Other External products

[quitmanlover]

I met the same problem. I bought it 3 days ago from a promotion in Amazon and maybe immediately the seller reduced its price again.

The hard drive sometimes sounds upset, and stops data transfer.

I plan to give it back to Amazon.

[drummy]

just to keep u guys upto date i re-formatted this drive to ntfs, unit allocation size 64k, i have been playing full hd movies through it using WD media player has not had a single pause it is working great now so if anyone having problems i suggest trying this.

[southpaw77]

Hi,I just got my 1TB expansion drive and on the very 1st day itself it had produced this clicking sound from time to time. However I have no problem using

the drive though, wat I'm afraid of is if the clicking sound is an ominous sign that it's gonna die pretty soon...

So should i be worried and return the drive before its too late? This is my first time using an external drive, is it normal for these drives to be noisy or they 

should be almost quiet (regardless of the brand/model)?

[clickinghd]

Its 2.33 AM and I just woke up due to this clicking sound. I bought the drive yesterday, and figured I would transfer my data before I go to bed. Well the clicking was bad enough that it woke me up. It goes into a repetitive loop. Taking it back tomorrow. Very unahappy, since this seems to be a recurring issue for people on here and the one time I didnt check reviews before I bought.

Message Edited by clickinghd on 09-08-2009 02:38 AM

[clickinghd]

would LOVE to know what the Admin thinks of this issue?

[AlanM]

Well, since you asked, I'll go into it a little bit.  I have a background as a Tech Support agent, and clicking sounds are a common failure symptom for all types of hard drives.  It's kind of like saying "My refrigerator stopped blowing cold air", really.  There are various reasons for it, but it's a common secondary symptom of failure. 

I am really sorry to hear all the trouble and inconvenience to which you all have been subjected.  I hope you're able to get to a satisfactory solution.

And finally, since hard drives can fail at any time, remember in the future, always keep a backup, a second copy of your data on a separate storage media. This cannot be emphasised enough.

[Raymentchen]

I am having the same problem with my Seagate Expansions 1.5tb. I guess it is the same as the early problem with Barracuda 7200.11, which can be fixed by firmware update.

check this ： http://www.macworld.co.uk/business/news/index.cfm?newsid=24482

and http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931

However  I am not sure how to deal with my Seagate Expansions. Could I get firmware update for it?

Message Edited by Raymentchen on 09-10-2009 06:11 AM

[p a t r i c k]

Hi Raymentchen

The way to deal with the problem is to send them back to the retailer and ask for a refund. Do this before you put any stuff on the drives.

Earlier in this discussion  I said I was going to keep them because I thought the clicking sounds had died down. However the clicking sounds are intermittent and much worse on some days than others.

I did get one of the Seagate Expansions replaced and it made exactly the same sounds.

The mistake I made at the beginning of the "Seagate Expansion Experience" was to put a lot of data on these drives and then find myself committed to them in that sense. I used them for storage and in fact the data on each of my pair was identical, one backing up the other.

This meant that to send them back I had to get alternative drives (I've got a pair of Western Digital 2TB My Books) and transfer everything to them. Then I had to wipe the Seagate Expansion drives. Because the Seagate Expansion drives are so slow it took 20 hours to securely erase one drive with one pass of writing zeros over the data.

All in all these drives have wasted a very great deal of my time. Tomorrow the courier from the retailer (Amazon) comes to collect them. How glad I will be to see them go.

So, to reiterate, my advice is to send them back as soon as you get them and do not waste time trying to make them work and most definitely do not put any data on them. 

[Raymentchen]

Thank you for your rely. But I have no other place to store my data. If I return my drive, I might loss all of it.

[p a t r i c k]

In reply to posting by AlanM:

Hi

I think the kind of communication the thread would be interested in is whether or not Seagate are addressing the problem with these drives?

Judging from your response Seagate are in denial, or maybe just thinking they can get away with selling things which don't work.

Anyway I've got rid of mine - hooray!!

My advice to anyone that accidentally buys these drives is to send them back immediately, then get something else.

Don't waste time trying to make them work. 

Message Edited by p a t r i c k on 10-09-2009 02:39 PM

Message Edited by p a t r i c k on 10-09-2009 02:40 PM