Other External products

[AlanM]

The clicking sound experienced with some of the Expansion Drives in 1.5TB and 2TB capacities was an issue that has been identified and addressed  with a change that was made at the factory in April 2010.  If you are still experiencing this issue, please contact support.

Please feel free to PM me with any questions.

[upset user]

Just got a replacement from a supplier of a 2TB drive, and it still clicks!!!!

Whats the fix, is there any official documentation from seagate i can have to show why i am returning the drive again, as they claim they could not find the fault on the last unit.

[pv7721]

Oh, so Seagate discovered (and addressed, so they claim) in April 2010, whereas the first reports I've seen about this click of death dated back in autumn 2009 (so it took them more than a half of a year). Nevertheless in August 2010 I bought an unit still defective, the retailer replaced it last Saturday but the new unit broke even faster (I'm under the impression that they tend to break when data is read back from the drive, and not when it is written). So next Saturday I'm going to see them again, ask for a full refund and look for a Seagate alternative!

[Raal777]

I have the Seagate External Expansion 1.5tb since 50 days ago, , since one week when is reading the drive I hear a some "click" sounds, Im worried, and tonight watching a movie from that drive, it have a delay reading and the "clicks" comes again, but stil working, I install a Hard Drive management, the  first advice (warning) was "The drive Seagate is Overheating", it marks 154 ºF when the limit are 130 ºF in that program.

I dont know if thats the origin of the problem, my other drives are around 115/120 ºF maximus, I put a fan and a frozen gel under the seagate drive and the alarm goes off...

I contact the technical support today by email waiting an answer.

[kenmojr]

---

AlanM wrote:

The clicking sound experienced with some of the Expansion Drives in 1.5TB and 2TB capacities was an issue that has been identified and addressed  with a change that was made at the factory in April 2010.  If you are still experiencing this issue, please contact support.

Please feel free to PM me with any questions.

---

I've been experiencing this clicking noise for quite some time, so I've been following the LONG thread on this forum....

Sorry AlanM but your reply is quite vague... Yes, I clicked the link and it took me to your support page. Big deal!!!...Can you not tell us how we should contact via e-mail or telephone number? If there is a case or incidence number we should be quoting?

My patience is getting quite thin with Seagate on this issue and your reply is quite irresponsible... Now kindly reinstall the faith I once had in Seagate and give us more information....

[AlanM]

---

kenmojr wrote:

Can you not tell us how we should contact via e-mail or telephone number? If there is a case or incidence number we should be quoting?

---

You need no Incident number to contact Support.  And the link takes you to precisely where you need to go to contact them.  The number is not printed in 80-point font on that page, granted, but a minimum amount of reading the page will lead you where you need to go.

[kenmojr]

[Per Guidelines: Be courteous.]... and kindly answer my prior question...

[kenmojr]

Is the drive replaced, is there a firmware upgrade, etc?

You state the problem has been identified... as customers of Seagate and owners of these faulty drives do we not have a right to know what the problem is? This "secrecy" is not the norm in the automotive world...

I use my Seagate to backup my thousands of digital photo and digital art (paintings, 3D renders) that I've created over the past several years...

So once again I'm asking you to kindly answer the questions... As a customer I feel I have a right to treated in a civil and courteous manner...

If I must return my drive I would like to know ASAP as I need to find a way to copy the data to a temporary location...

[MrMatthew]

Hello,

Please visit the link at: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/about/contact_us/ on how to contact Technical Support.

 Clicking the Technical Support option will give you official email, 1 on 1 live chat and call technical support options.

Hope this helps!

[kenmojr]

Look... I'm not trying to be argumentive or confrontational but why won't someone answer my questions. I think they are legitimate...

So once more I'll ask... What is the flaw with these hard drives? Will they be replaced or is it a simple firmware upgrade? Please answer and PLEASE no more links to your support site...

Cheers

Ken

[lindoro]

Dear AlanM,

I bought one of those faulty drives in Innsbruck during a leisure trip, but I live in Italy. I bought it on August 2010, much later than the issue has been solved. I just completed the procedures for sending it back for a replacement (order id: 1003588305), but I dont think that's fair to ask me to pay the shipping back to Seagate for the replacement: that batch of hard drives was well known to be faulty and honestly I can't see any reason for which I should pay for the shipping back (in addition to all the other issues deriving from the backup, the waste of time and so on...). It simply should haven't been on the market.

There isn't even a phone number for assistance in Italy (not even in Italian!). This is quite disappointing for such a big company like Seagate.

Marco

[AlanM]

Marco,

I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean.  Our Contact Us page is linked in numerous places on our Italian site.

http://www.seagate.com/www/it-it/about/contact_us/

[lindoro]

Dear AlanM,

there's more than one topic:

1) This is the "italian" technical contact page:

Europa

Medio Oriente

Africa

1.405.324.4714

Invia caso di studio tramite e-mail (Inglese)

Inglese Francese Tedesco Spagnolo

It is clearly written in Italian, but I can't see "Italian" among the spoken languages in the list. This means: no Italian is spoken (and I'm not very good at speaking and understanding English, to not to say German or French!)

2) This device is on the market since 2009. The "clickety sond" problem affecting so many people has been recognized in April 2010.  I bought it in August 2010, this means that it was deliberately sold even knowing the high possibility of it being a faulty device.

Now you at Seagate say: "Yes of course, we'll replace it. Just send it to us AT YOUR EXPENSES, after having taken all your data AWAY (where, it's not our problem!), after having spent HOURS of your time trying to find that we already knew of the problem months before you bought it, and other HOURS for packing it and bringing it to a postal office, and let's HOPE that the replacement wouldn't have THE SAME defect". THIS is not fair: I cannot accept that, months later the problem had been recognized! Come on, I'm not having the feeling that you (at Seagate) did all your best to respect the buyer, and to sell him the best of your techology. At least you could have organized a collect-at-home-at-our-expenses service, in partial compensation for the foreseeable problems that your clients would have faced. This is VERY disappointing!

Is my thought clearer now? In any case, I dont think I'll buy seagate or maxtor anymore, and as a university professor of computer science I'll recommend my students to stay away as well.

m.

[Wombat64]

I had no issue with my 2TB Expansion drive being replaced. Called the Warranty phone number. The woman asked me what the issue ws, I told her. She offered to send a replacement after I send mine in to them, or she would have the replacement sent 2-day UPS with a return label for the defective one (at a cost of $19.00). I chose the latter. Arrived today, moving my music and video from backups. No clicking yet. So far so good.

[pv7721]

Well, the replacement I first got was also working flawlessly... at the beginning... but only when I wanted to do a last test of consistency check (I wanted to make sure that all data that I copied on it was identical to the source, only then I realized the horror of the replacement being faulty as well!

My big chance was that I bought this through a retailer which refunded me in full after I brought back the replacement drive! Otherwise, I imagine I would have been extremly frustrated to pay from my own pocket for a replacement that might not work!

I will also stay away from seagate drives (the problem is that nowadays you cannot stay too much away from them, as they OEM a lot, so for instance Lacie uses Seagate drives) and I also regret Maxtor was acquired by Seagate, as they killed the very good brand that used to be Maxtor (I was looking to purchase a Seagate big drive in order to replace 5 years old Maxtor drives, which worked flawlessly, but which were becoming too small).

I'm finally glad to see that since I've answered to this thread, I'm not the only one stumbling upon this awful "click of death" issue, which is definitely not fixed (or Seagate didn't to the right thing: when this issue was discovered, a recall should have been done, but indeed this is too costly for the company, so they preferred to do it on a case by case basis).

[Wombat64]

I'll just have to hope things work out here. My warranty is good until 2012 and the warranty rep told me if the same issue occurs with this replacement that I would possibly be eligible for a replacement of another product of equal or lesser value. I hope it doesn't come to that.

@ pv7721

What did you mean by "only when I wanted to do a last test of consistency check (I wanted to make sure that all data that I copied on it was identical to the source, only then I realized the horror of the replacement being faulty as well!" 

[pv7721]

@Wombat64: my home setup is as follows: I used to have several Maxtor drives (a small 250 GB NAS, another Maxtor II USB drive and a couple of Maxtor III) and I never knew where my data was. So I put everything on a big Lacie 2 TB NAS... which crashed. I was fortunate enough to live near the Lacie European HQ so I could give them the drive to recover the data. Once I got the data back I said I need a 2 TB backup so I bought a 2 TB Seagate Expansion...

I use a very nifty tool, called Total Commander, which is an orthodox file manager (i.e. besides the command line it presents a left/right image of the file system). Why is that nifty? Because you can synchronize between 2 folders and it lists the files that are missing / extra (and it can also add the missing files / folders). So once I copied the whole data I wanted to make a last check by launching a synchronization between source and destination (the Seagate Expansion drive). That implied a long time operation of reading files from the disk (I noticed that the click seem to start ocurring when the disk was acessed for reading, not writing). So as soon as I start to do that I start hearing the dreaded death click.

My opinion is that Seagate wanted to do a smart thing by incorporating the power management... but the thing was not working right... so at some point a conflict occurred between the disk who tried to power itself down and OS reading from disk... also I could not find any power management software to disable this, maybe this was enough?!?

[nospamboz]

---

kenmojr wrote:

What is the flaw with these hard drives?

---

Given the content of these youtube videos, I think it's an electrical grounding problem.

http://www.youtube.com/user/n9jcv

Those videos are from March 2010.

[pv7721]

What seems to be forgotten is that if you attempt to repair your disk yourself:

1) You may not succeed

2) You may void your warranty AND if you didn't succeed you might have a very expensive brick on your hands.

[nospamboz]

It is, of course, a judgement call. All I can say is that the enclosure "patch" from the Youtube video worked for me. Clicks are gone and the drive functions well.

[kenmojr]

---

pv7721 wrote:

Well, the replacement I first got was also working flawlessly... at the beginning... but only when I wanted to do a last test of consistency check (I wanted to make sure that all data that I copied on it was identical to the source, only then I realized the horror of the replacement being faulty as well!

My big chance was that I bought this through a retailer which refunded me in full after I brought back the replacement drive! Otherwise, I imagine I would have been extremly frustrated to pay from my own pocket for a replacement that might not work!

I will also stay away from seagate drives (the problem is that nowadays you cannot stay too much away from them, as they OEM a lot, so for instance Lacie uses Seagate drives) and I also regret Maxtor was acquired by Seagate, as they killed the very good brand that used to be Maxtor (I was looking to purchase a Seagate big drive in order to replace 5 years old Maxtor drives, which worked flawlessly, but which were becoming too small).

I'm finally glad to see that since I've answered to this thread, I'm not the only one stumbling upon this awful "click of death" issue, which is definitely not fixed (or Seagate didn't to the right thing: when this issue was discovered, a recall should have been done, but indeed this is too costly for the company, so they preferred to do it on a case by case basis).

---

That's why I'm now shying away from Seagate drives. The mod here won't even come clean with us and inform us, the customer what the problem is. He's refered us to tech support, which I've down and now I'm back on this useless forum trying to find out a way to resolve my issue. NO I don't want to return my drive for another faulty drive that clicks as well.... I want the issue resolved...

If the mod doesn't tell us what the problem is AND STOP referring us to tech support, then it's no more Seagate drives for me... Too bad though Seagate SCSI drives were the drives we preferred in our Netware servers..... Now Netware is dying in the marketplace and so is Seagate....

[pv7721]

Well, I'm afraid that moderators just do their job: they moderate these forums, but it's tech/cust support which supports customers, so technically they cannot do anything else but refer us to SeaGate tech support.

Not sure if you watched the 2 parts film where a guy shows how to fix this... with basically a simple piece of paper? As I said, I'm skeptical that the issue would be so simple to fix... and if it's not really fixed (because the test he does it's really quick and simple) then you've broken your warranty and your disk has just become a very expensive brick.

I'm looking at the competition, unfortunately at 2 TB there don't seem to be too much choices, and the best deal I saw on Amazon seems to also suffer, hopefully not of clicking, but of heating problems (because they've put it in a case without caring that the disk can become hot during normal operations).

[smilin' Jack]

I'm going to wait 6 months and see how this replacement issue works out. If Seagate is going to replace defective drives with the same problem.....it's not worth the postage for me to send the old one back for an exchange. To any official of Seagate.....you're not improving your image by acknowledging delays and declining to post the cause of the defect. It likely won't be long before some irate consumer starts a campaign about your defective expansion drives and your lack of response.......that draws the attention of the Internet community.

[K]

The drive I bought just before Christmas has the clicking thing, as well as a whole pile of other issues. Seagate has the gall to expect *me* to pay the return fees, without any guarantee that the replacement would work.

Suffice to say, I will never purchase a Seagate product again as long as I live and I will inform everyone I know to follow suit.

[Futura57]

I simply had to register on this forum to say how very disappointed I am in Seagate after having recently bought two 2Tb Expansion external HDDs (ST320005EXD101-RK units) from Maplin in the UK. I am running Windows XP and today got my first ever blue screen of death. Not only that, the drive keeps disconnecting while copying data from my existing drives. And, yes, one of them is an older Seagate 500Gb unit which has been flawless. The lack of clarity in any response to people's pleads for help is staggering. Life is too short to mess around trying to find workarounds for issues like this. The product is simply not fit for purpose and, like others on this thread, I shall never knowingly buy Seagate again and will actively discourage others from doing so. I now have ABSOLUTELY NO CONFIDENCE in the products' ability to safely store my data.

[wobblyo]

I recently purchased a 1.5Tb ext hdd & it has worked fine for the last 2 weeks.  I used it to back up a friend's PC prior to upgrading his Windows without difficulty, and this took the drive over the 50% mark.  On reconnecting to my desktop & carrying out a Windows 7 backup it started clicking during the backup.  I cancelled the backup and it continued to produce random clicking noises during file transfers; during the clicking the file transfer appeared to stop and then resumed after the clicking had stopped.  There doesn'd seem to be any consistency with the clicks it will just start at random and then stop after a few or maybe many clicks.  I tried a different USB cable, but on powering up the drive started clicking without me connecting the USB cable! I also checked my BIOS, but could not see any settings that might affect it.  I ran the SeaTools short & long self tests and despite much clicking during the longer test, the drive passed (ie. if I was to return it under warranty, the company would say it is OK).  Yesterday I ran the drive with my laptop and there was no clicking during file transfers.  However, when I started a Windows 7 backup it clicked a few times shortly after starting, but then completed the backup (over 5 hours - which was expected) without fault.  I have emailed the technical support & await a reply following the weekend.  I will try on my desktop again today with the hard drive on my desk to obviate any temperatur problems that may be causing it.  This problem does seem to be long-standing and obviously only affects some people.  I'll await a reply and hopefully post good news later.

[wobblyo]

No longer clicking!!  Having found a post in which a cure was found by replacing the USB cable with a different one, but one which had ferrite cores, I tried fitting a ferrite core at the disk drive end and wrapped the cable through and once around the ferrite core.  Initially this didn't seem to make any difference but after a matter of hours, having left the drive on & connected it is now no longer clicking when copying files to/from or using Windows 7 backup.  Whether this is due to the ferrite core or a coincidence of leaving the drive connected for several hours I don't know, but I am not removing the core to find out!!  (if it ain't broke - don't fix it!).  Also, one poster said he found USB legacy support settings in his BIOS on a Gigabyte board which he enabled and this also cured the clicking (my Core i7 Gigabyte EX58-UD5 BIOS didn't have these settings).  I had emailed Seagate about the problem who advised running Seatools, which I already had without error, but loads of clicking!!  NB.  The drive is also transferring files much quicker >30Mb/sec so appears to be working fine.

[JNeail]

Hi - did you get a resolution to this ..?  Got mine from Maplis also, but they won't replace or refund as it's more than 30-days since I purchased it that the clicking really started to take hold.  I'm trying now to return it, not sure what the costs are, but hopefully nothing, especially as they dont do advanced return shipmets in the UK (just in the US) which is crud..  This was my 1st Seage drive in a few years, and like you will never be buying Seagate products again, I've gone back to WD for the time being...

[kenmojr]

Wow...Seagate still doesn't have a resolution for this problem other then suggesting to ship back your hard drive to Seagate to have it replaced with another faulty drive... Unbelievable...!!!!!

[octopus888]

I'm not sure this is a defect.

Try this and see how it works on your pc.

Go to explorer and right click on the Expansion drive.

Select Properties, select the Hardware tab, select the Expansion drive, click on the Properties button, select the Policies tab in the new window and select Better Performance option instead of Quick Removal.

The clicking noise is gone. It only does it once when you wake it up from sleeping mode.

I've tried it on Windows 7 and XP.

[SEAWINGS]

Hi Octopus888,

I purchased my Seagate Ext HD from Maplins in the UK some 6 months ago, or thereabouts and only 'stumbled' across this Forum when seeking info on something else, saw the series of complaints re; 'clicking' and have followed it ever since.

As I live in the UK, returning it to the States is too costly for me to consider as, for what I paid for it v's the return costs, I'm a third of the way towards getting a new one.

I have had the clicks since day one, coming and going, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, but each time making me very nervous as what's on the Seagate is extremely dear to my heart and I don't ever want to lose it!

I tried your 'fix' just know, whilst it was in the middle of the clicks and whilst I was moving stuff around between it and the pc - it WORKED!

Not one click at all. Stopped it dead in its tracks and the Seagate is working fast, very fast and has not put a foot wrong in the past half hour.

Could you possibly have found the issue?

I'll keep a wary eye on it but I have to say that it is better than it was.

Thanks a lot for your post.

Cheers,

Seawings

[SEAWINGS]

Uh, Oh....

10 mins aftter the llast post, it started clicking again......on and off.  Working ok, but clicking......

Ho Hummmm

[ClickOfDeath]

I just registered my product and it tells me i no longer have free phone support. LMAO, seagate has no support. I have to pay 10 bucks on top of the money i already wasted on their brick. Oh did i mention chat support doesnt work too! We should all get our

drives together and build a house with these bricks and post it on you tube! Thats about all they are usefull for.

[Edit: Legal Discussion is a Violation of Community Guidelines] 

[SEAWINGS]

Ok, so all of this begs the question: "What IS a good, realible, fast 1T external Hard Drive to purchase here in the UK"?

[troybowd]

I bought 4 of the Seagate 2TB Expansion drives about 4 weeks ago.  CC95 firmware is present on all drives as standard.  The files that Seagate put on the drive have a modified date that is later than the date of the supposed fix that AlanM mentions.  Within 1 week I have experienced numerous random disconnects (with a nice loud click) on 2 of the drives which caused corruption on some files which I luckily had a backup of.

I have no desire to go through the pain of returning the drives only to get drives back which would obviously be inclined to exhibit the same problems.  So, I removed all 4 of the drives from the enclosures (therefore voiding my warranty) and fitted them internally.  No more problems after this, in fact approx. double the transfer rate, and half the temperature.

I have around 10 seagate drives in my systems and have sold many more to my customers.  All work fine, all internal.  My conclusions:

1) Seagate internal drives are great.

2) Seagate external enclosures suck in a huge way.

3) Seagate ignore there is a problem for years, and offer no reasonable solution for existing users.

4) Seagate offer a 'fix' but don't detail what it is, therefore implying that the 'fix' was merely an attempt to restore confidence so suckers (like me) continue buying.

My new rules:

1) Primarily because of points 3 and 4, I will never buy a Seagate drive ever again.  Period.

2) If you really want a Seagate (I don't anymore), then just buy a bare drive and keep your warranty.

I work in the computer repair/upgrade business, so I hope that Seagate understands this is going to cost them $, just like it has cost me $.

FWIW I have a 5 year old Hitachi external drive that went through a partial house fire 2 years ago.  After  a bit of cleaning the aluminium enclosure, it still works perfectly fine as does the enclosure.

I do hope that Seagate can get it's act together to save this situation some day (year, millenium?).  After reading all the threads and seeing the youtube vids and the amazon reviews, it's too late to win me back.

From now on, it's Hitachi (or possibly Samsung) here.  I need reliability, not this stuffing around where I have to fix a brand new 'friggin drive myself.

[Munky]

If yours has died completely and want a last ditch attempt at getting your data back, try http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Rescue-Restore/Bringing-your-Seagate-quot-Expansion-quot-series-HDD-bac...

[leeu]

I also experience that on my external drive. its 1.5 TB seagate. "The click" sound ...not continues at first I suspected it to be a result of a fluctuation of current but after 1 wek of using the "click" is still there....I am planing to run for a waranty to the store where I bought it.

[TraineeAngel77]

I naively bought a Seagate drive on March 15th. (I am a WD fan) I received it yesterday, and after reading about all the problems the expansion drive has been having thought I would add my input to the woes!

I started it up and all seemed well. But after a while of copying files I noticed what could be described as the click of death. It was more of a squeaky click at random times. Since mine is still within the 7 day cooling off period (UK, may vary from country to country) I am going to return it tommorrow and exchange it for what I should have bought originally: A WD 2TB!!!

I have to say that one does want a reliable drive, but from personal experience I find the worst drives are Toshiba/Samsung and now Lacie/Seagate by the look. Silly me thinking I would have a "change" of hard drive. I have NEVER had problems with WD internal or external. Something else, I also found my warranty to be from date of manufacture and NOT from day of registration (sale).  This isn't fair.

The most problem I have had with external drives is bad blocks but that's another matter...

[SEAWINGS]

Hi All,

Well, since my last post which I see above was April 2011 it is nearly a year since i heard the click of death. The adjustment described in Octopussey's post worked for me and my external Seagate HD has performed perfectly since then to tonight. I have not heard a sound from it, it is on all the time, and I am now very pleased with it. It's fast and (becoming) reliable - indeed it never actuially has let me down so far.

Just my up-date report - nothing more sinister. I just had another posting notice so thought I would let you all know how I had got on so far.

Cheers,

[Gill]

My 1TB external Seagate Drive started clicking after I gently dusted it - after about 20 months service.  I backed up, and formated, which took ages as when it was clicking it couldn't do anything.  I was just about to send it back when I read on the internet that you only get a refurbished old drive which may play up again.  I read a few things like turning it upside down - didn't work.  So I hit it about 10 times reasonably hard with my hand.  Clicking stopped, now works better than it ever has.  I probably won't fully trust it again and will be more thorough with my backups to DVD, but for now it is working fine (5 days) with a lot of use.  Maybe the theory that the case is causing the problem is correct.

[TraineeAngel77]

@Gill LMAO!!! I wouldn't recommend 'hitting' something like this. A hard drive uses precision electronics that could be dislodged permanently. I do however take on board what you mean though. I know the click can be frustrating (I exchanged mine for a WD 2000) but that said if it works ... may just be a loose connection and you have found a solution...

[Gill]

Thanks for the reply.  I wouldn't normally hit computer equipment, it was just that I was probably just going to bin it.  It is still working perfectly, seems faster than before and also quieter.  Maybe there was always a slight problem that I just took for it being a slow, noisy drive.  I would only recommend this as a last resort, but it worked for me.