WD "Special Edition" HD ...Noise

Yesterday I got my Western Digital "Special Edition" 80gb hard drive with 8mb of cache from Newegg. I installed it and it works. But it makes a funny noise and I wanted to know if this is common or if there is something wrong with mine. I read that this was supposed to be a very quiet hard drive so I'm kinda of shocked about this. The noise is makes is sort of like a chirping/grinding noise and it reminds me of when you save something to a floppy disk (that type of noise). Well this hard drive is making this noise almost all the time. It's on and off but it's very constant. It's not like it just happens when I'm saving something to the hard drive. It's happening when the computer is idle. I want to know is this normal? Is this ok? Or do you guys think maybe I should return this one and get another one from Newegg?

Thanks in advance.

I have the same drive and it does not do that. I would return it.

Is it a high pitched noise? If so, than that is normal. It's a shame nobody mentions this... That is why I insulated my case and why I sold a couple of them off. :D

I stay away from WD Drives, too many bad expriences. I have had better luck with Maxtor and Segate.

Now this is getting interesting. I got home today and it hasn't made that noise since I've been home. But when I first sat down at my computer there was an error message. This is what it said.

The title said "Windows- Delayed Write Failed"

"Windows was unable to save all the data for file D:. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere."

I'm pretty sure this is why it was making that noise because that noise has stopped now. What does all this mean?

it means you should probably RMA the drive. ;)

How do you RMA a hard drive?

log in to newegg and RMA it if it's within the 30-day (?) time period, or else call WD.

Oh you're talking about a return policy. Well I think the hard drive is fine. But what about that error message? What did that message really mean? Also it mentioned something about the D: drive and yet my new hard drive is the C: drive.

My 100gig WD also makes those chirping noises. Annoying as hell. This is my 3rd 100gig WD drive, the previous two failed (the second was dead on arival and the first started making very loud motor squeeling). In my experience WD quality these days is almost non existant :/

new information always helps. ;)

it's a bit confusing, though, b/c first you said the new WD drive was making noise, then in the post about the error message you said you assumed that was why it was making the noise. but now you are saying that the data failed to write to the old drive? is that right?

it could maybe still be an error on the new drive if your OS is there and it failed when writing to D: -- especially if the old drive has never given you problems.

or the old drive could be going bad, or it might not be hooked up or master/slaved properly. are the two drives on the same IDE channel, or different? are you sure the jumpers are set correctly?

you should probably also run diagnostics on both disks to try to isolate the problem. kind of sounds like the new disk failed, and the data didn't get written to D:. but w/2 disks it's hard to say. a disk scan, etc. might tell you for sure.

your hard drive is about to go bad

Quote:

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Originally posted by serotone9
new information always helps. ;)

it's a bit confusing, though, b/c first you said the new WD drive was making noise, then in the post about the error message you said you assumed that was why it was making the noise. but now you are saying that the data failed to write to the old drive? is that right?

it could maybe still be an error on the new drive if your OS is there and it failed when writing to D: -- especially if the old drive has never given you problems.

or the old drive could be going bad, or it might not be hooked up or master/slaved properly. are the two drives on the same IDE channel, or different? are you sure the jumpers are set correctly?

you should probably also run diagnostics on both disks to try to isolate the problem. kind of sounds like the new disk failed, and the data didn't get written to D:. but w/2 disks it's hard to say. a disk scan, etc. might tell you for sure.

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I did say my new hard drive was making noise, but then again I can't really guarantee that. My two harddrives are stacked on top of each other. The newer one is on top. I do know that it was one of the hard drives and I figured it was the new one because I've had the older one for like 3 years and it's never done anything like that before. The odd thing is that the noise has stopped since that error message (which is good).

I think you are accurate when you said this "it could maybe still be an error on the new drive if your OS is there and it failed when writing to D: -- especially if the old drive has never given you problems." It kept on making that noise because it couldn't write to the D: drive. I think that's the best guess as of right now.

As far as connections. I know that's all right. It says so in the BIOS. And yes they are connected to the same IDE (1).

What data was being written to the other hard drive? I didn't ask it to write any data to the D: drive. Is it something that it does automatically or what?

I don't believe the hard drive is about to die as I just bought it (although you never know). And I do know that chirping/grinding noises can often mean a dead hard drive as I just experienced that with my last hard drive about 2 weeks ago. But I don't think that's the case with my new Western Digital HD.

Even more problems. Tonight I was installing some more programs and software onto my new hard drive (like my graphics card software and Norton Anti-virus). Anyways after installing those things I restart my computer and it has trouble loading. I was amazed how quick it would load up from setup mode (where is shows all your drives, I.e. primary master, primary slave, etc.). After I had installed the new WD HD it would load that so fast that I could barely even read what was the master and what was the slave. But this time something really wrong happened. It loaded up extremely slow (like probably 30 seconds instead of 2 seconds). And it said that my D: drive (my older HD) was not there. I tried to check it in BIOS and it wasn't there either. Did my older hard drive just die on me?

It sure looks that way and that really frustrates me because my other hard drive just died like 2 weeks ago (that's why I had to buy the Western Digital "Special Edition" HD).

Is there any hope for my older hard drive or is it dead?

Hi,

These Western Digital drives I have heard they produce alot of noise, when i was talking to my college teacher he said one of the 40GB western digital drive failed on him and said they make so much noise, i thought weatern digital were a good make.

Cheers:cool:

your hard drive is dead, if its 3 years old, your lucky to get that much life out of it these days. that high pitched noise is usually the harbinger of death, i have heard it many many times. go to the manufacturers website and see if they have a HD test utility, run the test to be sure.

Unfortunately it probably did die. But that's just a weird coicidence because my other hard drive (before I bought my newest one) died about 3 weeks ago. It's weird they would both die right around the same time especially since they were bought at different times and they were different models/brands. You mentioned that these days 3 years was a long time for a hard drive to live. To me that's just not right. I hope you are overexaggerating because 3 years is not a very long time. Why do the hard drive companies make them with such terrible quality that they can't even last more than a few years? That's really wrong, especiall for people who don't back up their hard drives (which is probably a LOT of people).

Overall for me it's not a huge deal as there was currently nothing on the hard drive and it was only an 8gb hard drive to begin with. But I'm still mad that all my hard drives are dieing at the same time. It kinda makes me feel like there's something wrong with the whole computer.

What brand and voltage is your powersupply?

I can't recall what brand it is. It came with my case. The brand of the case is Codegen. The power supply is 350 watt.