I just purchased two 6TB Black (WD6001FZWX drives and experienced the same periodic head clunk sound about every 5 seconds that people with WD Black 4 TB drives seem to have.
Over the years have owned a lot of Hitachi and HGST drives and not experience this behavior.
Called and found it was evident that the tech support does not read this blog and had me do all kinds of test with different enclosures, computers, and cables. Find it hard to get to use to in my “quiet” creative computer room with its barely audible cooling fans in the background.
dobster in the community stated, “Apparently the sound I’m hearing is PWL - “Preventive Wear Leveling”. It’s a periodic head sweep to distribute lubricant and prevent wear in a particular place if lubricant were to build up in one spot. On many older models, this would happen maybe once a minute. But on some builds it’s maybe every 5 seconds. My drives are WD4004FXWX 4TB Black drives.”
Hope this helps those in the Mac Community wondering what is going on and it doesn’t mean anything wrong with new drives.
