Western Digital Scorpio Blue 320GB Clicking Noise

The annoying clicking noise that every WD3200BEVT (and possibly other Scorpio Blue) hard drive has. This happens most often when the drive is idle.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• WD3200BEVT
• 320GB
• 320
• western
• digital
• wd
• scorpio
• blue
• clicking
• clacking
• annoying
• noise
• 2.5
• inch
• hard
• drive
• hdd

[amtwhite]

Were you ever able to get rid of the click noise? I have it in a brand new laptop with a WD Scorpio blue hard drive...

[palmboy5]

@amtwhite Nope, I replaced it with a Hitachi that also clicks (not as loudly) and I just live with that now.

[KingMacintosh]

Have same exact drive and same exact problem on a computer for work. Don't trust this, drives a year old and I wouldn't be surprised if it conks out any day now.

[palmboy5]

@KingMacintosh I actually RMA'd my drive a couple months ago and the new one still does the same clicking (of course). Got to LOVE this Scorpio Blue. -_-

[c0rrupts3ct0r555]

thats the WD idle feature, parks the heads when not in use, then unparks.. u can use a program called wdidle to fix it.

[palmboy5]

@c0rrupts3ct0r555 wdidle works on the 3.5" hard drives, I've used it on my WD 2TB's. It does not work on Scorpio Blue's though! Trust me, I tried! The drive starts dying mid-copy and had all sorts of weird behavior. It is fortunate that using wdidle to set it back to default fixed that little adventure.

[MarSis13]

Arrrghhh mine's making that same exact noise! It's annoying the hell out of me!

[sakeranz]

my new Asus with WD64000BPVT 640 GB also making sound like that...

i thought it was HD "death click", it's annoying idle sound but....oh well gotta get used to it......

[KingMacintosh]

@palmboy5 WDC laptop drives suck ass, there's in a class of their own failure. I'm surprised my one-year-old Scorpio in a work comp still works!

[comoseabien]

Hello, i'll buy this HD what do you think?

[Kaoritsuki]

Never have this noise... but what do i know it blew out on me D:<

[cyberkeeper1]

@everyone: the click you hear is normal. in this model, the head retracts to the park position to prevent damage in case of impact. any time the drive is done with any write operation and remains idle about 30 seconds more or less, it parks the head. and it also parks the head in this model during a write operation, again to prevent damage. it has a G-Sensor in the drive.



[parkhoon]

@parkhoon Okay, I got my SA replaced. This time it came with a Hitachi, and problem is gone.

[parkhoon]

Oh shit. My laptop HDD is doing the exactly the same thing. I have a Scorpio blue 500gb in Sony SA. I don't know what I should do with this.

[TheZBRproductions]

Your harddrive is dieng , the head is smashing to the top of your harddrive, backup as much as you can and replace it!

[Eep386]

That is probably WD's clunkily-executed attempt at saving power, also known as Idle3 (so-called "Intellipark".)

I used to have a Scorpio Blue. It ran VERY warm and voraciously devoured my battery (I was running Win 7.) It also frequently entered Idle3 state, leading to nice frustrating 3-5 second delays at random intervals when it spun back up. APM settings and wdidle3 had frustratingly little effect. Finally ditched it in favor of an old Momentus, never was happier.

[redcatex]

have same external, doesnt matter connected on sata or usb, after a while it starts to lose files, and now it's basicly dead i cant even try to format it. but mine makes that noise less times.

[bingo453]

@palmboy5 advanced options meaning DOS or windows programs. I haven't gotten the Samsung drive yet. I'll wait and see.

[palmboy5]

@bingo453 If anything, the slim would insulate the noise less, and for me the slim wasn't even out yet. I had the drive in a Windows laptop with no settings able to stop the clicking, what "advanced options" do you mean exactly? I have tried the IntelliPark-changing DOS based program but that definitely wasn't meant for the Scorpios as the drive couldn't complete any sort of operation without dying.. No experience with Samsung, good luck!

[bingo453]

@palmboy5 I could be because I have the 40 GB PS3 version and not the slim. I've searched everywhere on google and as it seems it is the "idle click". Unfortunately I can't turn this off because I don't have advanced options on the PS3. If I had a notebook I could download a program but I've decided to return the WD drive and get a Samsung 500 GB for my PS3. How does that sound?

[palmboy5]

@bingo453 Interesting, back when I was reading user comments for the WD on Newegg, the people stating that they didn't hear such a click were using them in a PS3 so I guessed the PS3 insulated such a noise enough. Unfortunately for you that wasn't the case :\. I ended up replacing my WD with a Hitachi HTS545050B9A300 model drive which has a slightly louder spinning hiss noise (WD's is still the quietest I've heard which was why I bought it) but it doesn't do the clicking noise.

[bingo453]

@palmboy5 thanks for the answer, but it happens just as in your video. It's not activity clicking it always happens when it goes idle but the hardrive spins up again after a few seconds, then goes idle and makes the noise again. It doesn't do it if I load or save game data, neither if I download anything.

Do you know an alternate harddrive I could use for my ps3?

[geneva2589]

Mine does this too... anyone have answers for this??? I just bought it!!! it's a 500g scorpion blue WDD

[palmboy5]

@bingo453 The light for the HDD turning on would probably mean that you're hearing normal activity clicking rather than the clicking I have recorded for this video. I'd prefer activity clicking over the clicking I recorded because it isn't as loud or random. This thing is like a Chinese Water Torture device as you can't expect when the next click is going to occur and it will drive you nuts.

[bingo453]

is this normal? I have a 500 gb western digital scorpio blue in my ps3 and it makes these sounds every time the light for the hdd goes on...