anything changed when the capacity was increased to 320GB (still 2 platters, slightly higher data density). For me, the noise is only audible in a quiet room when the computer's fan isn't running. However, HDD noise and temperature are both influenced by the mounting in the notebook. A sold palmrest must help to dampen the sound.

I don't think the Samsung would be much quieter, and is reported to give the occasional clunk for reasons unknown.

John

 

My ear is about 1-2 feet from the drive in a normal room.

The WD replaces a 120gb/5400rpm Hitachi which was significantly quieter. The Hitachi was inaudible to barely audible with the fan running. The WD is noticeably louder than the fan. Same computer, mounting, palmrest.

I chose the WD in large part because the Samsung is reported to give the occasional clunk for reasons unknown.

 

I don't mean to be picky, but sounds travel better through liquids since the density of molecules per unit of volume is greater. Because sound is basically a pressure wave, more molecules would carry the wave further and louder.