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WD Passport Clicking Noise of Death I recently purchased a 320GB WD Passport external drive, which has been pretty wicked. The thing is tiny, comes with a short USB lead and is the perfect companion to my aging iBook G4, which incidentally I’m hoping to get three years out of.. roll on sept ’08 :) Recently the drive has been making what I’d interpreted as the click of death which was annoying since I’d just got all my data organised on it, set iTunes to use it as it’s library (importing 12,000+ songs etc) and wasn’t looking forward to sending it back to Germany.
After a bit of testing and forum-digging however I think the problem is more related to power. It never seems to click if it’s connected to the primary USB port (the one closest to the firewire port) unless I’ve got the other USB port in use as well. Whilst this is annoying because I can’t always have my iPod and the disk connected at the same time (making transferring music to it difficult!) it does at least appear to mean that the disk isn’t dying.. We will see I suppose. There have been a lot of comments about the clicks being the first sign of failure, but I reckon that the lack of power and subsequent strange behavior leads people to remove it without un-mounting it first. Repeat this enough and there’s the reason for the data loss. Watch this space!
Comments! HAPPIER NOQ Sat 07 Jul 2008 wow, thanks so much for posting that! am moving to a different country and left my PC back home had a lot of stuff backed up on this little 80GB WD. Got the same 'clicking noise of little power' when you plug it into the firewire or on a pc network port works like a treat! thanks for this!!! FLETCH Thu 08 Aug 2008 :-) No worries! Glad you've still got all your data! SHAWN Wed 08 Aug 2008 I found that my wd passport 80GB was clicking when it was plugged into a Belkin 4 port USB hub. When I put it directly into the laptop USB port, no clicking! Thanks for the hint. CHARLIE Thu 09 Sep 2008 I have 2 Passports and they are both (not always at the same time) connected to a powered USB port. Sometimes they click, sometimes they don't. A couple of years back, I had to send a 40GB back to Germany in the 2nd year of its guarantee because it packed up.. They were pretty prompt and returned me an 80GB model, much to my pleasure. I was using it as a backup, but it occured to me that I was (and will no doubt be in the future) almost a month relying on solely on my internal hard drive. Failure at that point would have been a disaster. So, I went and bought a backup for my backup! Remember, it's not 'if' but 'when' with regard to hard drive failure!! Good luck! FLETCH Fri 09 Sep 2008 That's worth highlighting actually, It's not IF it's going to die.. just WHEN! :-) OGRFNKL Tue 12 Dec 2008 I have the exact same drive, with the exact same intermittent clicking problem. It only started to do this recently, however (when I first bought it a few months ago it worked just fine). The clicking can come on suddenly after the drive has been running for a while, at which point Windows stops recognizing it (which also means it cannot be unmounted properly!). If I leave it plugged into the USB port while the computer is rebooted, sometimes it'll work on reboot, sometimes it won't. In other words, the drive has become unreliable. Perhaps using a different cable, or plugging it into a different port, may provide a temporary workaround, but the moment a drive cannot be trusted 100%, it should really be replaced immediately, lest it die an ugly death and take all your data with it. Mine will definitely be going in for warranty repair/replacement (luckily, the problem happened while it was still under warranty!). SAMMY Wed 12 Dec 2008 hey guys my 500GB drive is doing this as well, but its also BEEPING - could this be related to power as well? thanks! GREGORYBE Sun 01 Jan 2009 Hey, Same problem here, bought a WD Passport 500GB few days ago, and it sometimes beeps and clicks. Thanks for the advice. Going to check if it is USB port dependant. Thanks J Tue 01 Jan 2009 Wow it works! I was ready to trash the HD. Thanks for the tip! FLETCH Wed 01 Jan 2009 No worries! I've never heard of any beeping but then who can tell! Good luck. FERDZ Mon 01 Jan 2009 Man, I was worried for a moment there! Nice to know its not a HD problem! THANKS! FLETCH Wed 01 Jan 2009 I wouldn't like to say "It's safe! Your data is fine!" but if you're seeing the same issues that I was, I can let you know that mine is still alive and occasionally clicking (once in the last six months). :-) GEE Sat 01 Jan 2009 omg thanks for posting this.. I switched my passport to the other side of the laptop and its working perfectly again! DEATHBOY Mon 03 Mar 2009 Holy crap. I just had this happen when I used the wrong PSU with the 1tb version. CLICK CLICK CLICK - "oh hell, it's dead!" I googled, found this article and realised I had underpowered it with the wrong power supply. Once I located the right one, it booted first time, no problems since. Thankyou *VERY* much, that saved me a drive I would have considered dead. ML Sun 04 Apr 2009 Thank you! THE OTHER GUY Thu 04 Apr 2009 THANKS FOR POSTING THIS MY WD PASSPORT (ONLY 4 MONTHS OLD ) MAKES A COMPUTER BEEPING NOISE ( WHICH I DON'T THINK IT'S THE CLICK OF DEATH) AND SOMETIMES WINDOWS TELLS ME I HAVE TO FORMAT IT TO MAKE IT WORK WHEN IT WORKED FIVE MINUTES BEFORE, SO I IGNORE IT AND IT STILL WORKS. SO ANYTHING WRONG WITH IT ? SCIFIERIC Mon 05 May 2009 This post was a life-saver! Woo hoo! Well done fletch. I was about to toss mine and I just moved it to a rear port and it works like a charm ... again. MARIO Sun 05 May 2009 My ext has just died... i didnt back it up... it was making a click before now it makes a wierd ... sound i lost all my data on it :s DRM Fri 06 Jun 2009 Panic then relief.... had beep / click experience and almost lost it. Calmed down and started to investigate.... found this post and it sparked a thought (pun intended as you will see shortly). I had the WD drive connected to my HP 2133 Mini-Note and put the laptop to sleep. While it was sleeping I disconnected the WD drive and had planned to use it on another machine. Thought better of it and choose to plug it in again and THEN restart the computer to remove it properly. Did this and was greeted with the click / beep problem. The WD Sync set up screen appeared which I promptly cancelled in fear of deleting my data. Before taking anymore chances, google came to my rescue finding this post. Reading through it, I realized I had turned my power bar off due to a thunderstorm we were having and the laptop was on battery power. The WD drive was plugged into a USB hub which itself is powered.... by the same power bar. Turned the power bar back on, loaded the WD drive directory through explorer and bingo.... problem solved! Does seem to be the lack of a sufficient spark that caused the click / beep problem. Once the drive had enough power it worked fine. I also tried it in both my laptop USB ports directly with the laptop on battery power and it worked fine. I replicated the click / beep problem plugging it into the hub without hydro again. Seems if it is connected via a USB hub that doesn't give enough power it has issues. Hope this long post helps someone like the shorter ones helped me. Take care. GREG Thu 08 Aug 2009 I Love you. I'm going to college in a week and i have my life on my hd. The clicking has been going on for a while and i was getting scared. Being a gamer, i always had a keyboard and mouse plugged in, then when i tried my hd the light came on then nothing happened. I unplugged them and still the click, then i plugged in the charger for my laptop. BAM SUCKA! Thanks for the help! SIMO Thu 09 Sep 2009 I just got a red WD My passport 320 gb, out of the box, plugged in, started syncing, and turned it around several times to look at it, and it started clicking, everytime I turned it around...10 min later... i did the same and that was the end..... WD - I am sorry, not relaiable, thank G it just happened and not a month ahead! Backup guys, back up on another device, and not WD! FLETCH Sun 09 Sep 2009 Sounds like you had a broken drive if physically moving it caused it to click. Clearly it makes sense to have a couple of backups but so far the consensus seems to be if it's clicking or not respoonding it seems to be a power issue. The corruption then occurs because of the way the disks then get treated once they stop responding, ie constantly being unplugged without unmounted, shook about to see if somethings rattling.. If you're not happy with your disk take it back. I can report however that my wd passport is still going strong after 15 months of quite heavy usage and it hasn't done the click of death since I purchased a new macbook (unibody/2.4). Hope this helps! JAMES Mon 09 Sep 2009 this forum helped me, just got a black WD passport 400gb, and was so worried that it was dying when i would plug it in, it would beep once, then keep connecting/disconnecting in windows explorer.. after reading this, i also realised that i didnt have this problem until i started using my see-through usb cable (a little longer length, but prettier), which i believe is somewhat of a no-name cable which isnt giving enough power.. so yea, i think we can all come to the concensus that this is all power related.. and in general, i would never lift a harddrive thats spinning, had a friend with a 320gb WD mybook that he had placed vertically.. one day he accidentally tipped it so it fell over to its side, and that was the end of that drive.. remember, these drives rotate several thousand times per minute, and a small arm that reads/writes info can easily scratch the disk platter.. thats my 2 cents xD LAMAR PHILLIPS Fri 10 Oct 2009 Big help alleviating the stress on this one. I heard that beeping and started to panic. I have 3 usb ports for my Acer (1 on the left, 2 on the right), 2 of which are in constant use (mouse and ExHDD). The ExHDD normally on the left, the mouse on the right. But I had my ipod on the left and plugged the ExHDD on the right and got the beeping. It was more like a triple beep. Got online, read this forum, rebooted, and replugged in the ExHDD on the left side and it was fine. I hope this was the only problem and it can be easily fixed by keeping it assigned to the left port. I have yet to get the clicking noise. I've had ExHDD fail after hearing that, which only seems to happen AFTER the warranty. EMILY HARRIS Mon 12 Dec 2009 The clicking started - it never ceased to stop and with denial in tow, I ignored it. Have just been told "clicking" is the failure of the arm (mechanical fault - probably skimpy materials and engineering) which "clicks" as it tries to read and therefore mount onto your Mac/Pc desktop. Importantly: the symptoms were that it hums - and when the clicking stops YOU'VE HAD IT! (as the arm won't even bloody read it). It's £800 to send to a lab in order to retrieve the data (OMG). The process is specialist as it transfers the data via a compressed gas controlled chamber. If any dust gets in there you're mullered! BASICALLY DO NOT BUY/TRUST/RELY ON WESTERN DIGITAL they are shite I now am thinking about a server. FURIO FILOSETA Mon 02 Feb 2010 Once a WD Passport starts to click, it could be dying. I suggest that you test your drive using WD SmartWare. Go to Settings -> Setup Drive -> Diagnostics, then Complete Drive Test. It'll take a while, but most of the times you'll see that the drive fails this test even if it doesn't click anymore. Only if it passes the test, you should consider trusting your files to the Passport. Anyway, I've been through FOUR of the little creeps in two months, so no, I don't recommend it as a backup device. TIM Fri 04 Apr 2010 Just bought a 320GB passport last night and copied 50GB onto it. Plug it into a different PC this morning and... clicking noises! I tried plugging the Micro USB cable directly into the PC - same issue. Then I thought about the power comments. Retrieved the cable the passport came with, and plugged that into a powered usb hub... no more clicking yet.... Just to be safe, updated firmware and software FLETCH Mon 04 Apr 2010 Again - I don't want to say that your particular WD passport is OK and that you should trust your life to it but... mine is still working absolutely fine and has never clicked in any machine except my knackered old macbook G4. As I alluded to in the article, the click is almost certainly the drive arm and I think if you were to continue to under-power the passport and "put up" with the clicking it would knacker eventually. This knackering would almost certainly be accelerated by unplugging the drive without un-mounting it, which you might be forced to do if the drive hangs enough times. Every single hard disk is going to fail, it's just a matter of when, not if! Always have a backup! CHUCK Tue 08 Aug 2010 I have the 160GB model and after owning it for about 2 weeks I couldn't deal with it clicking and disappearing from windows all the time. Western Digital replaced it, the new one did the same thing. I've been dealing with it for a year now, I use it as a torrent drive. I have to unplug and plug it back in about 3 times a day when it starts clicking. 3 days ago windows told me the drive wasn't formatted, had to use Ontrack easy recovery pro to get all my data off it and format it again. Has been working normally since (normally as in clicking 3x a day) FLETCH Tue 08 Aug 2010 The clicking itself probably isn't that dangerous, it's the constant uncontrolled mounting and dismounting that eventually corrupts the data on the disk. FWIW mines still going strong but as ever. Leave a Reply |
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Hello! Fletch.cx has been going since 1999 in one form or another, yep incredible, when will it end? For more of my bullshit see last.fm, lluckj.com, facebook and if you really want a constant avalanche of musings, observations and lies then follow me on twitter..
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