I recently had a custom Windows 10 PC (Puget Systems) built which included two WD Red Pro 14TB NAS internal hard drives. I have had the system for about 3 month when a strange noise appeared during start-up. The noise only happens during a startup from a complete shutdown. The noise does not happen during a Restart. The sound occurs about 16 seconds after power-on and last about a second. It is best described as a “Woodpecker” sound. Once the system is up and running, the PC is absolutely quiet and works as expected. I have run Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic on both drives which both PASSED. I have reached out to WD support via email but have not never received a reply. I have a recording of the sound but cannot find a way to upload to this forum.
Hello,
Please refer to the following KBA article: Error
Startup spin up sound is sometimes audible. Some hard disks I have stuffed into my rig vary in the level of noise they make. Then again I have data center class disks that do not care much about disk head seek noise etc.
I have this exact issue on a brand new build with a 16TB WD Red Pro. It must be expected. I RMA’d the disk thinking it was bad, new drive does the same thing. No clue if that helps, it’d be nice if someone from WD confirmed this rather than just sending a KB, which does not necessarily cover this. I am providing a link to a small video for reference (listen at the 15s - 20s mark).
I also have a WD Red Pro 14TB NAS internal hard drive that I ordered DIRECTLY from the Western Digital website (just to ensure it would be a quality drive, not something random from Amazon, and that the 3-year? warranty would be for sure good, since I have heard horror stories of drives bought from Amazon).
It has this exact same woodpecker like sound only when booting up the PC or when waking it from Sleep Mode. I was freaking out at first because generally HDD’s are not supposed to make noises like that, so I was expecting the drive to go back soon due to the loud noise possibly causing issues like knocking or misalignment.
It is good to know that there are at least two others who also have this problem, the video uploaded also helps since that sounds very very similar to what my drive does. What can be best described as a “woodpecker” like sound. I would love to know WHY it does this just so I can sleep easy at night that if I fill my 14TB drive it won’t suddenly go bad and all that data will be lost, since I am using it as a backup right now.
Also that bog standard reply from Logan.S WDStaff is frustrating because the link no longer works and it doesn’t help us at all.
This is such a loud noise that I also considered RMA’ing it, until I asked a friend in the tech business after I showed him a similar video… he said “ahh it’s probably fine, don’t worry about it”. Rofl, ok fine then.
Disks are mechanical so some noise is expected
the Windows disk optimizer will eventually clean up fragmented files
over time less seeks = less noise
greetings folks 
i bought a 14Tb too (from western digital through amazon a few weeks ago) and i have the same behavior when starting it up, and i am a bit puzzled as i’m not used to this kind of noise anymore
it’s surprising that no one from WD bothered to post a reply to this thread already…
cheers,
-J.
