Whiny drive?

I have in my possession an out-of-warranty 120gb Western Digital IDE drive, 8mb cache, 7200rpm, model WD1200JB-00EVA0.


The drive works fine when I plug it into my computer. It reads and writes fine, and I can see all the data on it. Transfer speeds are also fine. WD Data Lifeguard Tools reports no problems.

So all's well and good, right?

Well, here's the thing: this drive makes an inexplicably loud whine whenever it's plugged in. I have had a few of these drives in the past, none this loud. I have no idea what could be causing it, and it doesn't seem to affect performance, but I can't trust the drive when it's doing this.


Any idea what could be causing it, or how I could remedy this? Can I send it back to WD for repairs at all, even though it's out of warranty?


I already tried percussive maintenance, that didn't seem to work

sounds to me like the drive is dying, possibily do to failing bearings. Might wanna get the info of and replace it

In my expericene some WD drives pick up a very loud whine after a while. I always took that as a cue to replace the drive.

WD has finally switched over to fluid dynamic bearings as of jan 2005 across the line. If you pick up a new WD, just make sure it was made after jan 2005. FDB really helps to makes drives quite!

dicecca112 said:

sounds to me like the drive is dying, possibily do to failing bearings. Might wanna get the info of and replace it

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It's not mission-critical, in fact I haven't even been using the drive and someone gave it to me. It's out of warranty, though.

I'm not sure we can say anything for certain without hearing the drive in person. My 80gb WD has had a good whine to it sense the day I got it almost 2 years ago. You might want to get a friend/tech listen to it to make sure, but It's probably fine.

WD's are known to whine, its the bearings.

My WDSE's would whine every now and then , but would eventually stop . Right now both of my 80'S in RAID are running nice a quite and have been 98% the time . Ive had these two in RAID for quite a while now , not even sure if they are still under (3yr) warranty any more .

Unless the whining gets REALLY loud (or progressively louder), then I think your fine .

Bios24 said:

I'm not sure we can say anything for certain without hearing the drive in person. My 80gb WD has had a good whine to it sense the day I got it almost 2 years ago. You might want to get a friend/tech listen to it to make sure, but It's probably fine.

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It's really loud though. I've used mostly WD drives for a while, and none have been this loud.

I also had a Western Digital 20 GB 7,200 RPM UDMA 100 HDD that did the same thing. That HDD, like the one you're posting about don't have any bad sectors and passed all tests. Just a spindle whine. The manufacture date on it is January 23, 2001. I got it used for a spare back in probably this past February. January 23, 2001 LOL! That was the same day that I was literally arrested, because of some a**holes ratting me out after I got p***** off at a person that was harrassing me shortly before. Long story.