I have this HDD that started to make unfamiliar sounds when doing intensive binary file comparisons. It’s a WD Caviar Black, SATA3, 1 TB, WD1002FAEX. I don’t have the exact age right now, but it has been around for some years. I have a second drive of the same model that I can potentially do some comparisons with.
In the waveform and linked audio file below, you’re looking at a binary comparison of 1.00 GB (1,075,721,579 bytes) worth of files in Beyond Compare. There are 25 files in total: 10 video files worth 990 MB and 15 picture files worth 35 MB. The files are roughly evenly distributed in the sequence, but with somewhat more picture files (7 files) at the beginning and at the end (5 files). Some smaller video files (20 - 70 MB) are in the middle and the largest file (170 MB video file) is at the very beginning. The last three files are video files (128 MB, 134 MB, 116 MB). The larger the file, the deeper and more constant the sound is. The smaller the file, the more erratic the sound is. My uneducated guess is that it comes from more sequential reading vs. more random reading and movement of the head.
Have a listen to it on this link. It’s a Jumpshare link - a file sharing service with support for audio files. Note that audio has been normalized (turn your volume down).
This is a recent development, as I started troubleshooting Windows component store corruption, SSD slow performance and errors, and most recently finding out that I had a faulty RAM module. The relevance of this is that the computer has been lifted up, and brought in to another room, put on a desk and then moved back and put back down on the floor several times. I have never dropped it or bumped it, but it’s a heavy computer, with three HDDs in the disk cage that moves and rattles around slightly. Each disk has its own tray. So in terms of acoustics, I’m thinking this may influence what I’m hearing. But the sound has not gone away over the past several days, and the disk seems to be okay, although I have not ran any test on it yet.
So what do you guys think? Have you heard this sound before? Is the disk in fact dying? Should I replace it immediately? I have a backup of the data on it, but I wouldn’t want to replace it just because it’s noisy when doing intensive binary file comparisons. It’s not like I will be doing file comparisons on it every day. As long as the disk is healthy, I see no reason to replace it, other than to prevent data loss, in case you don’t have a backup.
Now… English may not be my first language, but man do these people know how to twist your mind with their mere tongues! 
