A few days ago I bought this model of hard drive (it’s a Caviar Blue 500gb SATA), and after installation everything sounded fine except for when I shut down the computer. When I shut it down, the hard drive made a very worrying scratching sound, similar to the sound of a dvd player scratching a disc when tilted to the side, that lasted less than a second. When turned on again I heard no abnormal sounds. This happened every time I shut it down. I called WD customer support and they told me to RMA it because they said it shouldn’t be making noise. Instead I returned it to the store and got it exchanged for a new one.
I finished installing it a few hours ago, and it’s happening again. Every time I shut it down, it makes that same noise. I haven’t been building computers for very long, in fact the WD Caviar Black 1TB I’m trying to replace was actually my first drive in a custom built system. But with that drive, there was nothing like this. The system shut down and the hard drive shut down in one uniform hum. That was always the case with previous store bought hard drives as well.
What I’m wondering is, after two hard drives with this same issue, am I actually misinterpreting a sound this paricular model is normally supposed to make? Or did I really wind up getting two with the same exact issue? Any help is appreciated, and I’d love if someone who owns one of these could confirm that this is normal/ not normal. Thanks!
