I both one 2TB Seagate Expansion 5 months ago. After 2 weeks the loud clicking sound problem appear. I was too busy and manage to go for a replacement only 3 months later. After 1 month of waiting today I got a new one. Guess how long it works before the clicking sound problem appears again - 2 hours!!! No more Seagate Expansion for me. I'm going to replace it with another external hard drive.
I have had this problem with my seagate 1.5tb external hard drive pretty much since I bought it, and I have just put up with it so far. Could I have had this drive replaced or is there a known fix?
The problem is simple, the screw washer on the capacitor side is touching and creates some kind of short on the pcb board. The connect bracket with the harddrive may also touch the metal case. Two things to fix the problem, replace the screw washer with non metal washer or put insulation tape around the capacitor. You have to put a insulation tape, like duct tape on the metal case underneath the connection bracket . I have done it and the seagate is working great without any constant clicking noise for a week now. It's one of those problem that's hard to trouble shoot because it works fine when it's out of the case. I hope this will help people with 1T or 2T external Seagate hard drive and get it fix themselves. You all have a great day.
I guess there are different root causes for the same problem here. I tried most of the solutions posted on this thread: the high-quality USB cable with ferrite-core, outside the metal case, inside a PC, etc... the only thing that defenitely helped me was upgrading the firmware of the HD (see one of my posts). No problems since then!
I bought a 1 TB Barracuda drive some 1 year back and used it without problem for alomost 8 months. Then the clicking sound started and the drive eventually went dead. I took to replacement and got it replaced. Then the replaced drive again started clicking after 2 months of use. I have warraty till 2014. Can I specify on request to replace to get a model that is free from this problem. Apart from replacement hassel it is not that easy to back up 1 TB of data. I did a firmware update with no relif. The model is ST31000528AS. I admire your product but this is gone too far. I have a lot of imprortant stuff that I just can't keep moving.
My brand new Seagate 2TB External Drive ST320005EXA101-RK just arrived today. After connecting it to power and plug it in to my PC, wait and wait and wait, nothing happens. Same thing when I tried it on multiple machines all running Win7 with USB 2.0 on it. Wasting me freaking 2 hours on this! I am going to return it back to the retailer tomorrow. Seagate, you are killing your image making defective drives like this!
