4TB WD HDD making noises every 5 seconds ...

[Darkwave Dahlia]

... which kinda reminds me of the problem with Windows 10 and the APM settings.
The thing is: I tried several tools from the internet - nothing worked. Anything else? Because it just gets on my nerves big times ...

Specs (if relevant)

Storage

3726GB Western Digital WDC WD4005FZBX-00K5WB0 (SATA )
232GB Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 250GB (Unknown (SSD))
1863GB Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB (Unknown (SSD))

CPU

Intel Core i9-9900KF @ 3.60GHz

GPU

3071MB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (MSI)

Additional Information
- On the front of the computer (case is a beQuiet), the left LED keeps blinking like crazy.
- The noise sounds like a faint "knocking". I think it's caused by APM function which parks HDD heads too often.

Question

How do I make the intervals longer e. g. 10 minutes? Or remove the APM completely? Several tools I downloaded look fancy but do nothing at all. And if you know the answer, please: ELI5.

[Andrius227]

Dont think there is a way to fix it. All you can do is maybe move the drive to an external enclosure and put it as far away as you can, in some sort of cabinet or something. That works for me at least.

Putting hdd's inside the pc case is terrible from my experience. Always causing vibrations and stuff and i cannot even switch it off for the night without turning the entire pc off.

It also doesnt help that you got a WD black, which is the noisiest WD drive. I use WD Reds for both PC and NAS (5 in total) and i can actually sleep in the same room (which was not possible when i had a single 2TB WD Black).

[ぜぜぜぇ〜イ！！！]

Run HDDScan and set the APM value to 3 or use CrystalDiskInfo, choose Advanced Feature and set the value to 03h, click Enable, your problem should be solved (no more sound).

[Darkwave Dahlia]

I changed my PC 2 times already ...

[Illusion of Progress]

I know this is an old thread and OP moved on from it through hardware changes (guessing nothing was ever found to address it then), but it's an interesting read nonetheless. I currently still have a 5 TB model of that same HDD and I've never experienced hearing this.

[Andrius227]

Illusion of Progress님이 먼저 게시:

I know this is an old thread and OP moved on from it through hardware changes (guessing nothing was ever found to address it then), but it's an interesting read nonetheless. I currently still have a 5 TB model of that same HDD and I've never experienced hearing this.

Might be PWL, i know most modern wd hdds have it but i dont know about older wd blacks.

I didnt even know it was a thing at first, its barely audible on my wd reds. But then i bought and shucked a couple of 20tb wd elements and they had a much louder noise every 5s and i looked into it and it turned out to be a feature called PWL.

[Illusion of Progress]

Andrius227님이 먼저 게시:

Illusion of Progress님이 먼저 게시:

I know this is an old thread and OP moved on from it through hardware changes (guessing nothing was ever found to address it then), but it's an interesting read nonetheless. I currently still have a 5 TB model of that same HDD and I've never experienced hearing this.

Might be PWL, i know most modern wd hdds have it but i dont know about older wd blacks.

I didnt even know it was a thing at first, its barely audible on my wd reds. But then i bought and shucked a couple of 20tb wd elements and they had a much louder noise every 5s and i looked into it and it turned out to be a feature called PWL.

Interesting. I have a 5 TB Black, I had a pair of 4 TB Blues, and replaced them with a pair of 8 TB Blues (which I think are H.G.S.T. models), and also a 5 TB external Elements, and I can't a noise for any of these drives other than the vibration from them spinning and the usual noise they make when seeking things. not saying none of them have the feature or anything but I can't hear anything but the expected noise, and I'm... rather picky about noise usually. I had to return four GTX 970s over coil whine, and technically I can hear my GTX 1060 do it at times (only in Minecraft of all things). If any of these hard drives are making a noise like that, I guess I'm not noticing.

[ぜぜぜぇ〜イ！！！]

Illusion of Progress님이 먼저 게시:

Andrius227님이 먼저 게시:

Might be PWL, i know most modern wd hdds have it but i dont know about older wd blacks.

I didnt even know it was a thing at first, its barely audible on my wd reds. But then i bought and shucked a couple of 20tb wd elements and they had a much louder noise every 5s and i looked into it and it turned out to be a feature called PWL.

Interesting. I have a 5 TB Black, I had a pair of 4 TB Blues, and replaced them with a pair of 8 TB Blues (which I think are H.G.S.T. models), and also a 5 TB external Elements, and I can't a noise for any of these drives other than the vibration from them spinning and the usual noise they make when seeking things. not saying none of them have the feature or anything but I can't hear anything but the expected noise, and I'm... rather picky about noise usually. I had to return four GTX 970s over coil whine, and technically I can hear my GTX 1060 do it at times (only in Minecraft of all things). If any of these hard drives are making a noise like that, I guess I'm not noticing.

The noise is much more noticable on high capacity drives intended for NAS or server (enterprise edition).

[Illusion of Progress]

*shrugs* No idea then. The reply I responded to stated "most modern Western Digital" so I was replying based on that, as at least 5 of my 6 HDDs (all are Western Digital) are modern enough, and maybe all 6 are if you count 2017 as "modern". In any case, OP was hearing it with their 4 TB Black (which was likely either a 2015 or 2016 model like mine?) back in 2019.

The two recent HGST model 8 TB Blues (EAZZ) definitely have some distinct noise characteristics that the Western Digital model 4 TB Blues (ERZR) didn't, but they don't sound like they do what OP describes.

Out of curiosity OP, you mentioned moving on from that drive "two changes ago". Was it behaving with the noise until the time you got rid of it?

[Andrius227]

Illusion of Progress님이 먼저 게시:

Andrius227님이 먼저 게시:

Might be PWL, i know most modern wd hdds have it but i dont know about older wd blacks.

I didnt even know it was a thing at first, its barely audible on my wd reds. But then i bought and shucked a couple of 20tb wd elements and they had a much louder noise every 5s and i looked into it and it turned out to be a feature called PWL.

Interesting. I have a 5 TB Black, I had a pair of 4 TB Blues, and replaced them with a pair of 8 TB Blues (which I think are H.G.S.T. models), and also a 5 TB external Elements, and I can't a noise for any of these drives other than the vibration from them spinning and the usual noise they make when seeking things. not saying none of them have the feature or anything but I can't hear anything but the expected noise, and I'm... rather picky about noise usually. I had to return four GTX 970s over coil whine, and technically I can hear my GTX 1060 do it at times (only in Minecraft of all things). If any of these hard drives are making a noise like that, I guess I'm not noticing.

Well PWL does sound exactly like normal hdd noise which is why most people dont notice it. It's only really noticeable when the hard drive is idle, there is a normal hdd click exactly every 5s, thats PWL. It's only really a problem with very noisy drives.

[Illusion of Progress]

Interesting. I Googled the term, and it stands for "pre-emptive wear leveling", and the Wikipedia[en.wikipedia.org] states...

"The term preemptive wear leveling (PWL) has been used by Western Digital to describe their preservation technique used on hard disk drives (HDDs) designed for storing audio and video data.[4] However, HDDs generally are not wear-leveled devices in the context of this article."

And Googling "Western Digital PWL" has a lot of talk about it, similar to OP's thread here (except OP was asking about APM), most of them being within the last five years or so. Newer threads claim all brands do it now but I can't say.

This is a new one to me I think. I knew there were certain energy savings things (like on Greens and similar drives, and externals) for aggressively parking heads. I notice my external drive sometimes need a good 2 to 3 seconds to respond whereas my internal ones don't (they are either ready to go if spun up, or need to spin up and take longer than 2 or 3 seconds). But OP had a Black so I was a bit confused by any of that sort of stuff pertaining here. I notice some of the comments are saying if they are somewhere where they are "cushioned", the noise either greatly lessens or disappears, but that sort of applies to HDDs in general. All my hard drives are in my case with those padded absorbers between them and the "tray" they sit on though, so I'm wondering if that could be (part of) why I never noticed it, even if any of mine even do this behavior.

My Black isn't what I'd call silent, but it's not overly loud, and I definitely never noticed a consistent 5 second sound.

Sort of curious if OP had this noise until the end, and if their HDD was cushioned or not. I double checked the thread but didn't see it mentioned whether it was or not.

[Darkwave Dahlia]

Interestingly, I had this noise until the end. Well, until I decided to disconnect the HDD. After that, I switched everything to SSD with a complete system swap and have only used SSD since then.

[Andrius227]

ᑐᑌᑎᕱ님이 먼저 게시:

Interestingly, I had this noise until the end. Well, until I decided to disconnect the HDD. After that, I switched everything to SSD with a complete system swap and have only used SSD since then.

Same here. My pc is all SSD's (6 SSD's, 31TB total capacity). But i still use hard drives in my NAS.

[Illusion of Progress]

ᑐᑌᑎᕱ님이 먼저 게시:

Interestingly, I had this noise until the end. Well, until I decided to disconnect the HDD. After that, I switched everything to SSD with a complete system swap and have only used SSD since then.

Interesting. Not sure why I've never noticed it with mine then. I presume your HDD, when you had it, had something to absorb the vibrations?

Maybe some luck out and others don't and just get noisier ones. Not sure.

[_I_]

some cases have little rubber boots for the hdd mounts to stop some vib
but most do not make much to begin with, or use all 4 screws will be quiet, the quick release brackets tend to rattle very easily