WD15EADS grinding - hardware or firmware??

[BD]

I recently bought a WD15EADS 1.5TB 'Green' disk made by Western
Digital.

I plugged it in, on a SATA docking unit that I use.

I did some writing to it. After the write activity stopped, the heads
kept on grinding. Even after I did a soft-disconnect of the drive and
just left it plugged into the dock, the grinding continued.

I did some digging, and found a forum post in which the poster
described similar symptoms, and actually recorded the sound the drive
makes. This is pretty much exactly what I'm hearing:

http://boomboost.com/example/wd15eads_bad.mp3

I don't know whether this is a firmware issue and can perhaps be fixed
with a firmware update (can I even flash the firmware on these
drives??), or if it's a hardware problem requiring an RMA.

Opinions or insights would be appreciated!!

BD

 

[Rod Speed]

BD wrote

I recently bought a WD15EADS 1.5TB 'Green' disk made by Western Digital.

I plugged it in, on a SATA docking unit that I use.

I did some writing to it. After the write activity stopped, the heads
kept on grinding. Even after I did a soft-disconnect of the drive
and just left it plugged into the dock, the grinding continued.

I did some digging, and found a forum post in which the poster
described similar symptoms, and actually recorded the sound
the drive makes. This is pretty much exactly what I'm hearing:

I don't know whether this is a firmware issue and can perhaps
be fixed with a firmware update (can I even flash the firmware on
these drives??), or if it's a hardware problem requiring an RMA.

See what WD has to say about it.

 

[Arno]

I recently bought a WD15EADS 1.5TB 'Green' disk made by Western
Digital.

I plugged it in, on a SATA docking unit that I use.

I did some writing to it. After the write activity stopped, the heads
kept on grinding. Even after I did a soft-disconnect of the drive and
just left it plugged into the dock, the grinding continued.

Do you have any indication this is a problem? May just be
an automatic selftest.

Arno

 

[BD]

Do you have any indication this is a problem? May just be
an automatic selftest.

Only by comparison. I do not have any other 1.5TB green drives, but I
have 2x1TB Greens and 4x650G Blacks. None exhibit this behavior.

I have another new 1.5T Green in my hot little hands. Will confirm its
behavior this evening.

 

[BD]

Only by comparison. I do not have any other 1.5TB green drives, but I
have 2x1TB Greens and 4x650G Blacks. None exhibit this behavior.

I have another new 1.5T Green in my hot little hands. Will confirm its
behavior this evening.

Follow-up - I ran another 'new' 1.5T disk, and it did not behave at
all the same. The continual accessing of the heads was evident only on
the one drive. That drive is going away...

Cheers,

BD