Hard drive failing?

[bielius]

Hello everybody

So i bought this Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB drive, but i am experiencing really strange sounds with it.
So occasionally the hard drive would "reload".. for example, just after i open a program, everything would hang for about 3 seconds, and the hard drive would make sound like if it would spin faster and then make a click sound, and after that, everything goes back to normal again.
This is a 3 week old drive, but i noticed it some days after i bought it. It is not my OS drive, i'm running my Windows 7 32bit on an another HDD.
I have heard that click sound means the drive will fail soon, but i don't know so much about drives, i have had another samsung HDD in over 2 years without any problems, so this is something new for me...
thanks for any further help!

 

[SNGX1275]

Get Samsung's ES-Tool and test your drive with that. Then when it fails send it back to them for a replacement.

You are right that the sound you are hearing is a good indicator of a failing drive, be sure and get any important data backed up asap.

 

[Leeky]

As above. Maybe it suffered some damage during transit, as it seems very quick for an otherwise new disk to fail.

The Spinpoint F3 1TB's are extremely popular as well, so I wouldn't say its something entirely related to the way they're made.

 

[bielius]

i have hard time believing this is actually happening to me..
never had a computer component failed, i am feeling unlucky now.
but on topic, i've put the files on a CD and a flash drive, but neither seemed to work. when i put in the flash drive, it just shows me the black screen after POST, and when i insert CD, it tells me to either check for startup errors or start windows normally. ( ofcourse i did set the boot sequence in BIOS...)
the only question is: which key gives me the option to change the boot sequence "on air"?(on air- change what comp should boot from right after POST) I tried F2 and F12, but neither worked...
p.s. thanks for the super fast replies!

 

[Leeky]

Haha, I hear you're pain.

I've never had anything fail on me either, until the PSU did a few weeks back, taking out absolutely everything but one part... My Samsung Spinpoint F4 2TB.

We all have bad luck sometimes buddy.

Could you explain in a little more detail what you did please?

 

[bielius]

Yup, well, i always say this: Sh*t happens.
Well, i've tried to put the files on a CD and a Flash Drive, but neither worked. when i tried booting up from CD, windows message came up with the error check tool thing, and when i tried to boot from the flash drive, after the POST, the white short stripe was blinking in the upper left corner of the screen, and been doing that for 10 minutes, then i restarted my pc.
sorry for my typos and my ingrish, it's late here and i've had a really hard day...

 

[Leeky]

It sounds like its corrupted for some reason.

Is making another backup not a possibility?

 

[bielius]

well, actually no, because i do not have any spare hard drive that's working which i could make a backup in, so i would really like to get this working without backup needed. but even if the drive will fail, no critical information is stored there, just pair hundred GB's with games and other trash. but maybe there are other applications i can use to check if my hard drive fails?

 

[SNGX1275]

You can use SeaTools, it will run from within Windows, so no need to make a boot disk. I am not familiar with Samsung's RMA policy, but they may require you to get a error code or something similar from their diagnostic tool before sending it back. So I'd try again to get ES-Tool to work.

When you got the ES-Tool zip, and unzipped it, there is a .iso file. Did you just copy that to a CD, or did you burn it as a disk image? If you just copied it there is your problem. If you don't want to waste another CD you could use UNetbootin to make the flash drive bootable (but that is going to wipe out whatever is on your flash drive, so copy its contents somewhere first).