1TB WD My Book Essential Edition, screeching noises!?

[Hobie-wan]

More in general, every manufacturer has issues from time to time, model to model - or even particular production runs or shipments. If I refused to buy from every HDD manufacturer I'd personally had problems with...I'd basically be unable to buy a drive.

Indeed, the only universally bad ones were that particular series of Deskstars (Deathstars). Though even those were far better off if they were kept cool.

[Ziggy]

I use to have a couple of paperweights, I mean, Deskstars.

[Hobie-wan]

I have 2 or 3 Deathstars. Both are refurbs at this point, having had to RMA them. They were still working last they were in a machine. Admittedly they were crammed into a full case and were being used in a warm room back in the day. Not that they get a pass for failing.

[Xeogred]

I'd post an update but it looks like this error checking is going to take a few years. Well probably doesn't help that I'm on the PC too...

Hopefully it speeds up overnight.

Edit: Nevermind it just magically stopped, nothing was wrong. Guess I'll defrag it next. But do you guys have any idea what that loud noise could have been? I'm more than positive it wasn't coming from my PC (like it wasn't a weird boot code or anything).

[Xeogred]

Well, the weird noise popped up again today. I left my room for a minute and came back to it... I noticed once I accessed the drive again in Windows Explorer it stopped at that moment. I just ran both a Smart/Extended test (WD Diagnostics) on the thing and they passed. So software wise everything is checking out. Still being cautious here... you guys think there's an issue here at all or anything?

[Hobie-wan]

Does that shell have a fan in it? Maybe if it is a speed controlled fan it's dying and making noise when at slow speeds because the drive is idling and when it speeds up becayse the drive is in use it's quiet?

[Xeogred]

Does that shell have a fan in it? Maybe if it is a speed controlled fan it's dying and making noise when at slow speeds because the drive is idling and when it speeds up becayse the drive is in use it's quiet?

Don't think it has a fan, however I looked up my model and found something pretty weird:
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid ... LN&cat=HDD

"The enclosure's heat dissipating design with Morse Code prevents heat buildup, a notorious data killer."

haha wow, maybe that's it? The drive is behind my monitor, next to a computer tower I'm not using and next to another 250GB WD I pretty much always have off... there's breathing space between them but maybe I should move the drive somewhere else. Perhaps that's it?

[vlame]

Does that shell have a fan in it? Maybe if it is a speed controlled fan it's dying and making noise when at slow speeds because the drive is idling and when it speeds up becayse the drive is in use it's quiet?

Don't think it has a fan, however I looked up my model and found something pretty weird:
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid ... LN&cat=HDD

"The enclosure's heat dissipating design with Morse Code prevents heat buildup, a notorious data killer."

haha wow, maybe that's it? The drive is behind my monitor, next to a computer tower I'm not using and next to another 250GB WD I pretty much always have off... there's breathing space between them but maybe I should move the drive somewhere else. Perhaps that's it?

Code: Select all

The Morse code message written into the drive case is made up of a selection of the words "personal", "reliable", "innovative", "simple", and "design". The first occurrence of "innovative" on the My Book Pro and My Book World Edition reads "innovateve" ("e" is one dot in Morse, "i" is two dots).

[Xeogred]

So it's playing an "e"?

I dunno, that kind of confused me even more.