SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Remember when a hard drive making a repeated grinding sound meant that it was time to backup the data, hope you get it all copied out in time, and prepare to send the hard drive to the great recycling factory in the sky? Fear not, Western Digital is on a mission to help you relive your click-of-death PSTD data loss nightmares with its latest invention: Preventive Wear Leveling aka PWL. The idea of PWL is simple, but the implementation can be a nightmare. It is supposed to move the hard drive mechanics every so often to prevent hard drive failure due to repeated limited motions. The catch is that on some drives the PWL kicks in every five seconds making an audible click that can be felt up to a meter away. This has been asked about on forums and as of July 2025 is still an issue in latest generation Western Digital hard drives that is driving people crazy with the grind and vibration occuring every five seconds. The click of death is now a feature.
Soylentils, do you have one of these drives? What is your experience with the WD five second click of death?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Monday July 28 2025, @02:28AM (2 children)
Complaints back to 2017 -- it appears this is, yeah, a "normal" function, but with a high percentage that go awry and cause various difficulties, including shit performance and stuck-on drive access. More threads:
https://community.wd.com/t/periodic-noise-from-head-movement-wd-black-4tb/183096/22 [wd.com]
https://community.wd.com/t/tincidunt-praesent/199915/65 [wd.com]
And someone's fix:
https://digiex.net/threads/wdidle3-1-05-western-digital-hard-drive-head-park-timer-modify-disable.16019/ [digiex.net]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday August 06 2025, @04:30PM (1 child)
These are the special enterprise drives. I just bought another WD 5TB My Passport external USB drive and so far so good.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday August 06 2025, @05:17PM
Yeah, I've got boxes and piles of WD drives (over a hundred drives), and a whole bunch in use (two that run 24/7 are over 20 years old) and I've only once seen this issue -- over 20 years ago. Thermal calibration got stuck, and would occasionally have a clacking fit. That drive still soldiered on for 3 or 4 years before being deemed too crusty to continue using.
Backblaze just released Q2 stats for this year. WD had by far the fewest fails-per-hour-of-use.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.