My Book (New) 8 TB: vibrations?

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

I have a brand new My Book (8 TB) (WDBBGB0080HBK-EESN).

Is it normal that the enclosure vibrates (and that vibrations can be felt when touching it) enough that it transfers some of the vibrations and tremors to the wooden desk (regardless of the rubber feet on the bottom of My Book), resulting in a faint buzz or a hum which can then be heard in a quiet room even from few feet away? It’s not dramatic but can be a bit irritating, as it’s not that loud, but it IS a constant low-frequency buzz.

This My Book shares the desk with 4 NAS devices (ALL using WD Red drives, 9 of them in total across all of the NASes) and generates more vibrations than all of the NASes combined.

It’s like the enclosure is not doing a particularly good job dampening the vibrations coming from the drive.

This happens whenever the drive is powered on, regardless of whether it is being accessed or not. The moment USB cable is unplugged and the drive goes to sleep, this stops.

Since this is my first and only 8 TB My Book, I find this quite strange, even though I know it is using helium-filled drives (WD80EZZX) but I have no similar 8 TB drives to compare this to (I’d be curious to know whether a 6 TB My Book does the same). I’ve had a few older My Books and My Clouds (Gen 1) before and no enclosure was vibrating this much when powered on.

Is anyone having a similar experience with the new My Book (8 TB)? Would you consider this to be normal?

WD Support has referred me to the article (linked below) about the hard drive noise but as I have explained this is NOT a hard drive noise as such; in fact I’d say that the drive itself is pretty quiet when reading and writing (and not much louder than my Red drives), it’s just that it’s generating significantly more vibrations whenever it is powered on, even if idling.

https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=15113

Since there is no better way to just describe the sound or the intensity of the vibrations, this is what they look like when measured using the accelerometer sensor on an iPhone (with the iPhone placed flat on top of the enclosure and left there). As can be seen from the image, these are quick, fast vibrations, not that big in amplitude but easily felt since they are quick.

My Book:

1242×1493 549 KB

And just for comparison this is a 4-bay NAS with 4 x WD Red 4 TB drives, clearly not generating as much nor as intensive vibrations as the My Book:

1242×1656 594 KB

Anyone in the community using the new My Book 8 TB, any thoughts on this? :slight_smile:

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That degree of vibration sounds a bit odd to me after having worked with drives for decades. Sounds like something may be unbalanced in your motor.

I have also worked extensively with electric motors and felt them vibrate badly. DO NOT try this with a hard drive, but with a smaller electric motor, if it is vibrating you can usually stop the vibration by tapping the bearings till they re-align.

That’s a common practice when rebuilding a small motor. When you first put the end pieces back on with the bearings you tighten the screws loosely then fire up the motor. It’s bound to vibrate and when it does you tap the motor shaft ends till the bearings align and the vibration stops. Then you tighten the end pieces and test again.

Again…do not try that with a hard drive, I mentioned it only to convey the idea that an unbalanced motor can do that. There is nothing you can do about it in a hard drive without voiding your warranty or potentially destroying the drive.

There’s nothing else in the drive that could cause that kind of vibration. If the head motor is vibrating like that it would be slow and random. The fact that the vibration is always there suggests it’s the motor. Either way, vibration of that severity in any form is not good.

If the motor bearings in your drive are out of alignment you need to ship it back to the factory for a replacement. If you bought it from a larger store, like a Walmart, you could take it back there.

Even if the drive inside the Mybook is not secured properly, it should not vibrate that badly. I have held many hard drives in my hand with the motor running full speed and there is no vibration whatsoever.

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Found this quote on an amazon site:

“Compared to the 8TB Red, the EZZX runs very quietly, runs cooler, and as far as I can tell runs just as fast. The “real” 8TB Red drives I bought had bad humming and vibration which was really annoying, it reverberated though the floor of my house and was audible downstairs. Not at all wife friendly. The EZZX is barely audible when an ear is pushed against the drive, and no vibration is detectable by touch”.

See near bottom of page in comments section:

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Thanks for your input and comments a while back. Just to let you know what happened afterwards.

The local distributor has replaced that previous My Book as it was clearly faulty. It has spent a few days at their service center first for them to test it. I have just received the new one and this one seems to be operating normally.

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Interesting, here it is 4 years later and I have the exact same vibration issue with this drive that I just purchased from Amazon and received 3 days ago.
WD 8TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive, USB 3.0 - WDBBGB0080HBK-NESN
The drive doesn’t make any sounds, just has the annoying vibration that I was able to eliminate from being an issue by using a pad underneath it.
But my concern is 2 fold. First if it will cause longer term issues and second that I consolidated 2 smaller drives on to it and went through a pain in the butt process of relinking many shortcuts.

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I bought the exactly same drive (same model number) and can hear the same low frequency hum. It is very, very annoying. Not acceptable for such type of desktop drive.
It is also running very hot, up to 56 C. That drive is definitely goes back to store.