My Caviar Black drive are the same. I've got two of them and they're quite audible while under heavy operation, even noisier than all the fans in my Antec 1200.

My Black is fairly quiet but then again, its in my server, which has a lot of hard drives and other hardware so it could be me. I know that if im next to it, i cant hear it over my green drives but that may just be down to the case? If its bothersome enough, you could always get some 'dynamat' or foam and make a ventilated sound deadening enclosure? Is it noise when your reading/writing on the drive or when simply spun up' ?

i confirm that Black is noisy as in my new rig it's almost the only thing i hear (except if at max load when the fan spins more) adn in my server i have 2 Caviar Blue and i'd never hear them even in full copy (raid-1 rebuild)

PS: i found that WD drive runs really hot, did anyone have this problem too (like 45+ celsius) as all of my previous drives never hit 40 in the same case/usage...

Heat isn't an issue, as the drive bays have a fan blowing directly on them.

I seem to be getting a general answer that these are just noisy drives. The Seagate I took out was so quiet I think I just got spoiled. It really isn't loud, I suppose, if I think back to the days of RLL drives... those sounded like a military operation.

Cheers!

Are these drives mounted with those soft black rubber washers? Possibly a good good hard drive silencer kit might work. I could have sworn there was a program that would adjust the performance levels of the WD drives and their acoustic noises. Automatic acoustic management (AAM) or IntelliSeek ect.

I peeled the black rubber washers off, because they added too much width to use the screwless mounts on my case. I think that may have been where I went wrong. I've gotten used to it, I've just gotten so used to a silent machine!

Screwless mounts only get you screwed in the end..

I have a very similar (if not the same) HDD in my machine (four of them, actually). If I turn all of them on a the same time they make my desk vibrate. They can also be heard from any room in the house. Thankfully, this does not happen naturally and has to provoked by artificial means.

Worries are over. From WD, what I'm hearing, this is normal, and why they provided the rubber washers.

Secondly, it seems to have vibrated itself into a more comfortable position, and has dropped noise transmission to the case by at least half. When the system is idle, it is still audible, but when it is under load and the fans spool up I can't hear it.

That's good to hear your hard drive is happier, i know from my current WD drives verses all the ones i have had in the past, the newer ones tend to be a bit louder. My 5400rpm greens make an absurdly loud click that can be heard from great distance. I have also had BOTH my green drives fail on me at different times, thankfully. Never have problems with my WD-Black though!

Those green drives (from anybody) seem to be just killing themselves. Overall a bad product that exhausts itself trying to use less power.

Don't get me wrong, using less power is a good thing, but when you are replacing the drive on a regular basis, it just isn't worth it.

The Black is now so quiet it seems like I'm hearing scratching when it is busy. The motor whir now is no louder than the 120mm fan on the rear of the case, which is the loudest thing in there. It is audible (different tone) but it seems like the drive needed to NOT be lodged in super tight. I wiggled it and it is no longer in the clear-back position and has about a one mm shift area, but I don't move this machine so I don't care. I guess, if you are using the WD Black drives on tool-less mounting points, don't muscle them in the way I did.