Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[mencius]

The drive is making these clicking noises every minute or so when it is idle. Not very loud, but definitely noticable and annoying. Is it normal for this drive?

I've uploaded a recording of the sound here, it's around 2:20

http://www.mediafire.com/?kh67j7vh9u30lcn

Thanks.

[Cantbecanit]

It might be a power issue, or maybe even placement, which way do you have operating, i.e horizontal,vertical,inverted etc. does sound like a head parking though, mind you I was lucky to hear it, the minute I went to play it she stuck the washing machine on spin, women huh.

[mencius]

It's horizontal in the case secured with 4 screws.

[Cantbecanit]

Label side up?

You might want to check the leads for bends and connection, other than that it's feasable that the drive has a bug, if that is the case I would set it aside for now as there seems to be a number of customer's having issues with those 2TB drives, I say set it aside as if and when it is established there is a bug it will be better to have the drive you bought and flash it than send it in and get a refurb in exchange, don't leave it too long though if you don't see a solution within the next two month's, it doesn't sound like clack of death, but does sound like the drive is doing something that it can't complete fully, hence the retry sound, if you can try it out as an external, if it doesn't do it then at least you will have some idea that it might not be the drive and could just be a Windows thing or even other hardware causing it, one thing I always do when anything like this happens is to reseat everything in the PC, not saying this will cure it, but if you have ten minutes to spare there's nothing to lose trying, good luck.

[mencius]

Hi Cantbecanit,

Thanks for your replies. After reading the other thread about this model failing/not detected, I bought a Hitachi drive instead.

[Cantbecanit]

That's understandable and not a problem, if that gives you any trouble later on can you pop in and mention it, it help's to see if there are similarities between brands.

All the best.

[jascro]

I recently purchased two of these drives and have noticed the clicking, at first I wasn't worried or bothered but now I'm starting to wonder just how long they're going to last.  I don't know if just one or both are making the noise but it's good to see I'm not the only one who has noticed it.

It's not caused by power supplies or incorrect installation, there's some sort of issue with these drives and I for one would like an explanation, as I'm sure many others would too.  The only time I've heard drives make noises like this is when IBM (Hitachi) drives used to develop what became known as the 'IBM click of death'.  I haven't had a drive fail for years (since IBM drives) and I'd really like to avoid going through that again.

Please, can someone at Seagate look into this before it becomes an epidemic and tarnishes the brand.  Just think what's going to happen if you ignore it and thousands of people end up with dud drives...

[Cantbecanit]

The brand is tarnished with the 11 series drives, as I've been here helping since I've seen a few posts that are obviously competitors making the brand look worse, not you btw, but it would help to know what hardware yours is running on as old tech isn't always 100% with new tech, and it would seem #1 competitor WD aren't without their own issues as drives get larger.

[jascro]

The two I purchased are in a brand new Buffalo Linkstation Pro Quad NAS, the clicks become noticeable as soon as the unit completes booting (once all the head movement of the bootup process has completed). Specific model of the NAS is LS-QVL/E running firmware revision 1.41.  I had planned to start with two and add another two later on and perhaps look at a RAID5 setup, now I don't know what to do.

I think enough people have made mention of this now that it warrants serious investigation by Seagate.  I am merely a consumer, have no affiliation with any manufacturer of any kind - I just want what I have bought to work well and reliably, sounds simple but seems far from it.

I'm still not sure if it's just one of the two or both, could isolate them and find out if required or helpful.

[Cantbecanit]

Have a look here http://forums.buffalotech.com/t5/Storage/LS-QVL-E-Setup-trouble/td-p/59050 note it's WD drives they are using this time.

Here's some more http://forums.buffalotech.com/t5/Storage/What-specs-of-Hard-Drives-will-work-in-Linkstation-Quad-LS-...

Here is a link to give you more reading    http://www.google.co.uk/#sclient=psy&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=LS-QVL%2FE&aq=&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=...

Hope you get some sort of fix for it, but I would be looking at Buffalo rather than Seagate right now tbh.