Other External products

[driveperson]

Bought a Seagate Expansion 1.5 on November 27, 2009 and proceeded to copy nearly 450 GB to it without any problems. However, three days ago I started getting a few loud clicks every once in a while when I was accessing it, but today it is clicking all of the time even when resting.  In addition it was locking up at times when I was trying to access files on it.  Having been through the "click of death" with other drives, both external and internal, I managed to remove all of the files.  I'm really disappointed with Seagate since I've been using two of their external 100GB ST90000U2 drives since 2006 without as much as a hiccup (and I've dropped one a couple of times).  I went to Seagate because of my dismal experience with failing WD drives so this is a bummer.  I've got a two Acomdatas and one Iomega external and no problems at all with them.  Sounds like these Expansion drives have some systemic problem that Seagate needs to address sooner than later.

[RandomDesign]

Well, I wish I'd seen this a couple days ago.  I'm yet another person with this problem.  I had a 500GB external drive that just wasn't big enough for my media center anymore so I picked up a 1.5TB Seagate at Fry's because it was on sale for $99.  The first drive was clicking tons the first time I plugged it in and I could barely copy data to it so I brought it back the same day and exchanged it for another one just thinking it was a DOA drive (doesn't faze me after 17 years in IT).  The second one seemed fine and I was able to copy my ~480GB of data from my old drive to this one.  It seemed fine, I was able to play the TV shows I'd recorded just fine for two days and then last night I heard it clicking again while it was recording a show.  Once the show was over I tried to play the file and it's all garbled in the middle around the time it was clicking.  I was going to buy another of the same brand drive I originally had but got sucked into this one on an impulse because it was a good price.  I guess it's going to have to go back and this time I'll just have to exchange it and pay the difference for a better drive.

[Eleyvie]

Got the same problem. I bought the ST315005EXD101 several months ago and it immediately started clicking, but I considered it to be just a harmless quirk since the drive worked perfectly. Then it started it's infamous delays about a few weeks ago. I tried running defragmentation but the problem only worsened. There are files that are being copied as slow as 3 KILObytes per second! HEY SEAGATE WHERE IS ANY REACTION? Because until I get a reaction I'm going to post my opinion on Seagate everywhere.

(Edited: Please do not use profanity.)

Message Edited by AlanM on 12-21-2009 10:12 AM

[tom_unhappy]

Hi,

I just joined this forum to complain of the exact same clicking going on in my 1TB external drive that I bought a few days ago in a Belgian supermarket, because my desktop PC was dying on me, and I had to rescue the data on it.

Just this once, I ran to the supermarket and just bought the largest external drive with the best price, without reading reviews first...

Will try a better USB cable as mentioned above later today, but most likely I will return the drive to the store. At first I thought, oh boy, the supermarket will claim I dropped it, hence the click of death, but armed with these 8 pages of complaints, at least they won't be able to pull that on me. So Thanks Alot Seagate for this magnificent forum where we can all talk about your wonderful products.

I see that this thread is now 6 months old, plenty of time to offer this community a technical solution, so I guess we don't have to hold our breath for that to happen?
So, guess which brand will not be on my future supplier / recommendation list?

 Regards,

UPDATE: this evening, I tried a good quality usb cable with ferrite filters on the drive, and what do you know, no clicking sounds anymore. Let's hope this will prove to be a final solution, and not mean that the drive just didn't feel like clicking today. It is the cheapest thing to try, especially, when your toddler has been ripping the receipt into shreds, as in my case...

Message Edited by tom_unhappy on 12-22-2009 01:52 PM

[nocapitaletters]

Add me to the list!

I wish I'd seen this topic a few months ago!

I'm Osman,from Turkey/Izmir...

Last summer,I graduated from a university..And I made plans to come to UK as language school student.Now I'm in London

I didn't have a laptop so I borrowed my sisters'..

But I did have lots of data in my PC,so I bought 1.5 TB Seagate Expansion External HDD...

At first,it served well.But after I came to UK with all my datas were coppied inside the drive,it started to produce clicking sounds....it sometimes freezes,can't read the files without stopping!!!

I bought it in Turkey from an online shopping website...

The problem is that I'm now in UK,I don't have money to buy another to copy all my files.And I don't how I can replace it or  I get the refund!

 So thanks for epic fail Seagate!

Any advice?

[ssakiy]

That's pretty cool...
It tooks only 16 hours and the clicking sound starts on my Seagate Desktop 1TB (ST310005EXD101-RK) - I guess that's a new record.

This drive was a replacement for a Maxtor Desktop (Seagate Inside (R)) which died suddenly at the tender age of 6 months and took 600GB data and a lot of working hours to the grave. Funniest thing is the external drives should only work as backup... I'm happy I have made a lot of backup DVD's so I can restore all data, but it will take a lot of time.

So I'll give 2 promises to Seagate:

- Never again there'll be any part, drive or something crappy else from Seagate in or nearby my PC;

- I'll share my experiences with any shopping and customer review community I'm able to register to trying to prevent others to make the same mistake like us.

With more than 1 Billion shipped hard drives in 2009 I wonder how much of them came back in 2009... 

[stlbuddhist]

Have to report I've now had two of these drives both developed the loud clicking.  One purchased from Best Buy, the other exchanged by a different Best Buy over 10 miles apart from each other.

This sounds like a bad batch of drives.

[driveperson]

Too bad, but I simply cannot trust Seagate quality after my experience with the clicking, clicking, etc. Expansion 1.5 drive.  I'm returning it for a full refund, perhaps never to buy another Seagate product or recommend one.  As a replacement I ordered a 1.5 WD Elements for $109 and what a basic, but solid piece of equipment on first inspection.  Time will tell about its true quality, but user reviews are outstanding from what I've read on forums.  It is so quiet I can hardly believe it is running.  Seagate needs to get on this clicking problem with the Expansion drives, as dissatisfied users like me will spread the word quickly about our negative experiences.  Out of frustration I almost posted a really great video I had of my clicking Seagate on YouTube and Facebook, but decided it wasn't  worth the trouble.  Again, too bad Seagate.

[shin-arudo]

bought this seagate expansion 1.5tb yesterday.

was copying my datas and left for sleep.

woke up this morning and heard those clicks.

searched internet and found this thread.

read posts here, and suddenly got paranoid and dissapointed, my previous free agent go 500 is ok until today.

Is there any solution for this? I did try to change the USB cable with my shorter cable and until now (around 3 hours) didnt heard any single click.

Is it really solved? because my roommates said, he got experiences with cable problem on the hdd though.

I will let you guys know bout this. Hope its only bad quality of USB cable quality. Thanks. just share my 2 cents here.

*EDIT : its clicking again!! i heard twice in couple hours... oh my gosh, what should i do? Is there anything that Seagate can do for these? i mean, its already like defect product that everyone have on their hdd!!

Message Edited by shin-arudo on 12-25-2009 12:51 AM

[Tamadite]

If the USB cable has the ferrite choke on one end only it should be on the one that connects to the HDD enclose.

Message Edited by Tamadite on 12-26-2009 02:56 PM