Clunking sound from WD 800JB

[AdamP]

Hi Guys,

I just bought this drive (the special ed. 8MB) a couple of days ago. I notice that when I reboot in XP pro that the drive makes a clunk noise, sounds like it spins down, and then spins back up while in the BIOS POST stage. This causes the IDE auto detection to hang for a few seconds because of this. Is this normal? My WD 300BB doesn't do it but I'm sure they have changed the firmware since then. Does anyone have this exact drive w/XP and have the same prob? However, I booted into DOS using the MSDOS startup disk and tried rebooting and there was no clunk noise which makes me think it's an XP thing. I've run the diagnostics from Data Lifeguard and it passes and the online WD diagnostics and it passes. I talked to WD tech. support and he said just replace the drive, it should never clunk like that. But he didn't seem to know much.

Thanks,
Adam :t

[Midknyte]

if it sounds like a marble in a paint can, replace it ASAP. it doesn't matter if it passed the diags; it will eventually fail.

[AdamP]

No, it doesn't sound like that, really. It's the same noise my WD 300BB makes when it autoparks the heads. I think that is what it is but I'm unsure. It's weird that this drive does it but not the other one........

[NDD]

Any "weird" or "unusual" sounds are BAD. Replace the drive ASAP (technicians are usually get paid for their job :) ).

[alivin]

Hi Adam,
I have a similar sound on the same drive, a clunk when the hd is spinning up but no hanging, I'm on win me I posted this similar quest a while back and the general feeling was it'll be ok so long as there are no error reports from speedfan's s.m.a.r.t. page
2 mos and no hd probs so far.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed for both of us.
:cool:

[AdamP]

Thanks for the input, alivin! I already returned the drive and exchanged it for the same model and the new one doesn't exhibit the same problems with spinning down like the old one........

:t