Noise coming from 4TB WD Blue SSD

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1

Hi all,

Just bought the 4TB WD Blue 3D NAND Internal SSD, and put it in a USB-C caddy for use with my MacBook Pro.

The drive works great, but it appears to make more noise than I’ve ever heard from an SSD before when. it’s being read from. There’s what sounds a bit like coil whine, and a quiet HDD-like clicking.

Is this normal? It does the same on two different Macs, in two different caddies, and with two different cables. It only happens when reading, not when writing.

Thanks for reading. :slight_smile:

2

Given there are no moving parts and no regulators etc, it’s not obvious what is making noise. I have lots of SSD products and no a peep from any of them.

Usually the whine is seen from power lines which are AC, harmonics from reactive loads can make noise

3

I can hear very, very faint noise from another one of my SSDs, but it’s much quieter than this one.

Using driveDX, there appears to be nothing wrong with the drive, so I guess I’ll just see how it goes for a while, and take advantage of the warranty if it breaks down.

4

I have dual M.2 SSD in 2 of my machines, the only noise present is the fans. I use lots of fans in my machines so that brutal workloads do not cause overheating.

I do a lot of video conversion which can pressure the CPU hard.

5

Well, no, I wouldn’t expect you to hear the same sound from internal SSDs – I’m talking about an external one in a caddy. If mine was inside a PC case, I definitely wouldn’t hear it.

6

even in a case it should be quiet

7

Indeed, although as I say, one of my Samsung SSDs makes the same noise but very, very quietly, so I’m not sure what to make of it all, really.