!HELP! My Portable 5TB WD Easystore is making weird noises!

[Ali Akbar]

My Portable 5TB WD Easystore is making weird noises, I bought it around 3 years ago and I have at least 4.9TB of data (movies, tv shows, games, music) stored on it, some of them which are unfortunately not available to download anymore due to becoming dead torrents and rarbg (from where I got most movies and shows) going down, unfortunately I have no back ups (economic reasons), should I be concerned, Crystaldisk and WD Dashboard report the drive as working fine, but I had a horrible experience years ago with data loss, and I don't want that to happen again and lose all my data, here is an audio sample (note: The portable HDD is on a wooden table and I put my phone very, very close to the drive so as to capture the sounds properly and clearly, it is also nighttime right now). https://drive.google.com/file/d/16PJ5l5 ... F6ZU-/view

I know that hard drives park their heads, which sounds like clicks, and the grinding/fart like noise is when it is reading or writing data, also I could not make a longer recording because I am afraid further usage will cause more harm, so I just plugged it in and recorded the noises, then soon after the click at the end I ejected and unplugged it, am I being paranoid ?

Many of you are experienced in data storage and backups, so please, I need your advice and guidance, thanks in advance!

[annoyment]

TED TALK INCOMING
You ask me (a stoopid layman that had to live with one similar-sounding vintage internal HDD for most of the 2010's), it's a regular problem for any aging hard disc drive (regardless of what SMART or whatever status reporting software tells yeh), where the head(s) directly touch (when they should just slightly hover instead) the platter(s) - unfortunately, nowadays, ESPECIALLY since it's a Western Digital (and also likely with that much storage in a tiny form factor), your time/usage window, between the drive showing signs of trouble, and backing/transferring/cloning stuff (which thankfully I managed to do manually, with just about zero corruptions) and/or requiring to pay up for professional services, is VERY THIN (unsure if enough to have to skip the former option entirely); especially with HDDs having dropped in quality in 2020's (Western Digital being the most well known "offender")
Me layman suggestion is, alas, to (ASAP) power off and unplug the troubling device (irrelevant of use case; as in, no matter if it's the main "C:", or some "daily driver" for a media center or similar, or whatever), and keep it unused until ready to (seriously) commit to one/both of the noted options (again, your predicament is unlucky enough - be glad, plus count blessings or something along that line, that it can still read/write)
Select few discussions on the matter:
https://old.reddit.com/r/chia/comments/mztsit/
https://old.reddit.com/r/datarecovery/comments/14e3qqd/
https://talk.tidbits.com/t/17343
https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/b0eqtz/
Windows is shutting down

[Ali Akbar]

Thank you so much for the swift response and info

I have not used the WD drive after recording the sounds, but I NEED to get all that data, so far all day (again, prior to the recording) the drive was being detected by Windows and reading and writing files too, I just watched Godzilla: Minus One (1080p remux release by eXterminator) with my family, and the HDD was making little to no noise throughout the whole movie, maybe a click after 5-10 minutes at most, rest was smooth spinning sound of the platters expected in a normal HDD. same thing yesterday, one time it was making the farting like noise, similar to the one in the recording, but after unplugging, waiting for a few minutes, and plugging it back in, there was only the smooth noise of the platters, so there is still hope right? RIGHT?

If I manage to buy a new HDD soon, can I plug my current drive and just copy all the data to the new drive through windows, or will that be the death of my HDD. I've read that data recovery specialists are very expensive ($300+), and given current inflation and my economic conditions, I can't afford them at all. And isn't disk cloning also just the same as copying data, if not then is cloning better then simple copy & paste?

I can get a new HDD soon, but then there is another problem, which one do I get, through what you and the reddit discussions explained, WD should be on my "never buy from again" list from now on (honestly, I have lost faith in american electronic manufactures, call me crazy but I do believe that they deliberately make flawed/low quality products from cheap, fragile materials to get people to keep buying from them within a short timeframe), but then what, as one person suggested in one of the discussions, do I get a Toshiba N300 drive (can afford the 8TB one), get a enclosure and build my own External HDD, then just copy all data from my WD drive to that new one?

Just a side note, I have good experience with Toshiba, I had a laptop from them way back in 2010 (although my Mother says it was already a few years old when I got it), that laptop went through hell, mostly because of me, I was a child and I spilled water on it thrice, broke the screen twice, maybe even dropped it once, and through it all, it worked near perfectly and lasted till 2018/2019, that was when the internal HDD started getting bad sectors, and on that HDD I had my OS AND all my movies, games etc. And when it died I cried, literally, for hours. My Mother then bought me a 1TB Toshiba Portable HDD sometime in 2018 or 2019, and it works fine to this day.

One thing though, if I put my ear literally on the (Toshiba) drive then I can hear farting noises similar to my WD drive (although the Toshiba one is a bit quieter), just thought you should know.

[annoyment]

so there is still hope right? RIGHT?

If it held up after stated conditions, then IMO it's clear fer normal operation fer a limited time, but ye should gradually cease with prolonged use and/or heavy R/W stress (to reduce the chance of "going through hell" and then one day being suddenly undectable and/or not spinning), fer file integrity's sake
How limited is that I'm unable to speculate (because also WD), but DIY transfer to a new drive within that timeframe is still possible

And isn't disk cloning also just the same as copying data, if not then is cloning better then simple copy & paste?

If ye ever did defragmentation (recommending to do so, but not spam it, to ease the drive from too big head travel plus have files being read more "uniformly" across the platters, although it's difficult doing so without at least 10% space freed up), seeing that mesh of colored squares should clear up some questions - cloning also preserves the fragments' locations within the sectors (as well as lotsa extra infos - the lengths people, from Redump and No-Intro fer example, go to achieve and catalog proper dumps of removable multimedia should be a telltale enough); and while yer case ain't extreme (yet), it's a lifesaver when it becomes so (and when anyone is still able to have/restore access to it)
Here's a worthwhile read on the matter, even if barely related (professionals' negligence being it's cause): https://github.com/Kneesnap/onstream-data-recovery

If I manage to buy a new HDD soon, can I plug my current drive and just copy all the data to the new drive through windows

Keep it slow and spared enough, and that'll work out fine, as previously noted (did so too meself) - Windows (as long as it ain't randomly plagued with some newer 10/11 updates, like recent BSODs and earlier CrowdStrike debacle fer example) ain't that much of a point of failure (nor should WD; cross fingers either way) methinks

call me crazy but I do believe that they deliberately make flawed/low quality products from cheap, fragile materials to get people to keep buying from them within a short timeframe

"Planned Obsolescence"
The rest of the topic I don't have the knowledge to provide answers to (enclosures are good suggestions, though be wary that drives are just slightly more "hellproof" after setup), as I ain't much informed (especially dunno hoarding) in that area (mostly due to budgetary reasons also) - can only wish ye success and best of luck (suffered the same tragic fate meself long ago; hoping yers doesn't repeat), and kindly bump other users to provide better and more helpful insight
Windows is shutting down

[Ali Akbar]

Alright, I managed to order a Toshiba N300 8TB Internal Drive, which is arriving today, and the NexStar HX, 3.5" SATA III Hard Drive Enclosure USB 3.0 with Fan, which will arrive on Monday, based on this discussion https://talk.tidbits.com/t/bad-experien ... bp/17343/7

I have not used the WD drive at all since I recorded the noises, now the only issue left is getting the data out of the drive as fast as possible. It is either copy paste through windows as usual, or me having to install linux on my laptop and then getting either ddrescue or HDDSuperClone. Thanks, microsoft, for becoming more anti-consumer by the day, can't even use windows for proper HDD backup/cloning, these days I find myself saying this a bit too often.

can only wish ye success and best of luck (suffered the same tragic fate meself long ago; hoping yers doesn't repeat), and kindly bump other users to provide better and more helpful insight

Thank you so much annoyment, much apppreciated

Keep it slow and spared enough, and that'll work out fine, as previously noted (did so too meself) - Windows (as long as it ain't randomly plagued with some newer 10/11 updates, like recent BSODs and earlier CrowdStrike debacle fer example) ain't that much of a point of failure (nor should WD; cross fingers either way) methinks

Just to make sure I understand, I plug in the WD drive (assuming I just use windows for the data transfer), copy a few (10 to 100-ish) Gigabytes at a time, give the drive a 5-10 minute break, then repeat until all data is safely transferred, instead of just selecting everything simultaneously and copying and pasting it into the new HDD ?

[TigerTheGreat]

You can use Windows for proper HDD backup/cloning. A cracked release of easeus partition master works just fine.

Also in my personal experience WD sucks. I'm all for Team Seagate.

[Ali Akbar]

Alright, received the NexStar HX HDD Enclosure today, mounted the drive and booted it up, formatted etc. Then plugged in the WD Drive, upon booting it made a loud click exactly like in the recording posted in original post.

My plan is to copy the most important files first (movies, shows, games that are no longer available to download), then other ones (movies, shows, games that are available on multiple sites still). I managed to move (right click & move, not copy) the most important files to the new drive without issues, and the WD Drive did not make any unexpected noises, so far so good.

That is until I started copying one of the shows that I can't find anywhere now, Teen Wolf, all 225 GB of it (the 720p DEMAND & REWARD BluRay releases, got them from RARBG), and then, while copying, the process halted and the WD drive kept making clicking sounds, did that for a few minutes so I cancelled .

Hopefully I can get the rest of the unobtainable shows and movies, the rest I can still get online, I am really losing my s#it right now

When all is said and done, or something else (hopefully not) comes up I will update here.

[Terje_P]

https://youtu.be/1VZsY80eHb4?t=119

I would look into data migration software, in theory it should be faster than transferring individual files one by one with windows explorer. Let it run overnight and dont use the computer in the meantime...

[Ali Akbar]

Much for the video Terje_P, it will indeed come in handy in the future, because unfortunately I fear it is too late now, fortunately I managed to get critical data to the new drive, that aside I also managed to copy 2 shows, all totaling 235 GB out of 4.9 TB, so can't use any cloning software now since they have to format the destination drive.

Delacroix, I tried using easeus (got it from rlsbb) followed the install/crack instructions and it still did not work, whenever I would begin the cloning process it kept giving me popups to buy a license, and the cracked license kept reverting to "expired", when it comes to cracked applications such as this, and others like daemon tools etc, I seem to have bad luck because they never work for me.

By the time I finished the 2 shows, the WD drives' clicks (head parks due to being unable to read (bad?) sectors or crashes? ) increased, to the point where it became unresponsive. It wasn't even ejecting , since it is close to death anyways I will try getting as much data as I can off of it. Also, when I first plugged in the WD drive, I took pictures of all the folders, movies/shows & games, so in the inevitable demise of my WD drive, I know what stuff to redownload.

Thank you for warning me early on annoyment, I dread to think what would it have been like if I used the WD drive as per usual in the last 2 days

Just to give everyone an idea, these are the shows that I was trying to copy, because I got their 720p BluRay releases from RARBG (around 20-60 GB per season), and now I can't find those specific (or equivalent) releases anywhere (searched on hdencode.com, rlsbb, scene-rls.net, scnlog.me, movieparadise.org and some torrent sites, they either don't exist or are dead torrents and links):

Porus (Obtained from youtube, was then subsequently removed in 2020 or 2021, the reuploads, although official, are of lower quality) recovery successful
Chandragupts Maurya (Obtained from youtube, was then subsequently removed in 2020 or 2021, the reuploads, although official, are of lower quality) recovery successful
The walking dead (Seasons 1-6 & 8 ) 720p BluRay scene releases, recovery successful
Teen Wolf (All Seasons) 720p BluRay scene releases, recovery successful
Supernatural (All Seasons) 720p BluRay scene releases, recovery successful
The Penguins Of Madagascar (All Seasons) It was a torrent provided by annoyment, in which all the episodes were arranged in "air date" order instead of package order, the torrent is dead now, recovery successful
All Hail King Julien (All Seasons) 1080p TrollHD WEB-DL releases, recovery successful

[Ali Akbar]

!!! COMPLETE BACKUP SUCCESSFUL !!! over the course of 9 days I was able to copy everything over to the new HDD with minimal issues (on 2 separate occasions the WD drive made a loud click when transferring, which halted the file copying process (0 mb/s speed), I then cancelled the process and ran chkdsk and it found errors and successfully repaired them), also when copying, the WD drives' read speeds were lower than normal, usually the read speeds used to be 100-120 mb/s but now it averaged 40-70 mb/s, even spiking as low as 10 mb/s for a few seconds, only when there was about 1 TB of data left did the read speeds come close to 100 mb/s, but that too was a bit rare. I am surprised, but grateful, that the WD drive held on for this long.

Copying all the data took a long time because the WD drive has TERRIBLE airflow, despite the ambient temperature being quite cool (20 ish degrees celsius) within 10-20 minutes of copying data it would reach 40+ degrees internally, so I had to eject/unplug the drive and give it at least hour long breaks, just as a precaution.

A bit off topic: I suppose that is the main factor that contributed to its current status, since I bought it, it has been running for mostly 6+ hours nearly every day for the last three years, and it would be running 40+ degrees just after an hour's use. Based on the opinions of everyone here and reddit, or internet in general, WD is crap, and its portable drives even crappier, so combine its portable drives' terrible ventilation with crap quality mechanical parts plus nearly everything today being manufactured to fail quick rather than to actually last long, it would lead to quicker wear and tear, which would lead to its inevitable death far quicker than a good quality drive from a better/reputable company/brand

Although this is no longer necessary, here is the S.M.A.R.T. Data from CrystalDiskInfo for the WD easystore drive (I changed the RAW values to "10 [DEC]" instead of "16 [HEX]" just in case anyone wants to know


I would like to extend my sincerest gratitude to annoyment, Delacroix and Terje_P for your prompt response and your invaluable advice

[Terje_P]

You could get an external case with a fan, I would recommend one for extended use. There didn't seem to be any single slot cases with a fan, but in normal mode this one should work with just one drive. A bit pricey for what it is, but should prolong the life of your HDD.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006843777299.html

[Ali Akbar]

Already did, the new HDD that I got is a TOSHIBA NAS Internal 8 TB drive, so I bought this https://vantecusa.com/products_detail.php?p_id=260 along with it, the new HDD rests safely inside the enclosure, and I turned the fan at max speed so the temps range between 24-28 degrees, never goes above 28 so far!

[annoyment]

Congrats on yer successful backup m8
Me last bit of advice, is to now go on (ab)using the Easystore (and keep the Toshiba on low "mileage" - hoping it'll serve y'all long and well, and best of luck BTW ) in yer usual fashion fer as long as possible until its expected tragic demise - and THEN OPEN UP the bugger and run its internals through NdFeB and "blunt trauma" (way moar effective than disk wiping software IMO ) before junking (and switching to the new "daily driver"), as no1 would miss nor want a WD nowadays ("mileage" irrelevant)

I'm all for Team Seagate.

https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxQgAN_2 ... nmUmPccGVI
Windows is shutting down

[Ali Akbar]

Congrats on yer successful backup m8

keep the Toshiba on low "mileage" - hoping it'll serve y'all long and well, and best of luck BTW

Me last bit of advice, is to now go on (ab)using the Easystore in yer usual fashion fer as long as possible until its expected tragic demise

but the thing is my s#upid brain thought it would be a good idea to delete each of the files after they finished copying it to the Toshiba Drive (technically I formatted it), and only at the end did I realize that I should have kept all the data and used the drive till its demise, keeping the new HDD unused until needed , anyways I do have plans for the WD drive.

THEN OPEN UP the bugger and run its internals through NdFeB and "blunt trauma" (way moar effective than disk wiping software IMO ) before junking (and switching to the new "daily driver"), as no1 would miss nor want a WD nowadays ("mileage" irrelevant)

Understood

[TigerTheGreat]

In terms of destroying stuff, I don't suppose anything beats uncovering the electronics, dousing this in gasoline and lighting it on fire.

Then again, there's always...