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?