new Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD6400BEVT 640GB 5400 RPM

[jchambers2586]

I got a new hard drive from new egg  it keeps making clicking noices Is the drive bad or is it by nature of the beast  How do I get the drive to stop clicking. I do not want to RMA the drive unless I have to.

[Bill_S]

Is it clicking non-stop?  Or is it, just clicking once or twice, irregularly?

If it's clicking non-stop, then the drive is bad, and you should replace it.  If it's new, return it to the place of purchase for a brand new one.  If it's clicking, irregularly, then you may be hearing the head parking.  You can run the DLG Diagnostics utility to make sure that the drive is okay, but if the parking issue becomes anymore of an issue, you should contact WD about it.  You can do so either by phone or email.

To Contact WD for Technical Support
http://support.wdc.com/contact/index.asp?lang=en

[jchambers2586]

I ran the DLG Diagnostics utility no errors were found at all. Do I RMA the drive I see if the next one does it also I have 3 blue 3.5 inch drives in my desk top they dont make any noise at all. I heat a clunck when it idel. It sounds like the arm is baninging agains the spindle.

[Bill_S]

That's the head parking.  You didn't answer my question.  Is the drive clicking continuously, or occasionally (irregularly)?

[jchambers2586]

ocasonally clicking.

[Bill_S]

Occasional clicking should not be an issue.  More than likely the drive head is parking as it goes into idle.  Also, if you are moving the laptop around, then it will immediately park the head to protect the drive platter.

[jchambers2586 · Accepted solution]

I turned it in for replacement they sent me a different model of drive. The model they sent me was one with advance format.  The other one was not a advance format drive the new drive doe not make any noise at all. 

[javispedro]

I have recently bought an Acer 5820TG which also has a WD64000BEVT disk -- it also makes clicking noises on idle. However, those are faint and that does not bother me.

The issue is that according to S.M.A.R.T, the load cycle count is already around 3100 for about 29 power-on hours (~ 2 cycles per minute). Worrying myself, I booted up the stock Windows 7 and let it idle for 2 minutes, which caused the load cycle count to increase from 2988 to 3000. This makes it a whopping 6 load/unload cycles per minute when completely idle, and if the 300,000 load cycle specification is to be believed, a mere 800 hours until estimated failure.

Now, my question is.

Should I worry about this? Will WD tell me this is "perfectly normal and acceptable" and that there's something going on that I don't know (maybe this "intellipark" technology means that the S.M.A.R.T. cycle count is inaccurate)? Or should I try to update firmware (if so, why is firmware so much hidden in the WD site)? Should I try to run the WDIDLE utility and set a much saner idle timeout value than the current ~ 5 seconds?

The clicking is not very noticeable and the frequent spin ups I can live with, but I cannot live with a drive that will die on me in less than a year.

[jchambers2586]

there is no warrenty on preinstallled hard drives. ex you buy a new pc and there is a drive in it. They are warrentied by the pc manufacture. so if you want a hard drive warrenty you are required to purchase a new hard drive. I know this because I have repaired alot of pc's in my time.  If you end up buying a new drive go with a momentus xt they are part ssd and part hard drive. they are really fast. 

[rezabaig2003]

Hey I new to this forum. I am from India, but friends I must say WD customer care is su... (Very Bad). I recently bought a WD Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVT-00A0RT0 for my Sony Vaio lap.. but to my expectation the HDD was bad and I have to visit the retailer to get it replaced. The retailer raised RMA on 5th Aug 2010. the status after 7 business day (Excluding Saturday and Sunday) says "waiting for the product". Dialing in the customer care, most of the time the toll free number is busy and if you are lucky enough to get through then whole day u have to just listen to the message "thank you for calling, our support agent are attending to call, please wait and your call will be answered asap" but to no avail. it seems that either there is only one agent is handling all the calls or if there are many agents then this prove that all the WD HDD are bad and the CC service is flooded with calls and the wait time is whole day and needs to be dialed again tomorrow. This was the first time that I bought WD product and that too faulty. How can a new HDD have problem. Is it not checked after production. Please help with the procedure as I can't work without laptop and I am sure that with this kind of India support, it take ages for my HDD to come to me.