Is your disk grinding and rumbling for no apparent reason?

In having several 1TB Caviar GreenPower drives; I've observed them at length.

Yes! It is the PWL function kicking in. It makes rumbling and grinding noises, like heavy file copying

The more write operations you perform, the longer the PWL operation will be in effect.

Some drives do this, some don't. It depends on the design and many factors, including the firmware.

This doesn't indicate a shorter life or a problem with the disk.

Additionally here's a real-world scenario. I had a disk that kept grinding away for some time. I put 2'n'2 together and found that after about 1/2 hour of power on the rumbling stopped and the drive idled nicely with no head movements. I had also just done a massive copy operation prior to the onset of the rumbling. The drive was simply wear leveling. And the bigger the copy operation, the longer the PWL state lasts.

A day or two later, I don't know exactly how long.. I didn't sit there all night with a stop watch.. The drive runs perfectly silent when not doing disk access. I copied a couple of movies to it and the PWL got excited again. Eventually it settled down as expected.

Sometimes this "eco" environment stuff can seemingly go too far. And at the same time most of us "seasoned" experts from the old-skool don't understand why something is done a certain way.

 

I'm Sorry! but is there a point to this? Are you asking something specific or are you just generally relating about WD Caviar Green Drives

 

General discussion. Little else.