MBP and WD HD Not good together?

SO i bought teh WD 500gb Scorpio Blue. The first one I got made ticking noises when it was idle and the sound was louder than the stock 320 5400gig hd. About 4 days later I started getting beach balls when watching movies and then the next time when I booted up the screen would be stuck at the apple logo without any spinning wheel and then no apple logo eventually. So i called dell for an replacement, I got the replecement, and this one STILL makes the the ticking noises when its idle. Is this another failing hard drive or what?

I have the March model, MCO266LL/A

 

Scorpio models have power management firmware that un/mounts the heads, which could be the clicking. Also, do you have anything set to spin down the HDD in the power options?

This was a bigger discussion when the WD 500s originally came out last fall, but then seemed to fall out.... Dell might still be selling some of the original, older stock as I'm guessing they don't move much in terms of magnetic storage via retail. My 400 Blue (which is just the 500 drive with 100 made inaccessible) is quiet, purchased in May from NEgg.

 

i suggest you ask for a replacement. ticking hard drive is a bad sign. (that of a failing hard drive)

 

The weird thing is it only does it when its idle.... Sigh asking for replacement #3. I dont think they were old either. The HDS had a date of June 09 on each of them.

 

can you try an hd tune test and see the results? also see if you continue experiencing these noises. if the results is poorer than the standard test, i suggest you ask for a replacement,

 

If you have bootcamp/windows on you can run the WD diagnostics

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=702&sid=3&lang=en

 

And that sounds like the head parking part of the newer WD firmware. People have been complaining about this issue a fair bit on Vista systems for the past couple of years due to the HDD management coding.

Plus, failure of two separate drives (as opposed to DOA from same production run) in such a short time is statistically unlikely . Perhaps back up your data and see if HDD#2 crashes like the first one, or whether I might be right on the head parking, since those drives that click as the symptom of imminent failure tend to fail sooner rather than later .

 

I ran hdtune pro and this is what I got HD Tune Pro: WDC WD5000BEVT-00ZAT0 Benchmark

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 2.9 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 78.8 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 57.6 MB/sec
Access Time : 16.5 ms
Burst Rate : 83.0 MB/sec
CPU Usage : -1.0%

The transfer rate minimum dipped so low I dont know why. and the CPU usage is in the negatives.

 

The big dips are due to the OS accessing the HDD during the HDTune benchmark run. This is a common picture when the benchmark is run on a drive being used as the primary system drive with the OS on it; if you run HDT on a secondary drive, then you get a nice clean curve every time. The dips are not indicatative of any underlying performance or other problem with the drive.

As for the neg cpu usage, maybe it could be something to do with this being done within a Bootcamp OS and the software interface with the Apple logic board? That explanation doesn't really make sense to me either, but I've never seen a drive with that kind of cpu HDT report from within any true native Windows PC.

The remainder of your numbers look fine and normal for a WD500 drive.

PS: While working late last night in a quiet house I heard my drive, during (and only then) idle moments, making occasional quiet and close spaced double tap cl-clunk sounds. For me, that is clearly OS X and the firmware parking the heads.

 

Yea I need the room to be completely silent for me to be able to hear the ticking when idle. I was just surprised because my stock 320 5400 HD did not make that noise. So I guess ill keep it instead of sending it back in.