Clicking when Idle?

Goatbert · Post by **Goatbert** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 7:13 am

Hey everyone,
I purchased a Western Digital Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT for my Mac Mini (2009), which serves as my main (non-gaming) desktop. I had a 5400 RPM Scorpio in my old Mac Mini and it worked great. I'm happy with the noise levels from this drive except that when idle, the damned thing will click, sometimes every couple of seconds. A very audible, loud click. Its driving me crazy - but SMART diagnostics and data transfer speeds show no sign that the drive is failing.

I checked the NewEgg page for the drive and other people have reported the same thing. So I though, ok, I'll get a Seagate. I go to look at the 7200 RPM 320gb Seagate equivilent, and see reports of the same damned thing. And again for the 500gb Momentus. Is this normal behavior or something? I don't feel like dropping $320 on an SSD, but I also don't feel like having to go through 3 or 4 drives to find one that doesn't do this. Any recommendations?

Thanks,
-Jeff

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 8:30 am

Hi Jeff,

It may be the noise is happening when the heads are being parked?

ntavlas · Post by **ntavlas** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 9:11 am

I`ve encountered this clicking noise on a drive that didn`t get enough power. It was an external drive that got it`s power through the usb cable. It also had a second usb connector in case it didn`t get enough current from the first one. So on certain pc`s it clicked until I plugged in the second cable.

It could also be a power managment issue. I think some 2,5 inch drives are programmed to shut down when idle and depending on the implementation one could come across this frequent shut down/wake up circle. If I remember correctly WD recently published a firmware that fixes this issue.

Goatbert · Post by **Goatbert** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 10:51 am

NeilBlanchard wrote:Hi Jeff,

It may be the noise is happening when the heads are being parked?

If that is the case, it is parking the heads a lot.

I think I'm just going to RMA it and hope for the best. Really not looking forward to prying open the Mac Mini again.

-Jeff

Goatbert · Post by **Goatbert** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 11:39 am

So frustrating - every drive I look at has so many people reporting problems like this, it makes me afraid to buy any. Is getting an SSD that costs 50% of the cost of my machine really my only reliable option? =/

Wish drives didn't suck so much.

Rebellious · Post by **Rebellious** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 5:50 pm

My WD Scorpio Black did the same clicking, I posted here with the solution:

viewtopic.php?t=52626

Goatbert · Post by **Goatbert** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 8:49 pm

You're my hero. Booted my mini to a FreeDOS CD, ran the utility. I don't notice the noise. Thank you!

Rebellious · Post by **Rebellious** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 3:14 am

You're welcome. The Hitachi 7K320 is very good too, so is the Fujitsu MHZ2320BJ and neither make clicking noises.