WD my passport weird noise

[Shalvation]

i started hearing some noise from my 4TB western digital hdd external hard drive, i start hearing it recently after downloading or uploading from qbittorent client and sometimes when i'm watching some movies or videos, it's been getting little louder, i checked the health of my hdd in cystaldiskinfo and WD software tests and seems healthy, should i be worried? is their a problem with the head spinning? also when i'm not using it the noise stops
-> The Noise

 

[neatfeatguy]

I've got an 8TB WD Red that has awful head parking noise. Apparently it is a known issue with that particular drive. I use it strictly for backup so I rarely hear it anymore. This drive has been doing it since the day I got it and I've had it for 4 or 5 years now, no other issues.

Any spinner that's making noise can be concerning, especially when it wasn't making noises you never heard before. It may be wise to see if you can get another drive to backup the data on this one, just to be on the safe side of things.

My brother wanted a way to backup data and be able to easily take it with him, I talked him into getting an enclosure case and a SSD. No spinning parts to worry about.

 

[Harlow]

i start hearing it recently after downloading or uploading from qbittorent client and sometimes when i'm watching some movies or videos

It's not surprising you're hearing lots of noise with qbittorrent. It's reading and writing hundreds of blocks of data per second. With a hard disk, that means multiple head seeks. You'll probably hear less noise during video playback. All perfectly normal.

I've had it for 4 or 5 years now, no other issues.

Your drive is probably well outside its warranty period and it could drop dead at any time. On the other hand it might last for another 10 years. I do hope it's not your only backup. You really need at least 3 copies of all your vitally important (irreplaceable) files, in case of ransomware attack, accidental file deletion or hardware failure. Don't leave all your backup drives connected to one computer at the same time, in case of virus attack.

Listen out for the "Click of Death". It's bad news and requires immediate action if you don't have other copies of your files.

 

[Konomi]

How replaceable is the data stored on it? I'm assuming given it is used for torrents, probably not much to lose outside of time redownloading, if it were to fail. Anything important should have a proper backup procedure and promptly copied off the drive. Depends on how much you value your files on the drive really.

 

[neatfeatguy]

It's not surprising you're hearing lots of noise with qbittorrent. It's reading and writing hundreds of blocks of data per second. With a hard disk, that means multiple head seeks. You'll probably hear less noise during video playback. All perfectly normal.

Your drive is probably well outside its warranty period and it could drop dead at any time. On the other hand it might last for another 10 years. I do hope it's not your only backup. You really need at least 3 copies of all your vitally important (irreplaceable) files, in case of ransomware attack, accidental file deletion or hardware failure. Don't leave all your backup drives connected to one computer at the same time, in case of virus attack.

Listen out for the "Click of Death". It's bad news and requires immediate action if you don't have other copies of your files.

All of the 8TB WD Red I tried (had it replaced twice due to the same sound from all of them) had the head parking sound. Apparently it's part of the PWL (Preventative Wear Leveling) written into the firmware for larger capacity HDDs. Some drives the noise may be more noticeable than others and some drives do it more often than others. Apparently it's very noticeable in the 8TB Red that I have, I thought it was the drives going bad which is why I requested returns on the first couple I had. The sound is annoying, that is for sure, makes you think something is seriously wrong, but according to WD it is the PWL service that is culprit of the noise.

Spoiler

“Preventive Wear Leveling”. It’s a periodic head sweep to distribute lubricant and prevent wear in a particular place if lubricant were to build up in one spot. On many older models, this would happen maybe once a minute. But on some builds it’s maybe every 5 seconds.

Preventive Wear Leveling

Which WD SATA hard disk model lines (Green, Blue, Black, Red, Purple, Gold) have PWL - “Preventive Wear Leveling”? I’m talking about modern models. > PWL - “Preventive Wear Leveling”. It’s a periodic head sweep to distribute lubricant and prevent wear in a particular place if lubricant were to...

community.wd.com

And yes, I have multiple backups of my data in different locations.

 

[Shalvation]

How replaceable is the data stored on it? I'm assuming given it is used for torrents, probably not much to lose outside of time redownloading, if it were to fail. Anything important should have a proper backup procedure and promptly copied off the drive. Depends on how much you value your files on the drive really.

Just movies and some stuff but after stopping seeding and fragmenting the HDD it's all stopped but the noise does come back when I copy files to Seagate hdd but not on sdd, also deleted some files I was seeding, they are probably corrupted