Hi there people, This a follow to a previous thread I started as my former 400 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200 HDD was faulty. I have since returned it to Seagate who took over a month to send me a new one!

The problem is the one they sent me doesn't seem to work either, it makes a horrible noise on start-up and then in Bios it reports the status as bad and advises to first back up and then replace the drive. Once it boots into windows it seems o.k but often causes crashes and some really slow performance. I use it as a media drive and it has a lot of video and audio files on it.

The problem is really getting to me as I need the drive for my work and I worried that if I send them back this drive they are just going to send me another that doesn't work and also it cost me every time I send it back! If anyone has anay advice on what it could be please let me know, does it sound as if it's a problem with the rest of my pc or just the drives their sending me? The first HDD problem was different to this one so I guess it's just the drives that are at fault.

Thanks in advance,

Will

Difficult to tell, depends on the noise, is it clicking, or whirring noisily ?

Tried chkdsk to scan your hard drive in search of a wide range of errors. This tool can also attempt to correct a number of hard drive problems.

Would lean more towards the HDD being faulty rather then the PC, but as I said difficult to tell without further analysis.

Ferris

Hi there, thanks for the fast reply! It's making a very strange sound which almost seems as if it's stuck. It kinda whirs a bit stop then sorta screeches and then carried on but it's very jarring sound and not something I've ever heard before, meaning it's not just a louder than normal drive it just sounds distressed.

I have tried using chkdsk but it actually completes that after a very long time, around 2 hours or more and didn't appear to come up with any errors but I understand that there are several ways of running chkdsk?

Cheers for your help so far!

Will

Screeching noise huh, that's simply not normal.

The Whirring is Ok, but screeching is an indication that the HDD is going to fail.

Get your data off it, wrap it, pack it and send it back ...

Ferris

I backed up my stuff as soon as I got the first warning as it simply didn't sound good. I don't have the operating system on it as it is purely a storage drive. I guess I will have to return it again although I'm pretty annoyed with Seagate! I really do want to rule out it being something to do with my pc though so if anyone has any thoughts on what it could be I would be very grateful to hear from you. Could it possibly be that maybe corrupt data is failing them as put on my old data onto the new drive?

Will

Hi Will

I very much doubt that, I would not expect corrupt data to cause the screeching noise on the HDD, more likely to be the heads about to drop. Corrupt data would slow you down, crash your system or prevent you booting-up, but not (in my humble opinion) cause the noise issues you are experiencing.

But your wise to seek further opinion, one man does not know all.

So, anybody ?

Good luck Will

Ferris

I have had another listen to the noise and I guess I would describe it as a scraping sound, a very loud one at that! It occurs only on boot up really and then settles down to normal once I'm in windows.

Will

sounds like you got another dead drive. return it again.
hallmark sign of a failing drive.

Yes it is. I use a 160GB Barracuda as a system drive and I've never had any problems with it at all, hence why I got another for data storage. It's a shame as Seagate have always been good to me before, but as I say, I waited well over a month for them to deliver this last drive. I may try and seek a refund from the original seller and try another brand as I'm not happy using Seagate anymore.

Will

Apologies from digging up an older post but just thought I'd let everyone know that I still haven't received my third drive form Seagate, bringing the total to over 2 months now. They also sent one to the wrong address for the second time in a row and their customer support team has also been particularly rude, replying to whole pages of complaints with single lines saying simply 'sorry for the inconvenience'.

I'm not really sure what to do about it, but I would advise against using Seagate and especially against using their return service, just seek a return from whoever you bought it from instead. Shame as they have been ok to me before but I shall never be using them again thats for sure!

you need to call corporate they will get to the problem and fix you up
the few RMA's I have done with seagate have gone smooth as silk

I have installed a lot of them

I have RMA'ed 2 Seagate's. One 40GB desktop, and one 100GB notebook drive. A Maxtor 320GB desktop SATA was replaced under warranty by Seagate. They sent me a 400GB SATA Seagate as a replacement. All these RMAs were generated on-line through Seagates system. I received all drives within 7 days from shipping them to Seagates Texas facility

you may need to contact your credit card company for a chargeback and warranty override if the maker will not give service.

Right I've finally received the 2nd replacement drive, it seems to work ok, although it is a lot noisier than my other drive which is the same make and model just smaller size. The larger drive makes some pretty horrible noises when accessing data, when idle it's fine but when accessing anything it becomes very noisy, way noisier than my other drive when that does searches etc. Are larger hard drives just noisier than smaller ones and does it depend on what data you have on them?

Cheers,

Will