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Hard Drive Clicking Noises on Seagate Free Agent Drives
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Hard Drive Clicking Noises on Seagate Free Agent Drives Ouch 04-07-2008
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Posted by Dave Martindale on April 10, 2008, 2:55 am
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>The drive is a bit noisier than expected, I certainly
>don't hear noises like that from my laptop's hard drive, but perhaps this is
>because it is completely enclosed, while the 750 gig Seagate drive is an
>external drive?

The external case may well provide a more direct route for sound from
the drive to your ear. In addition, the amount of noise produced by
head movement depends on how fast the positioner moves, how heavy it is,
the clearances in the bearings that carry it, and the algorithms of the
code that drive it. Drives with faster seek times tend to be noisier,
for example, because they have to start and stop the positioner faster.
Some drives even let you program their "acoustic profile", trading off
faster access at one end of the range with quieter operation at the
other end.

        Dave

Posted by Mark Robinson on April 8, 2008, 6:18 am
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 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.

Posted by Brian Mathews on April 8, 2008, 7:10 am
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wrote:

>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.



They don't work on USB Drives..

Also if you had read my Post you would also see why Plus Modern drives to track
recalibrating to
allow for heating on the Disk..



Posted by BillW50 on April 12, 2008, 2:15 pm
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Brian Mathews typed on Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:10:19 +1200:
> They don't work on USB Drives..
>
> Also if you had read my Post you would also see why Plus Modern
> drives to track recalibrating to allow for heating on the Disk..

Some of them actually do work on external USB drives.

--
Bill

Posted by Rob Simpson on April 12, 2008, 4:36 pm
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On Sat, 12 Apr 2008 13:15:26 -0500, BillW50 propped his eyelids open with
toothpicks and wrote:

> on Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:10:19 +1200:
>> They don't work on USB Drives..
>>
>> Also if you had read my Post you would also see why Plus Modern drives
>> to track recalibrating to allow for heating on the Disk..
>
> Some of them actually do work on external USB drives.

You managed to decipher that? I must hunt up my alternative grammar
glasses.
--
Rob - Linux user number 467898 Ubuntu User number 17166
Linux 2.6.22-14-generic
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Whip me. Beat me. Make me maintain AIX.
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