WD Green vibrating and whining normal?

N

null

Limp Gawd
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Apr 17, 2006
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I recently installed a WD Green drive for backups and noticed my case has since given off an audible humm. After removing or powering off parts one-by-one, I've realized it's the new WD Green that's causing it.

Compared to my WD Raptor and 500 GB Blue drives, I can feel the Green vibrating when I place my hand on it; it also gives off a high pitched whine. Both are very subtle, but noticeable.

Is this normal for Greens?
 
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No. I'd RMA but first leave it powered on for a few days and write some very large files to it.

See how it performs and feel how hot it gets.
 
Good, b/c now that I know what it is and where it's coming from, it's starting to drive me nuts.

Secure erase in progress, then back it goes.
 
It might just be that its speed (and thus the frequency it vibrates at) is resonating with your case, in which case a new one will do the same. Can you use it differently, use rubber grommets or other insulating techniques (rubber bands suspension) ?
 
Yeah it's completely normal. At least every one I had did that. It doesn't mean that the drive isn't about to die though. In fact, it means that the drive IS about to die. All WD Green's do this in my experience. I've had a 250% failure rate with them.
 
The Greens are absolute garbage in my experience. I would avoid them if possible.
 
auntjemima said:
The Greens are absolute garbage in my experience. I would avoid them if possible.
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Not in my experience. They do need to be adjusted for the load cycling though.

And unless you are talking about a large number of drives, you can't conclude a company's products to be garbage based on a handful from a bad batch.
 
S-F said:
All WD Green's do this in my experience. I've had a 250% failure rate with them.
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auntjemima said:
The Greens are absolute garbage in my experience.
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Well, rats. I bought the Green b/c they have really good reviews on silentpcreview.

Thoughts on the WD Reds? I'm just looking for a quiet drive I can use for backups.
 
rive22 said:
Not in my experience. They do need to be adjusted for the load cycling though.

And unless you are talking about a large number of drives, you can't conclude a company's products to be garbage based on a handful from a bad batch.
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I have tried 4 different green drives. 2 2tb and the others were 1tb and 750gb? I dont really recall the size of the 4th but 750 seems about right.

All failed on me. After the 3rd I went searching for others and the green drives are botom of the barrel and fail regularly.
 
null said:
Well, rats. I bought the Green b/c they have really good reviews on silentpcreview.

Thoughts on the WD Reds? I'm just looking for a quiet drive I can use for backups.
Click to expand...

The red drives are NAS drives iirc.. which means they are designed to run 24/7 and from what I have red they are of great quality.
 
auntjemima said:
I have tried 4 different green drives. 2 2tb and the others were 1tb and 750gb? I dont really recall the size of the 4th but 750 seems about right.

All failed on me. After the 3rd I went searching for others and the green drives are botom of the barrel and fail regularly.
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Yeah, 4 drives is nothing. And no they aren't bottom of the barrel at all. I have dozens, my friend's have dozens, people on this forum have much more.

You've had bad luck of the draw or something else is going on like faulty power, bad cooling, excessive vibrations, etc.

null said:
Is this something that could remedy vibrations in the drive?
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No not at all. But it should be done on all Green drives as a necessary measure to increase their lifespan dramatically since the way they programmed the heads to park constantly is completely ridiculous.
 
I assure you that any company that supplies me 4 bad drives out of the 4 i've owned will get negative feedback from me. When 100% of the green drives fail and my MANY others dont, there is a problem.
 
auntjemima said:
I have tried 4 different green drives. All failed on me. After the 3rd I went searching for others and the green drives are botom of the barrel and fail regularly.
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It sounds like others have had problems w/Greens, too: 5 of 10 Greens failed in 2.5 years

Granted, like rive22 said, a larger sample size would be more indicative.

But I did find something interesting on page 2 of that thread - the Greens started out w/5 year warranties, now they're on 2 year warranties. There may be a good reason for that, but it does make me wonder if WD reduced the warranty period due to more-than-expected failures.

But then again, the Blues also come w/a 2 year warranty, and Reds look like they only come with 3 year warranties. Blacks still come w/a 5 year warranty.
 
null said:
Well, rats. I bought the Green b/c they have really good reviews on silentpcreview.

Thoughts on the WD Reds? I'm just looking for a quiet drive I can use for backups.
Click to expand...

The geens are excellent drives, I have three 3tb drives since they released them still running strong and no they should not be at all audible unless your case rattles easily. If you have rubber grommets they do help keeping drives stationary and could extend your drives life, but they do require special screws.

The reason they moved to different warranties is because if the NAS proliferation. The greens originally came out when there was only black and blue drives. Since they have extended their line they transitioned their warranties.

Only buy the reds if you need RAID or use your drives 24/7, the greens are only rated 8/5 our something like that.
 
If you are on the fence and worried, go with HGST. They have some some a Coolspin model as well if you prefer the cool and quiet of lower RPM. I have these too and they are excellent. HGST/Hitachi is generally regarded as good quality and a favorite around here.
 
HGST is owned by WD so if you think WD is skimping, why wouldn't they do it to HGST drives ?

I've got more than 50 WD Green since the first ones came out and have had some failures, but nothing out of the ordinary, I don't trust any drive to not fail on me anyway.

Lastly I bought 20 HGST NAS 4TB because they were a good deal for 3year warranty, boxed drives, then 20 WD Red NAS 4TB from someone who bought hundreds and gave me a great deal, so far so good but only about a month of running them in my NAS. The HGST are 7200rpm and hotter than the Red for sure, but for my use case it doesn't matter. As a secondary to my 1TB SSD I've got a 6TB Red, very discreet (I'm watercooled).
 
The agreement when WD acquired HGST was that they were to continue doing their own thing with separate brands and compete in the market place.
 
I've had all brands fail on me at some point, except Samsung. the 3 2TB Samsungs I bought 3 or so years ago are still running great, they, along with the WD Greens and Black run 24/7 in my 3770K file server.

None of my greens vibrated or whined. I did have a 1TB Black that would make a grinding sound every now and then, and WD told me to RMA it. They gave me a 2TB Black since they had no 1TB Blacks available.
 
WD Blacks is the way to go. I've been using them for years & never had a failure (5-1TB & 500GB) Never had an issue & a quiet IMHO.
 
UMASS said:
WD Blacks is the way to go. I've been using them for years & never had a failure (5-1TB & 500GB) Never had an issue & a quiet IMHO.
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Blacks are not quiet when reading and writing, and they are too expensive for GP storage.
 
Zepher said:
Blacks are not quiet ...
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Based on what I've heard in person, I agree.

In my case silence is a big priority, so I'll likely stick w/Reds or Greens (so long as they prove reliable).

I have a media and backup server build around the corner. I'll need at least a few drives for it; before I decide which ones to go with I'll do some additional research. The Reds are looking good though.
 
You wanna know the truth about hard drives? THEY ALL SUCK, lol. I have RMA'd hundreds of drives, some of EVERY manufacturer.

Just make sure your data is in more than one place.
 
UMASS said:
WD Blacks is the way to go. I've been using them for years & never had a failure (5-1TB & 500GB) Never had an issue & a quiet IMHO.
Click to expand...

Blacks are exact opposite of quiet. I ran ask array of them a few years back and opted for the much more quiet green.
 
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