FreeAgent Products

[digiquix]

It sounds like a lot of people are having the same problem here.

I have a seagate 2TB drive that is showing the same symptoms.

1.) sits there plugged in idling

2.) suddenly clicks randomly

click  ... clickclick ... clickclick ...      click .... clickclick ...

stops and starts again randomly

It's hard to replicate, but it sure sounds very unhealthy and defective. I talked to seagate,

and they said the same thing.

"They don't read the forums, and pretty much don't care."

No drive test status, no support.

The **bleep**tiest support and service someone can get on the phone.

We should start creating a new facebook issue for this.

I will.

[CrazyRage]

I have registered to show my support for everyone grilling Seagate.

I got my first seagate a couple of years ago and it was a 0.5tb freeagent desktop. After using for a couple of weeks i heard the click of death and assumed that i must have knocked something loose within the case. Weeks passed and it failed. I was using a old pc with XP. Nothing I did worked and i thought i would leave it alone and put it in a cabinet and forgot about it for around 6 months. I was about to buy a new drive when I thought I'd test out the old one again. It suddenly worked and has not broken down since.

I think you guys are right about the upside down thing. Even though the drive stood upright (the 0.5tb) it was in a weird position in the cabinet and so whatever it was must have undone itself.

I've bout 2 more Seagate drives including a 2tb last week. On thing I might add is I never move my drives and i stack them so overheating is not an issue. I am now using them all on a quad core windows 7 pc and they are working fine.

I think it is really weird that there are different fixes, does this mean that the drives do not have standard (identical manufacturing faults) defects and that the one to go for you depends on how you use it?

[Xerxes]

I use quite a few USB Freeagents but only for external backup.. I would never trust or use a 3rd party backup system/application/encryption -- so I just use drag/copy only.

The other thing I will never do is try to copy vast amounts of data in one drag/copy, 8gig max. every 30+ minutes.

I think it is obvious to all now that these disks do run hot, and are NOT to be used as 'heavy-duty' external drives for multi-media usage sessions etc or trying to copy 60+Gb in one go.

Despite this I make sure I turn off the Eco power-down option, so my disks run permanently while plugged in.

Treat them gently as they require, no day trips in the boot or bus and they seem to last well.

After copying 60gig 'slowly' I would also consider allowing the drive to cool down by disconnecting for some time.

How do you treat yours ?

[HMTL]

Also registered just to post this:

Bought 6 months ago one 1.5 TB external drive (Desktop model), after 2 months I began to have Death Clicks noises.

The hard drive died 1 month ago... I returned it to Seagate, one week after I received the "new" one.... Exactly the same problem, worst, the new hard drive wasn't recognized by Windows.... Or 1 time on 5.... And when it was recognized, the connection was lost after 5 minutes....

Never, never I will buy Seagate again. This lack of serious is really unacceptable.

Don't lose your time with Seagate's hard drives !!!

Henri.

[glen]

Its funny but I dont usually set my stuff up vervically. Sony ps3 , wii etc there has been all kinds of damage done to drives moved while up or in certain transport situations. Well just bought a 1.5 FreeAgent Desk from Walmart for 70 . COuldnt resist and to be honest I am shocked about the possibility of a company today unloading a bunch crud and getting away with as Seagate seems to be doing according to every site I check. I only checked after I purchased since the price was so cheap and Its been years since I had a zip drive ..another situation .. 10 years ago  another company did the same thing competing with zip and messed with a lot of people with lousy customer service. That was also when computer city went belly up as well. Ok to I set this seagate vertical but the other way from the pic shown and so far no click out of box problems and I backed up nicely . I also was wondering about the position of the drive since the one I had years ago did respond to different positions. So I set mine up  the other way ...primarily since I usually dont look at specs and setup instructions. Still we shouldnt have to worry about the positon etc ... I am uessing that if its too cheap it probably is to good to be true. I was hoping walmart was just having a store loss leader... in reality they probably got a super deal from Seagate to unload this. I will be on this with updates and it needs to get reported to a regulatory commitee to force a suit not only for the price but of course damages to data since they knowlingly and willfully put this on the market and it was not due to normal wear and tear. However as for me no click yet ....

[HighCastle]

I got the 1.5TB FreeAgent Desk six months ago.  Right out of the box it was the noisier than my other three (two Maxtor and one Western Digital) external drives. 

I'm not sure when the clicking started.  It's like the tick-tock of a clock, but much louder.  I noticed it a few days ago when I was watching a video stored on this drive . . . three times during the video the player paused to buffer the movie (this NEVER happens with my other external drives) and while buffering the loud clicking noise was clearly audible.  It woke me up today, which was strange because I'm running on Windows XP SP3 and have the indexing service turned off.  As far as I know, nothing should have been trying to read from or write to that drive.

I have tried changing USB ports (Seemed to fix the problem at first but clicking soon returned).  I tried a variety of USB cables.  I have tried various positions for the drive itself.

SeaTools did not find any problem with the drive.  So I'm stuck with a failing drive that I cannot return.

Since I cannot return the drive, I will try other things, including removing it from its enclosure and installing it as an internal drive.

I read this thread from start to finish and was astonished to see that there has been no comment or help from Seagate on this issue.  Moderators obviously do read this thread because they have edited at least two of the posts.  Data storage is arguably the most important part of the home computing experience.  How can products so obviously flawed/defective end up on the market?  How can telephone support not be aware of this issue (as reported by an earlier post)?  Seagate's reputation will suffer from this.  Perhaps they don't care?  Maybe they're going out of business soon and they know it?  Why else would you flood the market with defective goods?

I will post an update if anything changes with this drive. 

[HighCastle]

Last night I removed the drive from the case and installed it internally in the same computer.  It did its "tick-tock" once or twice when I booted the computer up initially.  Not a single click since then.

It takes less time to access folders.  The drive seems so much faster now.  No pauses while watching videos.

At this point, this is strong evidence of a serious design flaw with the case.

**UPDATE 01-03-2011**

I have rebooted the computer and accessed multiple folders and still have had no problems with this drive.  This video on YouTube I found today has the exact clicking noise I heard from my drive.  The external drive in the video is a different model from mine, but the person solved the problem in the same way I did.  If your drive sounds like the one in this video, one solution is to eliminate the case and install it internally.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgJe9R0QpmI&feature=watch_response_rev

I am not sure which component of the case is at fault.  The "case" includes the power supply, USB cable, a circuit board, metal housing, and plastic enclosure.  The plastic enclosure is not suspect.  The USB cord doesn't seem to make a difference.  That leaves the circuit board, power supply, and metal housing.  One person on YouTube claims to have fixed this clicking issue by removing a tab from the metal housing near the USB port.  Here is a link to his video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK1pEVjReNA

I'm tempted to try it out, but my drive is already installed internally and working perfectly.  If I do decide to tinker with it, I will post my results here.

[jianni]

** UPDATE 01/23/2011 ***

I have corrected the SEAGATE click of death by placing the disk into another cheap, external SATA enclosure (you canbuy these for $10). Click is gone. I would assume that by installing this drive internally into my DELL Studio XPS studio would also fix the problem, but I already have a drive in there.

So it was never really the actual Seagate hard disk as the problem, but the cheapo external drive enclosure. Though I will be hesitant in purchasing another Seagate, but the other manufactureres build worse drives. Ie. The SAMSUNG internal hard drive that my DELL Studio XPS came with, died in around one year. I replaced it with a Seagate and no problems yet....

[Unreallystic]

My concern with doing that is it kills your warranty completely - and it isn't a garunteed fix.  My harddrive is just completly MIA at this point, I just never shipped it out ot Seagate in hopes of someone finding a universal fix.  As well, mine crashed within a month of taking it out the box, and in the middle of a system refresh - so ALL my data is on there and Seagate expects ME to fork over money to restore it.  Kinda sucks, I used to be pro-seagate, but after all this - I've been pointing all the fmaily members and riends that come to me for tech help - to other brands.  Its one thing for a 'lemon' situation to occur, its going to happen, but their method of handling it was the ultimate turn-off.  I've already purchased roughly two dozen drives from other companies at this point. - there loss.

-Will

[JDowney]

Hi

 I use the FreeAgent Desk 2TB, in fact I have 5.  However they all are now making this "clicking" sound and sometimes freezing.  I have searched through the Seagate forum, and know that I am not alone here...  Question is What Can We Do About This Situation?

  Does anyone know of a fix or workaround?  Does anyone even know what the problem is?  Can anyone shed anykind of light on this issue, and post it here?

Anything would be a help, so let's see if collectively we can come up with something...

Thank you!

 Jeff