# Strange HDD noise when idle.



## Techtu (Feb 13, 2013)

So for awhile now one of my storage drives seems to be making a hell of racket when sat doing nothing...

I've only recently discovered that this is whilst the drive is idle as was just updating a few of my programs which led to me running a test with HD Tune where to my surprise the noise stopped. It's pretty much sounds like the needle isn't resting properly and flicks back and forth, I'd usually think the drive was on it's way out but it's been like it for as long as I can remember. 

Here's a pic of HD Tune, does that look ok, if so what could be the solution to my problem if any


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## qubit (Feb 13, 2013)

The drive is dying from that description.

The blue line shouldn't be rough like that but more or less smooth.

Make sure you have a backup of your data and get another drive.


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## Batou1986 (Feb 13, 2013)

Techtu said:


> So for awhile now one of my storage drives seems to be making a hell of racket when sat doing nothing...
> 
> I've only recently discovered that this is whilst the drive is idle as was just updating a few of my programs which led to me running a test with HD Tune where to my surprise the noise stopped. It's pretty much sounds like the needle isn't resting properly and flicks back and forth, I'd usually think the drive was on it's way out but it's been like it for as long as I can remember.
> 
> ...



somethings wrong there for sure
how long have you had it so i have a guess of impending doom on mine


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## drdeathx (Feb 13, 2013)

Mr. Miagi says go buy solid state. Wax on, wax off.


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## Techtu (Feb 13, 2013)

Batou1986 said:


> somethings wrong there for sure
> how long have you had it so i have a guess of impending doom on mine
> http://img.techpowerup.org/130213/uhoh.png



I've had it a good couple of years... maybe 3.



drdeathx said:


> Mr. Miagi says go buy solid state. Wax on, wax off.



Mr Miagi say's check system specs he already has an SSD


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## drdeathx (Feb 13, 2013)

Techtu said:


> I've had it a good couple of years... maybe 3.
> 
> 
> 
> Mr Miagi say's check system specs he already has an SSD



Hehehehehe

Get another!


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## kn00tcn (Feb 13, 2013)

uh how do we know it's not windows/another app trying to do something? does it sound the same as writing/reading or is it a completely new sound? can you make a recording?

i've been using a clicking (head parking) seagate for over 4yrs, it's not dead or dying in my case, it's just a bit unstable & the read speed test is a little more jittery than yours

how are the smart values?


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## 95Viper (Feb 14, 2013)

These tidbits of info may be of interest to you...
WD10EARS makes "clicking" noise when idle

Quote from NGOHQ.com:


> It has come to our attention that Western Digital's Caviar Green HDDs suffer from a critical design flaw caused by an aggressive power-saving feature. Western Digital has developed a new technology called Intellipark (aka Idle 3 mode) and it is designed to reduce power consumption, in part by positioning the HDD's heads in a park position and turning off unnecessary electronics after 8 seconds of inactivity.
> 
> According to an in-house investigation and user reports', some software and operating systems are incompatible with the Intellipark feature causing endless head parking movement as the HDD continuously goes in/out of idle mode. This abnormal behavior creates stress on the HDD and that could lead to the following issues:
> 
> ...


 And, they mention a fix in the rest of the article, here --> Critical Design Flaw Found in WD Caviar Green HDDs


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## Batou1986 (Feb 14, 2013)

95Viper said:


> These tidbits of info may be of interest to you...
> WD10EARS makes "clicking" noise when idle
> 
> Quote from NGOHQ.com:
> And, they mention a fix in the rest of the article, here --> Critical Design Flaw Found in WD Caviar Green HDDs



its been so long i forgot about that my drive wasnt effected
This sounds like exactly what your describing


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## natr0n (Feb 14, 2013)

The speeds look good but the drive is failing/about to die.

Back and forth clicking means head failure usually.


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## Techtu (Feb 14, 2013)

95Viper said:


> These tidbits of info may be of interest to you...
> WD10EARS makes "clicking" noise when idle
> 
> Quote from NGOHQ.com:
> And, they mention a fix in the rest of the article, here --> Critical Design Flaw Found in WD Caviar Green HDDs



I think your spot on the ball there! I'll get round to giving it a try tomorrow with today being Valentines day an all the missus wouldn't be too happy with me spending more time here than with her  

Anyway here's a screen shot of my smart attributes.


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## Techtu (Mar 11, 2013)

Just to let you all know the fix worked a right treat!


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## DRDNA (Mar 11, 2013)

GREAT JOB GUYS! Thank you for the follow up to the resolution!


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## qubit (Mar 11, 2013)

I've got three WD20EARS HDDs and never had this load/unload problem. On top of that I'm using two of them in raid 1 as data-only drives without issue. These are not constantly accessed, so I don't know why I don't have the problem.

Only thing I can think of is that the timout is set to a much longer interval. I could check it with the fix if I was really bothered to find out.


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 11, 2013)

95Viper said:


> These tidbits of info may be of interest to you...
> WD10EARS makes "clicking" noise when idle
> 
> Quote from NGOHQ.com:
> And, they mention a fix in the rest of the article, here --> Critical Design Flaw Found in WD Caviar Green HDDs



must sound like a click of death (trying to find the boot sector while the head moves back and forth across the patter and the platter is rotating) that IBM Deskstar drives had. After Hitachi bought them i never had an issue again cuz all ibm deskstar drives turned in would be replaced with Hitachi Drives.


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## Tonytiger01 (Jun 18, 2013)

Your hard drive has a known critical design flaw in its Intellipark feature
but it  also has an easy fix

"It has come to our attention that Western Digital's Caviar Green HDDs suffer from a critical design flaw caused by an aggressive power-saving feature. Western Digital has developed a new technology called Intellipark (aka Idle 3 mode) and it is designed to reduce power consumption, in part by positioning the HDD's heads in a park position and turning off unnecessary electronics after 8 seconds of inactivity.

 According to an in-house investigation and user reports', some software and operating systems are incompatible with the Intellipark feature causing endless head parking movement as the HDD continuously goes in/out of idle mode. This abnormal behavior creates stress on the HDD and that could lead to the following issues:

 • Loud clunking/clicking/buzzing noises every few seconds.
 • Artificially increases the number of load-unload cycles in S.M.A.R.T.
 • Possibly shortens life-time of the HDD.
 • Possibly reduces performance of the HDD. 

 Western Digital posted a knowledge base article, where it claims that "The number of systems using such applications and utilities is limited", a statement which we believe is false and inaccurate. Sending an HDD to idle mode only after 8 seconds of activity is abnormal behavior, which much software doesn't like as they are constantly writing and reading data to/from the HDD. 

 According to Western Digital, the following models are affected: WD20EADS, WD20EARS, WD15EADS, WD15EARS, WD10EADS, WD10EARS, WD8000AARS, WD7500AADS, WD7500AARS, WD6400AADS, WD6400AARS, WD5000AADS, WD5000AARS, WD1000FYPS, WD7500AYPS and WD7501AYPS.

 Western Digital has released a DOS-based utility to modify the behavior of the HDD to wait longer before invoking idle mode. However, since most of their latest HDDs still ship with the default setting of 8 seconds, we strongly recommend users with affected HDDs to use the utility and monitor S.M.A.R.T data immediately (we recommend using CrystalDiskInfo for this task).

How to Adjust Intellipark's Timer
 1. Download the WDIDLE3 ISO image and burn it to a CD/DVD. (http://files.ngohq.com/fs/wdidle3.iso)
 2. Ensure that your SATA controller is set to IDE mode from the BIOS.
 3. Boot from the CD/DVD, it should take you into DOS. 
 4. In DOS prompt, type: "wdidle3 /S300" to change the default timer from 8 seconds to 300 seconds (5 minutes). 
 5. In DOS prompt, type: "wdidle3 /R" to verify the results. 

 We appreciate Western Digital's efforts to conserve energy and protect the environment, but the 8-second-overkill Intellipark feature could lead to opposite results as more HDDs will be produced to replace defective ones. We sent an email to Western Digital with a link to this article asking for a comment on this matter. We will update this story as soon when we hear back from them.

Update #1: Daniel Mauerhofer, Head of EMEA PR in Western Digital has commented on this article. "This issue is far from critical, does not impair normal functionality or place data at risk, can be mitigated with a utility for the small percentage of systems affected, and is a well understood industry standard."

Update #2: A user on Western Digital's forum claims that his Caviar Black HDD is affected as well. "WD2001FASS parks heads after 12.8 seconds. It will eventually kill itself doing this. I was getting around 1400 Load Cycle Count a day due it parking and waking up constantly."


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## 95Viper (Jun 18, 2013)

Tonytiger01 said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Are you real or just a bot?
You sign up to the forum to repost info that was already posted ( see post #8 ); in a thread that is 3 months old, and give no credit to where your info came from... NGOHQ.com's "Critical Design Flaw Found in WD Caviar Green HDDs" article.


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## Ketxxx (Jun 18, 2013)

The drive has a fault for sure and I'd certainly expect failure. It is odd that the drive is only noisy when idle though, at a guess I'd say one of the platters is possibly dodgy which could account for it being noisy while idle as the platter probably wobbles around more clipping any platters aabove / below it.


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