Annoying idle noise

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

Hi forum!

I have a mybook 1TB home edition which makes an annoying noise whenever I leave it to idle for about 10-15 minutes.

The noise is a mid/low volume, high pitched sound which seems to go on for more than 5-10 minutes (in any case, longer than I can bare to listen to it).

It stops as soon as I browse the drive and open a folder that has not been opened recently.

So I am left wondering, what is the cause of this noise? Is it normal? But most importantly, can I “turn off” this noise / prevent the drive from doing whatever it is doing when I leave it on its own?

Many thanks,

Sincerely,

sleepless nights next to my mybook

Edit: On second thought, maybe this is the wrong sub-forum, I think I misread the categories as “Mybook Mac” and “Mybook Windows” when clearly the second one is labeled “Mybook PC”. Oh well…