What causes a Western Digital Drive to beep?
A hard drive’s electronic components can fail and result in beeping noises. The most common source of the beeping is that the motor is unable to spin because the heads are stuck on the platters. In normal operation, a spindle motor spins the hard disk platters inside at several thousand revolutions per minute, but when the heads are stuck the spindle motor is not able to spin and emits a beep like sound as it tries to spin.
What to do if your Western Digital Drive starts beeping
If your Western Digital drive starts beeping, the first thing you should do is try to determine the source of the beeping. The most common source of beeping is that the motor is unable to spin because the heads are stuck on the platters. If this is the case, the drive will not be spinning up as it usually does and you will be able to hear that it is not spinning up.
If the drive is spinning up, you can check what is causing the beeping noises by restarting your computer and press F2 or F12 (depending on your computer model) to enter into the BIOS menu. In the BIOS menu, navigate to the “Tools” or “Maintenance” section and look for a function called “Drive Fitness Test” or something similar. Run the test and check the results.
If the heads are stuck on the platter
If you have determined that the beeping is coming from your hard drive and that the heads are stuck, you can try to fix the issue by yourself (DIY repair is NOT recommended unless the data on the drive is not important. The likelihood of making a mistake and causing the data to be not recoverable by anyone is very high).
The first step is to remove the hard drive from your computer and place it in a clean room environment. You can do this by using a clean room environment like the ones provided by Sentry Air Systems.
Once the hard drive is in a clean room environment, you can open it up and try to fix the issue. This requires some technical knowledge and can be risky, so if you are not comfortable doing it yourself, you should take the hard drive to a professional data recovery service.
If you decide to open the hard drive yourself, be very careful not to damage any of the internal components. The first step is to remove the screws that hold the cover of the hard drive in place. Once the screws are removed, you can lift off the cover and access the internal components.
In order to fix the issue, you will need to remove the heads from the platters. This can be done by utilizing a tool that lifts the heads off the platter surface and moves them back to the ramp.
Once the heads are moved to the ramp you can remove the head assembly and look at it under a microscope to check for any damage. If no damage is present on the platters of the drive or the heads assembly, you can reattach the head stack and put the cover back on the hard drive. Screw the cover back in place and attempt to power up the drive.