New Caviar Black Buzzing on "Boot" (2nd in a row)

Hi all,

I recently purchased a Caviar Black 1 TB drive (model WD1001FALS) from Best Buy.  When I installed it (temporary external enclosure, Antec MX-1) the hard drive would buzz each time I turned on the power.  HD Tune reported no health (SMART) problems and the error scan came back clean.  Nonetheless, I exchanged the drive at the store.

The problem is, the second drive is making the same exact sound, and only at boot (when the head moves, I think).  I have never heard this from a hard drive before.  I contacted WD support, they had me run their Data LifeGuard Diagnostics, and both the quick and extended tests were good.  Same goes for HD Tune. 

I’m 100% sure it’s the drive that’s buzzing (it’s quite loud).  I even powered it up separately with a new PSU I just got, and it still buzzed, so it’s not my enclosure.  I recorded the sound (high quality) - it’s very distinct.  I uploaded it to rapidshare for those interested:  http://rapidshare.com/files/438451203/WD_Buzzing.zip.  (I can reupload elsewhere, if necessary.)

Is anyone familiar with this buzzing?  I can’t imagine it’s normal.  Maybe the store just got a bad lot of drives in?  I can’t trust this drive until I know more about the buzzing.

I’d be thankful for any suggestions.

I purchased a WD 1.5 TB hard drive couple of days ago and I’d say that this click click sound is normal because i’ve also heard similar noises coming from my HD, however I’ve never heard that kinda noise that comes from your hard drive at 0:02. You should probably show it to a technician.

0.2 - 0.3 sec - servo getting power and discs starting to spin-up

0.7 - 10.0 sec - disc spin-up, full speed

10 - 15 sec - placement (the heads finding where they are on the disks)

16 - 20 sec - reading / writing data (assuming reading if its the boot drive

sounds like most IDE drives that i have had in external bays

the horror is when you get 0.2 - 0.3 sec and then it repeats 2-3 times before the disk finally starts going full speed

or the worst situation, when you only get 0.2 - 0.3 sec, regardless of what you do. (even if you freeze the drive and run it outside in 20F weather…)

Update:

I exchanged the second hard drive for yet another one.

THE NEW (THIRD) ONE IS MAKING THE SAME EXACT BUZZING SOUND AS THE FIRST TWO.

AAAAAAAAAAGGGHHH!!!

I haven’t run any diagnositics on the third one yet - don’t see the point.

By the way, I’m not crazy, and it is indeed the hard drive making the sound, not something else.