That Famous Click Sound!

WD External and Portable SSD External SSD for macOS
1

Hello everyone.

I picked up a new WD Elements Desktop 10 TB on Amazon to use it as a backup drive for my sound effects libraries.

I plugged it to my mac mini and reformatted it mac os journaled as soon as I received it.

Then I immediately started to hear and feel a weird sound at every 5 or 10 seconds. i could also feel the vibration coming off the wooden desk caused by the click.

Click sound is very similar to a heartbeat sound. Sound is very short and has dominantly low frequency content, just like a heartbeat.

And, It is always there during both read&write process and idle.

I searched the web and found similar threads. Some poeple say that it’s fine while others say that it’s not.

I tried to contact WD Support via E-mail to find out whether it’s a normal operation sound or not. I couldn’t get a satisfying answer though. They just send me a link with some information about the issue and an offer to replace it.

I know there are people having the exact same issue. Is that a normal sound or is it a sign of defect ? Can I trust it to use as a backup drive or Should I replace it ? I don’t care about the sound. I just want to know if it is normal or not. That’s it.

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Anybody ?

3

Hi @noise,

The ‘noise’ heard is due to a feature used to prevent disturbances in media lube due to prolonged dwelling at a single location. This is common for HDD suppliers as a preventive activity for reliability.

Normal operation typically forces seek away and the seek noises heard are expected. During moments of idle, there is less activity and the unexpected sound is more noticeable (Approximately every 5 seconds). Directly attaching the drive to a metal chassis can amplify this occurrence to make the hard drive more audible.

I request you to test the drive health status through Western Digital Dashboard

Title: The Western Digital Dashboard
Link: Install Western Digital Dashboard for Drive Performance Monitoring

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Thank you for the response. I’ll try that soon when I find a Windows installed machine.