6TB WD Red drives make squealing noise at power off?

[lunadesign]

I just bought 2 WD Red 6 TB (WD60EFRX) drives and noticed something odd while doing some testing on my usual test system.

When I power off the system using the PC's power button (i.e., because I've just finished doing some DOS-based tests), the drives emit a noticeable squeal/screech noise for about 2-3 seconds. If I shut down from Windows (not using the power button), the drives shut down quietly like one would expect.

I have over a dozen WD Reds (3 TB and 4 TB) and none of them have ever made this noise. In fact, I've never heard a noise like this out of a drive.

Is this normal for the newer WD Reds? I tried the WD Red support line and the very friendly support person wasn't sure.

[MikeC]

We didn't encounter this in our testing of WD Red 6TBs, tho I can't be positive the same kind of power down was done enough times for us to notice.

[lunadesign]

Thanks Mike.

I've had no problems reproducing this on both drives with 2 systems. In one case, I had the drive outside the cage so there were no case effects involved and I'm still getting the noise. It's truly strange....I'll try to find a way to record it.

[lunadesign]

I finally got some decent audio recordings tonight.

I recorded a WD60EFRX unit and then a WD30EFRX to compare. In each case, I powered up the drive by itself outside of the cage with no OS or other drives connected, then hit the power button to spin the drive down. I've posted the two MP3 files on SoundCloud.

WD60EFRX recording - https://soundcloud.com/lunadesign16/wd60efrx
WD30EFRX recording - https://soundcloud.com/lunadesign16/wd30efrx

In the WD60EFRX recording, you can hear the drive spin up at the 7 sec mark and the spin down squeal starting at 32 sec.

In the WD30EFRX recording, you can hear the drive spin up at the 5 sec mark and the quiet spin down starting at 26 sec.

[lunadesign]

In case anyone is interested, I spoke with my contact at WD and he didn't seem to think this was normal.

I got two more new WD60EFRX units and they not make the squealing noise. These new ones sound very similar to the WD30EFRX but the single click sound made at power down is a bit louder on the new WD60EFRX units (probably due to the increased platter count) but it still sounds totally normal.

I'm definitely returning the original set of drives.

[HellDiverUK]

I have a pair of WD50EFRX and they both make a squealing noise when powering down. They are pretty much silent when running, though. WAY quieter than the Toshiba 5TB "Cloud Storage" drives I also run, which are just noisy old enterprise drives.

[casebuyer]

have this sound time to time as well
is this dangerous