WD10EARS makes "clicking" noise when idle

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

I’ve acquired a WD10EARS HDD recently. Everything has been working fine with it until recently. I’ve noticed when the drive is in idle mode, it generates a strange loud click noise every few seconds/minutes randomly. In response, I’ve scanned the entire drive for bad sectors and errors, but no errors found.

I’ve checked around and it seems there are other people having the same issue:

* http://www.overclock.net/hard-drives-storage/933766-western-digital-wd10ears-making-noises-when.html

* http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/WD10EARS-1-TB-drive-ticking-sound-on-W7-Pro-64-system/td-p/111184

* http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/WD10EARS-keeps-on-spinning-Win7/m-p/41209/highlight/true

2

I think the green drives have a power saving feature that parks the heads after a short period of idle time. Maybe the sound you describe is generated by the parking.

3

Solved the problem by disabling Intellipark. http://www.ngohq.com/news/19805-critical-design-flaw-found-in-wd-caviar-green-hdds.html