WD Caviar Black 1TB Idle Noise Normal?

Hello everyone.

Just bought a WD Caviar Black 1TB ( WD1003FZEX). I’m quite happy with the performance so far. It also runs cool, around 22-23C.

But the thing is; there is a somekind of noise coming from the drive constantly, even when idle. It’s like a “hsssss”. It’s not very loud. I have couple of fans in my case (all run around 500-600rpm so not very noisy) and I barely can hear it. But when I get closer to the case then I start hearing the noise. But my older sata2 Seagate and Samsung drives are not making that kind of noise when in idle.

I don’t know if it’s the normal operating sound of Caviar Blacks, since people keep telling about how noisy it is. I’m consfused. Other than that SMART status is ok, drive is not making any loud/weird noise when reading/writing stuff or make vibrations.

Thanks

Best

supertramp,

The measured sound levels for this particular disk drive are 29dBA when Idle and 30dBA during Seek operations. If your sound testing utility provides similar values then the disk is operating as intended, however, the actual layout and case may affect the perceived sound levels when suppressing vibration, as every disk drive is different.