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An Anonymous Coward writes:

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 [tomshardware.com] about [wd.com] on forums [linustechtips.com] 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.

Soylents, do you have one of these drives? What is your experience with the WD five second click of death?

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