I just received my first ever 4x Western Digital Gold 6 TB (WD6002FRYZ), which I inserted into a brand new Synology DS418play NAS.
Quite immediately after getting started, I was struck by an incredibly annoying “clucking/chunking/choppy” sound. There is possibly also always a “raspy tapping/clicky sound” just before the chunk. This happens every 5 seconds, even when idle, and seems to happen 24/7. I’m not yet sure if it’s just one drive responsible for the sound, or all 4x of them.
Audio clips below – the sound is actually quite loud in reality even though it has a somewhat “muffled character”. I’ve also heard it make some “sharper sounds” with roughly the same mechanics:
By now, I’ve had them for a few days and I’ve completed the initial RAID/SHR configuration, I’ve run extended S.M.A.R.T tests from Synology DiskStation and they seem healthy. I haven’t been able to test them with some Western Digital utility as they’re NAS drives. Yet the clucking sound every 5 seconds, even when idle, is quite frankly driving me a little crazy.
I read somewhere here that frequent noises could possibly be due to a WD feature called “PWL”, but at the same time this support page – “How To Tell If The Noise or Sound An Internal Drive Makes is Normal” – seems to suggest that recurring clunking sounds are abnormal:
If you find that the recurring clunking sounds are abnormal then you should replace the drive. You should also try to connect the drive with the computer and check if you hear the same noise.
Thanks, but how should I be able to determine if the sounds are abnormal when I’m not familiar with WD’s products since before? Do you recommend me to get in touch with WD support and give them the information above, including the audio file?
It’s probably true but WD goes wrong to force end user with their beta “improvements”. A drive can’t live longer by constant move and lost reading/writing track each 5sec because this is happen too during sequential read/write !
WD should give a tool for control this option like WDIDLE with their head parking. My only drive with head parking active is die under warranty and same model without head parking enable is still alive and more older.
The end user have the right to choose what they think better for their datas. We not store WD datas on their drive. A lot of people send back these drive under warranty and a lot change for Seagate or Toshiba when the replacement drive come with the same issue.
WD lost money with warranty return and lost their customers at the end of story.
A tool or firmware and their customers are happy and a customer happy is a customer who buy again WD !
Can you please try to install HDTune and do a bad sector “read” scan on the whole drive ?
Please try to check if the drive emit the same noise during this operation. My drive emit all the time this noise.
During read/write/sleep all the time and yes I think to general issue on WD Black/Gold and probably Red too because some user report this behavior.
