Seagate Barracuda clicking: Driving me *ing crazy!!

R

Ryan930

n00b
Joined
Jul 30, 2012
Messages
23
Hello,

Well I got this 1TB Seagate Barracuda HDD in November 2010 and immediately noticed clicking. It wasn't until a couple months ago that I finally decided to call up Seagate and ask for a replacement. They did indeed replace my HDD for free, but even my replacement is clicking. At this point I'm going to assume that all Seagate HDDs are shit and I want my money back or a different model replacement that isn't known to have this issue (if it even exists).

I don't want them to replace it with the same one if there's a good chance that it'll happen again with the same model. I know 1TB isn't that much to transfer but it's still a hassle considering my PC is in an awkward part of my desk.

Anyone else having this experience? Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Edit: Oh and my boot drive is still my 6 year old WD Black with no problems whatsoever. C'mon Seagate!!
 
they aren't all shit, that's for sure, but you got a bad drive, it it hasn't been handled well.

the only suggestion is RMA the drive, it is dieing.

You will get people saying they have had WD drives die all day long, people who had maxtor drives live forever and people who have had 0 issues with Seagate drives.
 
You will get people saying they have had WD drives die all day long, people who had maxtor drives live forever and people who have had 0 issues with Seagate drives.
Click to expand...

And none of that is even remotely scientific. Not many users have 10s of thousands of drives of each model in usage to so that they can statistically compare the failure rates of the different models.
 
exactly!

just seems some people get stuck with multiple bad drives from the same company, i have had several WD drives fail, yet at work i have about 30 hitachi drives from 500G to 750G to 2TB now and some new 3TB drives in raid arrays and only had 1 drive die in about 3 years.
 
By "clicking" the guy really means excessive load cycling, not a crashed drive. This was behavior on older firmware. Unfortunate they're sending those out as warranty replacement but its because only a percentage of those recipients will complain and send it back.

You can Google Seagate load cycling.. already been discussed to death. Not an issue with newer seagates with more recent manufacturing
 
Last edited:
didn't know that, clicking on any drive i had, including Seagates meant dead driver as a scan would always show.

would explain why he has gotten 2 of them with the same issue.
 
odditory said:
By "clicking" the guy really means excessive load cycling, not a crashed drive. This was behavior on older firmware. Unfortunate they're sending those out as warranty replacement but its because only a percentage of those recipients will complain and send it back.

You can Google Seagate load cycling.. already been discussed to death. Not an issue with newer seagates with more recent manufacturing
Click to expand...

One of my 1TB Barracudas does this. I'm running nearly everything off the SSDs, so my HDDs idle quite a lot, but when I do access them, I have to wait for them to spin up and one of them makes a bit clicking. Drive was bought in the summer of 2011.
 
baldrik said:
One of my 1TB Barracudas does this. I'm running nearly everything off the SSDs, so my HDDs idle quite a lot, but when I do access them, I have to wait for them to spin up and one of them makes a bit clicking. Drive was bought in the summer of 2011.
Click to expand...

Doesn't mean its the same as what OP is talking about -- your drive might actually have a physical problem whereas the OP is describing whats more commonly referred to as "Seagate chirping" - the loading and unloading of the actuator arm.

If your drive really is click-click-clicking then if you don't have a backup, back it up ASAP, and following that review your SMART stats looking for unusual values or reallocated sector count, then run a full surface scan with Seatools or HDTune, etc.
 
SMART checks out fine, I made a fresh back up to the external just in case. I'll see about setting up a full surface scan before I leave for work tomrrow.

I suppose clicking is the wrong term. It's more of a long noisy spin up followed by overly loud, but pretty typical, HDD noise.
 
Don't let it spin down then. When a drive powers up it's normal that there are some noises.
 
If it's just acting as a seldom accessed file drive then you might try to enable AAM, not all drives have it, I don't think the seagate's I've had do but it quiets down the seek noise a great deal. Acoustic suspension also works, some guys go all the way to loosely hanging the drive in elastic bands, I prefer to mount it in a 5.25 inch hd caddy with slightly compressed silicone or sorbathane damping pucks, so that there's no direct metal to metal contact between the drive and the case.
 
I didn't think of that. I'll change the default spin down time.

I can't really suspend the drive inside the case...it's a moderately modified Fractal Define Mini with zero drive cages in it. I drilled holes in the roof of the case and shoved rubbed grommets in them and then screwed the drives to the roof through the grommets.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top