Hi, long story short my WD Elements Portable make this screeching noise occasionally and I am unsure what the cause and more importanly the meaning is. More detailed story below.
I have 1 TB and 2 TB variants (I’m gonna simply refer to them like that). I had the 1 TB initially until one day it froze while writing some data from my PC, resulting in it repeatedly doing this screeching noise any time I booted the PC with it connected, and I had trouble accessing it.
I plugged it into my laptop and there was no screeching and it was perfectly accessible (except for one folder to which I was copying to when it froze), so I backed it up. Windows 11 offered to repair it (Windows 10 on my PC did not attempt that despite the obvious issues) and following that I could access the data from that one folder as well. And that seems to have resolved it - I’ve connected the 1 TB back into my PC afterwards and it runs flawlessly ever since.
Since that happened I have also purchased a 2 TB variant. Yesterday I heard the screech from the 2 TB for the first time. I was downloading some family videos and the free space on 1 TB was not enough, so I switched to the 2 TB for this one case. When transfering the files over it did the screech once at about 20 % of the transfer (the overall transfer was successful) and then once when it was inactive and I was just about to eject it.
I perform backups (from 1 TB to 2 TB) via laptop and have never ever heard the screech when they are connected to it. Could it be something with my PC then?
