Must...resist...smashing...hard...drive!

[lost_soul]

Right, so I bought a Seagate FreeAgent Desk 1 TB external hard drive last year. It is this piece of work right here. That's right, the one with the massive amount of 1-star reviews. Anyhow, this hunk of junk sits here and makes the sound: "click click, click click, click click" on occasion for up to 30 seconds sometimes. When this happens, it (obviously) interrupts data transfers. So, if I'm watching some videos I've downloaded, they stop playing while the hard drive clicks. If you read the reviews, you'll notice that many of the complainers have this very problem with the drive. What should I do here? This thing advertised a five-year warranty... but some of the reviews said that the company won't even talk to you unless you pay for phone support.

 

Apparently, removing the drive from the case will void the warranty, but some people say that fixes the clicking. Should I remove the drive from the case and put it in an external enclosure? Should I go through the pain of sending it in, only to get stuck with another model just like this one? I'm not too optimistic that a new drive like this would be a good thing, again because of the charming reviews.

 

One thing is clear, I'll never buy this brand again.

[stumpy]

If taking it out of the case fixes the click then the drive is not secure in its case and is rattling around inside the case causing the click sound would also mean that the drive could damage itself in the end.

 

Although if a harddrive hasn't actually failed in the first 6 months, then there's a 80 percent chance that it wont ever fail. the 20 percent of failures after the first six months are cause by acts of god, eg lightning strikes surge through power lines, or an electromagnetic pulse generated via sun spots.

[lost_soul]

Here's a demonstration of what it sounds like. youtube link

 

The above is not my video.

[Tels]

If your (magnetic-storage-on-spinning-platters) harddrive is making clicking sounds, it is as good as dead. Get the data from it AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, e.g. yesterday! Afterwards destroy it, throw it out of a window, or sell it. But don't use it for anything.

 

The cause of the clicking is the head driving against some physical resistance inside the drive, and that is never a good sign. Trust me.

 

In any event, if you want to read out the status of your drive, use the S.M.A.R.T. Tools:

 

http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki/Download#Windows-InstalltheWindowspackage

 

If they display any errors, toss the drive. (You might also be able to get an replacement if the warranty isn't over yet).

 

For Linux, there is the smartd package, doing the same thing.

 

Edit: Someone on youtube said:

 

you could install the drive in the enclosure inside a pc, if it clicks then, its the drivve, these enclosures have a defect which powers on/powers off the drive rapidly, i'd back up, cuz the excessive clicking can eventually cause a head crash.

 

The enclosure being buggy could also be, but it is rather unlikely. In any event, change the drive!

[lost_soul]

I keep all of my important files backed up across multiple drives from multiple brands just for this type of reason. I also use different formats, like hard drive, optical disc, flash memory, and even ZIP disks! Feel free to laugh, but the ZIP disks are still working 14 years after I purchased them. Not one has failed. I also use an online backup too.

 

These days, you can get a 1 TB internal drive for $52. I can't believe I just said that. These are name brands like WD, Samsung, and Hitachi, not generic models.

[Serpentine]

External drives are really quick to pick up damage like this, I'd just grab a second one and RMA it asap. If you get lucky they'll send back a larger capacity replacement anyway.

 

That said, Seagate has really lost the quality that they used to have, I've only ever lost a single drive and it's been a Seagate (and I'm pretty sure it was bad firmware, ironically I flashed it the day before to prevent it from suffering the state locking firmware bug), however I have 3 of them that are sitting here but slowly dying. In comparison both of my Hitachi drives are both older, faster and far quieter. I look after my drives very well, my windows drives are always kept above 20% free and defragged using MyDefrag on the 'monthly' setting at least once a month, usually once every two weeks. Since they're internal drives they don't accrue much damage but I still find it nice that my almost 10 year old drives are as good as new.

[plasticman]

What should I do here? This thing advertised a five-year warranty... but some of the reviews said that the company won't even talk to you unless you pay for phone support.

Do the warranty thing. Record the phonecalls and put them on the tube. Usually the companies don't like bad publicity...

 

S.M.A.R.T isn't that smart in this case: You likely won't be lucky to access the smart data through the USB-Interface. And even if you could use smart -- what else could it tell you than "hey, your drive be broke". You know that already and there is no "smart" way to fix anything.

 

I remember having a similar issue back in the 90ies, in some 486 DEC-PC. Every once in a while the HD interrupted, clicked a few seconds and returned to normal. Strange enaugh, it never died.

[lost_soul]

I actually ran an S.M.A.R.T. test on the drive and it said there are 0 uncorrectable errors and no re-allocated sectors. It kind of makes me laugh. There is something definitly wrong with the thing, but it doesn't want to show it. "Go ahead, put all your data on me. I may take forever to read something on occasion whilst I'm busy clicking, but I'm perfectly healthy! Honest!"

 

lol

[stumpy]

from over the years on having drives that failed, I came to the conclusion that drives made in taiwan are the best and those made in china are the worst, and its the same with memory chips. eg got a drive made in taiwan still works 6 years after I got it and a drive from china that failed after 4 hours.

[Serpentine]

I actually ran an S.M.A.R.T. test on the drive and it said there are 0 uncorrectable errors and no re-allocated sectors. It kind of makes me laugh.

 

SMART is about the biggest bag of lies ever, It's up to the vendors to follow strange conversions and there's no real hard and fast methods associated to what they are actually meant to measure, most of the time you'll find the firmware doesnt even bother to detect values and just leaves defaults of 0/65k all over the place. The tools are based on the most common cases, but even those change constantly.

[Xarg]

Speaking of broken harddrives, my friend and his 2 year old daughter came over last night for a bbq. Halfway through, she grabs his 1tb hdd that he brought over for us, and slams it onto the floor. At the very least, the enclosure was destroyed.