This video presents the regular thumping (clicking) noise created by the Preemptive Wear Leveling (PWL) in Western Digital hard drives. I have two 8 terabyte external drives and both demonstrate the exact same issue. Or feature, I guess. At almost exactly 5 second intervals, there is a "loud" thunk followed 3 seconds later by a "softer" secondary thump. The noises repeat indefinitely for as long as the drives are connected. Searching online seems to confirm this is due to the PWL used by WD to extend the life of their drives.
I boosted the sound a lot on this video but I still did not max it out, because there is background noise and I didn't want to video to overwhelm overall. But I did want to create an online reference of the audio to support threads on the topic.
The time code and red and blue dots visually indicate where the sounds occur.

свернуть