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From: Mark Robinson on 8 Apr 2008 06:18
Ouch wrote:
> The other day, I bought an external 500 gig Seagate Free Agent drive. It
> made a few clicking noises when writing data, so after some research on
> internet, I decided I would return it. So I purchased from another store
> a 750 gig Seagate FreeAgent drive. Now this drive does exactly the same
> thing, so I'm most reluctant to return this one because I know that
> Seagate is a very good brand and that all hard drives have to make some
> operating noises. A year ago, a friend bought a 500 gig Seagate Free
> Agent drive, and it makes no clicking noises at all when you write to
> it, so that's why I thought something might be wrong with mine.
>
> The Seagate drives come with a 5-year limited warranty, so you can't do
> much better than that. I am using the drive mainly for backing up home
> movie holiday captures, so it won't be in continuous daily use like some
> drives are. Has anyone else experienced clicking noises on external hard
> drives? Do such noises really indicate that something is wrong, or is
> the hard drive likely to operate satisfactorily for many years even with
> these intermittent clicking noises? Is there any software that I can run
> that will check out whether there is anything wrong with the drive? I
> have the feeling that there's not much point in swapping the drive again
> as all of them are likely to do the same! Thanks for your help.

You may find that your operating system or the drive itself is configured to
unload the heads and spin down the disk after very short timeouts.

Parking/unloading the heads makes a clicking noise.

The idea is to reduce the chance of mechanical shock damaging those parts of
the disk holding your data.

You should be able to have a better look at what is happening using a tool to
look at the drive's S.M.A.R.T. data.
From: Ouch on 8 Apr 2008 12:45

"Dave Taylor" <daveytay(a)nospamplshotmail.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9A7ABF27B4C3Cdaveytaynospamplshot(a)203.97.37.6...
> "Ouch" <Ouch(a)ygothere.org> wrote in news:47f9e5ba$1(a)clear.net.nz:
>
>> Thanks for your help.
>
> Check on Seagate's web site , maybe their seatools supports the usb drive?
>
> Anyways, does it click when it is idle, or in the middle of when you are
> actively writing a large 2 gig file to it? My usb drive has a sleep mode
> and that is a click of the heads parking and the platters stopping.
> My drive is not the same as yours. I have an Western Digital.
> I hope that helps.
> --
> Ciao, Dave

The drive doesn't click when it's idle. The noise happens when it's writing
a large file to it. To clarify the situation, I have made a temporary video
of the noise the drive makes while it is writing a 1.4GB file. You can view
this video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxZ89UJQvmU

Thanks for your help.

From: Ouch on 8 Apr 2008 12:53

"Brian Mathews" <bm(a)yummy.conn> wrote in message
news:517mv394gbssrjajc6hpbfo1449cg1s2kr(a)4ax.com...
> On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 18:46:26 +1200, "Ouch" <Ouch(a)ygothere.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>"Charlie Hoffpauir" <invalid(a)invalid.com> wrote in message
>>news:dq5kv3588062l4t17k11rltormqdj2nvrd(a)4ax.com...
>>> On Mon, 7 Apr 2008 21:13:21 +1200, "Ouch" <Ouch(a)ygothere.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>>The other day, I bought an external 500 gig Seagate Free Agent drive. It
>>>>made a few clicking noises when writing data, so after some research on
>>>>internet, I decided I would return it. So I purchased from another store
>>>>a
>>>>750 gig Seagate FreeAgent drive. Now this drive does exactly the same
>>>>thing,
>>>>so I'm most reluctant to return this one because I know that Seagate is
>>>>a
>>>>very good brand and that all hard drives have to make some operating
>>>>noises.
>>>>A year ago, a friend bought a 500 gig Seagate Free Agent drive, and it
>>>>makes
>>>>no clicking noises at all when you write to it, so that's why I thought
>>>>something might be wrong with mine.
>>>>
>>>
>
>
> I have seen comments that Seagate uses a New ? feature that moves the head
> around so that it does
> not heat the track/disk.
>
>
> I have a 320G one and I don't hear any noise but then my system is not to
> quite, some 4 case fans,
> plus 2 in PSU and 2 in CPU/GPU, some 8 fans in total.
>
>
Thanks Brian, that's interesting. I have made a temporary video of the noise
the drive makes while it is writing a 1.4GB file. You can view this video
here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxZ89UJQvmU

Do you think this could now be a "normal" operating noise for a Seagate
drive if a new development moves the head around?

From: Mark C on 8 Apr 2008 20:03
Mark Robinson <usenet(a)blackhole.zl2tod.net> wrote in
news:47FB465A.7090307(a)blackhole.zl2tod.net:

> Ouch wrote:
>> (snip)
>> Has anyone else experienced clicking noises on external hard
>> drives? Do such noises really indicate that something is wrong,
>> or is the hard drive likely to operate satisfactorily for many
>> years even with these intermittent clicking noises? Is there
>> any software that I can run that will check out whether there
>> is anything wrong with the drive?

> You should be able to have a better look at what is happening
> using a tool to look at the drive's S.M.A.R.T. data.

Ouch: SMART tools often don't work with USB drives, but for
reference, smartmontools can read smart data from my WD MyBook
external USB2 HDD, with some tweaking of the command line.
Maybe it can also work for Seagate Free Agent drives?

AND Seagate SMART 'attributes' are non-standard or somesuch...
(recent thread)
From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro on 9 Apr 2008 00:42
In article <47f9e5ba$1(a)clear.net.nz>, Ouch did write:

> The other day, I bought an external 500 gig Seagate Free Agent drive. It
> made a few clicking noises when writing data ...

My one experience with a hard drive that made clicking noises in use, it was
because it had developed bad sectors.

I would say, do a bad-block scan. If that doesn't reveal any problems, then
the drive should be OK. Or at least, no worse than any other hard drive. :)

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