Other External products

[kenmojr]

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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).

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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.