This sata drive, now several years old, had started ticking constantly. Sysinternal’s Diskmon showed "irp_mj read/write " constantly.
It was still accessible to Win 7 Home and WD Life Guard diagnosed “Error Free”.
I considered backing up the partition and reformating, but decided to swap it into another computer with near-identical motherboard, as a non-booting drive.
On start up, Windows 7 on that computer auto-found and installed new drivers, even though its boot drive was also a Sata,
WD3000BLFS-01YBU1. I had access to the WD360GD without problem.
I then swapped it back to the original computer and the incessant ticking is gone!
Did the “Drive Installation” on the alternate computer make a change to the WD360GD firmware? I have no idea, but it now works on the home computer without ticking. Can WD Techs explain?
Maybe this will be of help to others with a “ticking” problem.
Robert M. Keesling