Should I just return these drives?

[deekortiz3]

So, I purchased 4 Seagate 2TB 5900RPM drives a few days ago. Out of the 4 two were DOA (No Spin) and one of the replacements was also DOA. Now I have got those replaced and have 4 drives that are all recognized in the BIOS and in Win7.

I noticed that I was getting occasional clicks from the drives. I wrote it off as noise from them being accessed but it got worse and the system started to hang during POST while it looks for the drives.

I ran tests to verify sectors and never got any problems with any actual sectors but the drives would hang on occasion and some would take way longer than others to finish.

Now, the interesting part is my HD Tune benchmark results...

Every single drive at some point during the test will have a huge performance down spikes. The only drive that runs the benchmark correctly is my OS drive a 7200.12 1TB Seagate.

Note, that this is a fresh Win7 install and with or without the drives being initialized in the OS the same problem occurs.

I thought maybe it could be power my PSU is about 3-4 years old...
Evga 680i
8800GTX SLI
Q6600
1 1TB 7200.12
4 2TB
BL/DVD Combo Drive
Corsair 620 Watt

I pulled out my 8800GTX's and tossed in an 8600GTS just so the power usage would drop and this had no impact.

Is there anything I may be overlooking or anything that could be causing this besides the drives being faulty.

Fry's has the 2TB Hitachi's on sale and I am ready to head over there and pick those up after I return the Seagate's.

Thoughts?

 

[greengolftee87]

I have 1 of the seagates and 2 of the hitachis. Personally id say go for the Hitachis. They're fast as hell and with the sale at Frys you cant beat the price

 

[deekortiz3]

Just to let you know in case someone reads this later...

I returned all the Seagates got the Hitachis for $9 less per drive. All look great in HD Tune. After testing the Seagates a bit more it looks like the all had varying degrees of Seek issues. I think I forgot how quiet hard drives should be the Hitachis do not click at all.

I have stuck by Seagate through the first 1.5TB drive issues and I have 20 of the dreaded firmware drives but I think this is going to be my last Seagate for awhile. I haven't had problems with the 7200.12 drives I have but all these issues lately have been very off-putting.

 

[deekortiz3]

I have 1 of the seagates and 2 of the hitachis. Personally id say go for the Hitachis. They're fast as hell and with the sale at Frys you cant beat the price

Thanks, the 7200 RPM drives definitely give a noticeable boost over the Seagates.

 

[rays87turbo]

Those down spikes seem to be characteristic of all seagate drives. I've noticed them on all seagate and maxtor products I've had...160GB, 320GB, 500GB, 1TB. They all do that to some extent, and I've noticed that the WD, Samsung and Hitachis all have much smoother curves, and generally perform better in sequential reads, but are comparable in other areas. That said I've never had any odd clicking and mine have been as reliable as any of the others.