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

[damnidlenois]

Hi all. I have two ST500DM002-1BC142 drives, they always make noise even when idle. I mean they make this annoying "drive in use defrag-alike noise" all the time; most of the times it's a bit less louder than the actual noise they make when reading/writing during normal use. But way louder than the idle nearly-inaudible noise or the very low noise they make when doing a surface scan.
I remember a few years ago, when I had a drive from the bugged series, while searching about its problem I found out about this "Seagate feature" on those drives that makes them do the in-use noise even when idle.
Is this still the same thing? Is there any way to disable it?
I have auto idle defrag disabled, actually I have defrag files deleted to be sure they never do anything.
Also have HelpSvc disabled and deleted, same for any other "auto" thing that Windows does. Disabled System Restore and antivirus idle scan. There's no auto-thing enabled on any of my systems, and no other hard drive makes such noise, not even an old Seagate one that I sometimes use for testing. Only drives that make this noise are these two and that old dead bugged one (and they are the only Seagate drives I have).
Thank you!

[drago]

I had 2 barracuda 500GB 7200rpm sata 3 HD in my desktop: the first was the system disk while the second was a backup unit in which I had copied the document folder (win XP).

On december the 22nd the system disk became noisy and the computer started having long pauses; I was lucky for having done a backup copy of my work because on december 24th the computer couldn't install the system at startup.

After having reinstalled the OS I realized that things were going worst, and in a few hours the computer was out of order and the HD was producing an intermitting noise.

The removal of the damaged disk seemd to solve the situation as I went trough the installation of the OS without any problem; I hadn't the guarranty documents, so I bought a new barracuda st500dm002 to be used as a backup unit.

The damaged disk was deassembled and the noise appeared everytime I manually rotate the disk.

At the end of january the old barracuda HD experienced the same problem as the the first one, after having copied every document on an external HD I disconnected the disk and I've installed Linux (Ubuntu) on the new disk I bought in december.

Yesterday, after having worked properly for about 2 week, the new disk has become noisy and the computer is very slow (it has taken 25 minutes to shut down).

As I have the guarranty documents for the HD, I've sent the seller an e-mail, and they've suggested me  to run the sea tool SW.

Now I'm not sure of what to do: how can it happen three identical HD were broken in less than 15 months? After the first crash I've been monitoring the hd temperature by an external device and it was always under 27 degrees (celsius).

I need some help about what to do now.

Bye

Stefano

[d00de83]

You are right the ST500DM002 has an issue but looks like seagate is not doing anything about it. I bought tons of those drives, even with power plugged in only with no sata cable the drive intermittantly crunches for no reason as if its doing a defrag.

I had 2 drives replaced a few months back but I still see the issue, it looks as if it also slows down disc access speeds as the drive is busy processing non existent information by itself.

Is there a firmware update for this issue as its a widespread problem but most people dont point it out.

Seagate address this issue please.

[d00de83]

755 views should point out that there is a problem

[ipristy]

I call this Smart fallout effect, BIOS kickstarts Smart and that's in manual from HDD.

They lie that will not get any slower and it's noticeable on mouse performance!