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View Full Version : Hard drive death symptoms?


PsichoDM
10-06-2008, 01:58 AM
Hi,

I was wondering if anybody experienced similar HD symptops before. It's a 500gb 7200rpm Seagate Barracuda, currently running my OS on it. What happens is that once in a while, usually when no software in particular is actively and aggressively using the HD (so mostly Firefox and a few IM programs), the hard drive produces a click and the cylinders noticeably slow down, by the sound of it. This happens once every 10 minutes, I believe, but I don't think it is at fixed intervals. It also does not seem to influence the performance that much, if at all.

I used the windows scan for potential problems with the drive but all three partitions that are on that HD were reported to be healthy.

Does the sound necessarily mean that it's going to die (it didnt' use to do that as far as I remember, and I've had it for quite a few years), and is there a way of checking its condition that's better than Windows's tools?

OmegaAvenger
10-06-2008, 02:07 AM
My friend has been mentioning that about his computer lately too (also a seagate)

I just recently added 2 seagate 750GB drives to my system and I head an occasional click and spin down. I believe its vista power management. However my OS drive never does it (likely due to constant bittorrent d/ls).

You can always try these tools:

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools/

Nenu
10-06-2008, 02:11 AM
It sounds like power saving turns the drive off after 10 mins of inactivity.