Constant HDD seek sounds

[M76]

I've just set up a raid array in my computer using intel RST, and now I can constantly hear the typical sound of spinning drive heads seeking.
I assumed it was the initialization before it finished but it didn't go away when it finished.
WTF is going on? Is this another hidden "feature" of Windows 10 cataloging my data?

 

[michalrz]

Which raid level?
It's probably just indexing and it should eventually stop depending on how many files are there.
Or an offline health check by RST. You could use the HDD vendor's tools to try to quiet it down via AAM. It shouldn't hurt performance a lot but will produce a quieter setup.

 

[Nenu]

If its just one drive it may have a problem low level format.
I encountered this a few times usually when something like a unscheduled power down happened. A sensitive area was probably written over/corrupted.
I was able to recover the drives with HDD Regenerator but it can take all night to run depending where the corruption is.
One drive was constantly seeking like crazy, it would not stop, I was amazed it was recoverable.

This was with drives less than 2TB, I have no idea whether HDD Regenerator will support larger.
Another good product back in the day was Spinrite.

Its been quite some time since I have had to deal with a corrupted drive that I'm not familiar with modern tools.
Good luck.

ps HDD Regen doesnt care how you use the drive, it works at lowest level.

 

[Jorona]

Just an FYI, Windows will poll all drives in a cyclic pattern because of how it does autoruns for CD-DVD ROMs. If you disable the Optical drive in device manager, does the issue stop?

 

[drescherjm]

Are these 8TB WDC drives?

 

[M76]

Which raid level?
It's probably just indexing and it should eventually stop depending on how many files are there.
Or an offline health check by RST. You could use the HDD vendor's tools to try to quiet it down via AAM. It shouldn't hurt performance a lot but will produce a quieter setup.

Health seems to be fine, it can't be indexing, because I heard the sound even when there was no data on the array. How do you do an offline health check? I don't see any such option in the RST application.

If its just one drive it may have a problem low level format.
I encountered this a few times usually when something like a unscheduled power down happened. A sensitive area was probably written over/corrupted.
I was able to recover the drives with HDD Regenerator but it can take all night to run depending where the corruption is.
One drive was constantly seeking like crazy, it would not stop, I was amazed it was recoverable.

This was with drives less than 2TB, I have no idea whether HDD Regenerator will support larger.
Another good product back in the day was Spinrite.

Its been quite some time since I have had to deal with a corrupted drive that I'm not familiar with modern tools.
Good luck.

ps HDD Regen doesnt care how you use the drive, it works at lowest level.

There are no signs of any data read errors or corruption, and performance is fine, so I don't think it's a faulty drive. But I can give it a try.

Just an FYI, Windows will poll all drives in a cyclic pattern because of how it does autoruns for CD-DVD ROMs. If you disable the Optical drive in device manager, does the issue stop?

I don't have optical drives, and it's doing it constantly. Autorun is disabled anyway.

Are these 8TB WDC drives?

Nope, 3TB drives 2 Toshiba, 4 WD.

 

[M76]

Eww, I've been fooled. The disks all seem to be seeking all the time, probably windows doing it's thing.

But the annoying noise was a fan acting up in the colder weather, that sounded exactly like a hard drive seeking very hard. Disconnected the fan, the noise is gone.

 

[Nenu]

lol, doh!