(WD Black 500GB) a strange click, and other questions

GSynergy · April 5, 2019, 5:14pm

I have noticed after a period of inactivity, my WD Black 500GB HDD (secondary) will make a click sound just once. It sounds as if the arm is retracting and the drive is to go to sleep, however under the Windows power plan settings, the setting for putting the HDD to sleep is set to 25 minutes, however this click appears about 5 minutes after using the drive.

I’m worried this constant arm retracting will wear out the HDD, as there’s already quite a number of hours on it. I haven’t owned this computer very long so I noticed the sounds since I got it. The SMART data looks all clear to me so far (other than high power on hours, approximately 25,100 hours as of now.) It never clicks during usage, only after and when it sits idle of 5 minutes. I can instantly access the drive again, as it seems the drive doesn’t actually stop spinning.

On a second and somewhat unrelated note, I have two of these drives, one acts as primary and one as secondary in a non raid arrangement. When under load both drives sit at about 42°C, is this normal or too hot for a HDD?

Any insight on this?

Brandon.P · April 8, 2019, 5:46pm

Hi GSynergy,

Some noise would occur during normal drive operation. The type and volume of noise are dependent on whether the is drive performing a read/write operation or idle with the heads parked. You can have a look at the below article to know more about this.

Also, there is no issue with the temperature as the operating temperature of WD Black internal drive ranges from 0 to 60°C. However, I would recommend using the Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool to test the health or performance of the drive.

DavidSucesso · April 11, 2019, 2:50pm

my new wd blue drives makes a click when retracting the arm to the park position

it seems that your drive is designed to park the heads after 5 minutes of inactivity

Andika · April 12, 2019, 6:27am

‘‘I’m worried this constant arm retracting will wear out the HDD’’

why do you need to put it in sleep mode every 25 minutes ?
this is what actually kills an HDD and not the number of running hours.
you waste 1000 times more energy to frying an egg than saving a few watts on your HDD

GSynergy · April 13, 2019, 12:30am

Ah, that was an example time… I could have it set to a much longer duration, however it doesn’t make a difference. The drive will go to sleep and park it’s heads after 5 minutes each time. I am unable to change it.

Andika · April 13, 2019, 1:34pm

you have no clue. heads parking and go to sleep are two different things.

you may want to try the WDIDLE software in order to stop the head parking noise.