Clicking 1.5TB Seagate

[NightrainSrt4]

Blargh. One of my 1.5TB Seagate hdd's was clicking and WHS kicked it out complaining and giving me errors all over the place.

Took both out, checked both with seatools. The bad one took 5 times as long and was clicking up a storm. But it says pass on everything. Go to the warranty page, and it says I need to get a failing code from Seatools.

I put the drive into a Sata on my desktop, as the USB I used wasn't passing smart data through. Now all of a sudden, no clicking. WTF.

Going to toss it back into the server again I guess. Don't know what to do. Not going to ship it out and get beat up on the trip just to have them tell me its not clicking anymore and send it back. If it was just the clicking I'd say whatever, but its dropping out of the server.

Ideas?

[Fuganater]

Contact them and say its intermittent and tell them exactly what you did.

[NightrainSrt4]

Yes, I should probably do that. For whatever reason I was just a dumbass and put it back in. Probably not the best of ideas.

The server accepted it back. The smart plugin says its perfect. I'm wondering if the head/arm was just getting stuck or something, as its on 24/7 but I don't think a lot of data was on that drive. Maybe it just needed a workout, as after a few tests the clicking went away and now its acting perfect again.

I guess time will tell. Nothing on these drives is critical. Anything that is has another copy somewhere. The entire server has duplication on as well. So *crosses fingers* as long as two drives don't go down at the same time there shouldn't be too many headaches.

If it starts clicking again I'll call them if it still passes tests. Warranty till 2014/15 depending on the drive.

[NightrainSrt4]

Bah. Server is giving critical errors and freaking out over this drive. Speedfan is saying there are too many reallocated sectors and that the drive should be replaced.

Run through every test in Seatools and it says the drive is fine. I'm going to have to call Seagate when I get time. In the meantime is there any app I can run that would put the drive through its paces, exasperating any issues, forcing them to show their face on a more regular basis?

[Fuganater]

Looking though my utilities folder... AH!

HD Tune
PassMark DiskCheckup
Diskeeper Lite
ClonyXXL

to name a few.

[NightrainSrt4]

I've got a few hours left of zero writing it. Checked sectors before so I can compare them after.

Before: 165 reallocated sectors.

[x88x]

IIRC, clicking usually means that something's wonky with the drive controller board, making the arm misbehave. ..I think...anyways, whatever's failing, the arm going past its intended min/max points is what makes the clicking noise. I'm guessing that you've already gotten all the data off it that you want to since you're zero-ing it, so what I would do is, once you've zero'd it, contact Seagate (their email support is quick too, if you don't feel like sitting on hold for ages) and tell them exactly what you told us. I RMA'd a bunch of 500GB 7200.10's a couple years ago just because they were getting slow, and they traded them for refurbs with no problem (they were ~1-2 years old at the time, and had a hard life running 24/7 in a fileserver that got hit almost 24/7).

[NightrainSrt4]

Yeah, once I finish classes this week I will give them an email. The drive is useless to me if I can't put it back in the server.

Zero'd it out and checked again, and still at 165 reallocated sectors. I was hoping it was going to increase.

The clicking stopped again. It comes and goes. I'm just afraid when I send it in its not going to do anything wrong for them and its just going to be sent back, and have taken the shipping beating in the process.

[AmEv]

Ah, paranoia. It goes away after the first few hard drives start clunking for no apparent reason.


Huh, wait. This seems oddly familiar......

[x88x]

I'm just afraid when I send it in its not going to do anything wrong for them and its just going to be sent back, and have taken the shipping beating in the process.

I've only heard of this happening for components I think once, and that was an out of warranty MBB (iirc). Most likely they aren't even going to test it before approving a replacement. The drive you send in will be sent to be refurbished and they'll send you a new or refurbished drive, whichever happens to be most easily available when they're processing your claim. That's how most computer manufacturers I've RMA'd stuff with have seemed to do it. Heck, Logitech didn't even make me send back my faulty mice the few times I've had to RMA their stuff.