3TB Seagate Backup Plus started making clicking noises, but seems fine?

[RoyA2015]

3TB Seagate Backup Plus started making clicking noise. Movie paused.. I was like is that coming from the movie.. I'm like dear god, I hope it's not what I think it iis.. "click of death".. Got up immediately and unplugged it.. Waited 12 seconds, and plugged it back in. Played the movie again, and all seems fine, no clicking sounds anymore. I'm like THANK GOD !!

WTH is going on here?

Read/Write head was stuck?
Click of death attempt?

My heart sank. I have A LOT of media on that bad boy.

My last external hard drive was a WD 1TB, and someone kicked it, and it got the click of death.

I was PISSED.

This one, I've kept it under a wooden table sort of thing. I've never kicked it, thrown it, or abused it. It's got my life on it. I keep all my stuff organized as best as I can, and etc.


Someone care to shine a little light on what just happened?

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

What happened is that you just got a chance to back up your data. Make the most of it. Once you've done that, try running a HD utility as recommended by the manufacturer. For Seagate I think it's called Seatools. Usually a SMART check, and short test suffice.

As far as what happened, noises usually point towards a mechanical issue. Those can happen due to defect, age, temperature, etc. If you've kept it on the floor there's a higher chance of dust getting in or clogging the air filter.

So again, back up what you can, and keep your backups current.

 

[RonRaxXx]

Also, when you go to back it up, don't buy another Seagate.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/

 

[RoyA2015]

What happened is that you just got a chance to back up your data. Make the most of it. Once you've done that, try running a HD utility as recommended by the manufacturer. For Seagate I think it's called Seatools. Usually a SMART check, and short test suffice.

As far as what happened, noises usually point towards a mechanical issue. Those can happen due to defect, age, temperature, etc. If you've kept it on the floor there's a higher chance of dust getting in or clogging the air filter.

So again, back up what you can, and keep your backups current.

Ok, so this is the 2nd TB hard drive I got. This time I have a chance to backup everything.

I don't like this thing happening. It took me YEARS to get the media that I have on this. I have a backup already of text files with accounts saved on a flash drive and also the C drive. I bet it's because of dust, because my internal hard drive for the Lenovo IdeaPad Y570 is older than the hard drive by two times. I've wiped it, and reinstalled windows on it several times, etc. So it's gotta be dust, is my best guess.

What kind of hard drive can I buy that I don't have to worry about this happening every few years? Seems kinda pointless to even buy an external hard drive. I've kept really good care of it.. and this is still happening.

 

[RoyA2015]

Also, when you go to back it up, don't buy another Seagate.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/

Seems Hitachi is the answer.

 

[J_E_D_70]

Western Digital. But, all drives have a chance to fail or have an accident. Your data you don't want to lose should be in two places minimum.

 

[Unolocogringo]

External drives are for backups and portability.
Not to be used as a regular drive.
Most overheat in the enclosure. With heat comes a lot shorter life.
The old rule of thumb used to be.
30c =5 year life span.
40c=2.5 year life span
50c= 1.25 year life span
Heat is a hard drives worst enemy, besides dropping it while it is running.

Your best option for longevity is a regular hard drive in a PC with full network sharing.
PS: Don't buy Seagate hard drives, they are known for premature failure for the past 5 years or so.

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

Every drive will eventually fail. And within every batch of drives some are going to fail early and some will last longer than expected. They call it a bathtub curve, because of how it graphs. The failure rate starts out high, due to uncaught manufacturing defects. It drops failure quickly as those get weeded out, and remains fairly stable, until they start wearing out due to ageing and usage then the failure rate climbs again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve

External drives experience a higher failure rate for a number of reasons. Physical trauma (ie your friend's foot) tops the list. Simply moving them around a lot, picking them up and setting them down subjects them to far more stress than mounting them inside a case that rarely moves. Constant plugging and unplugging. Also temperature variation. Going from room temperature to freezing conditions outside in winter then back to room temp, or from room temp to 50+ C in a hot car in summer.

I don't put a lot of stock into the Backblaze reports. For one thing, they were operating consumer drives out of spec. The Seagates they were using were vertically oriented (connector side down) in a tightly packed cluster, which they were not rated for.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/backblaze-storage-pod-partially-assembled-large.jpg

You can imagine the additional heat and vibration that subjected them to. They were also using consumer drives with enterprise level workloads. People make the case that a consumer drive that stands up to those conditions should be superior. But when you're operating outside of spec, it's targeting specific failure points and not overall reliability.

Every drive maker has produced lemons. And after the 2011 Thailand flooding there were some really bad ones. Rather than pick a maker, it's best to look for a specific model with a low failure rate. Unfortunately, it takes a few years to know how they'll hold up. Hitachi had a great reputation, but they no longer make drives. They sold their HD division to WD and Toshiba.

One last thing, how many power on hours did your drive have? Seatools will tell you. Most portables sit around unused for long periods of time, but yours sounds like it was always connected. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing, but it is a factor.

 

[RoyA2015]

More recent.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/

 

[RoyA2015]

Every drive will eventually fail. And within every batch of drives some are going to fail early and some will last longer than expected. They call it a bathtub curve, because of how it graphs. The failure rate starts out high, due to uncaught manufacturing defects. It drops failure quickly as those get weeded out, and remains fairly stable, until they start wearing out due to ageing and usage then the failure rate climbs again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve

External drives experience a higher failure rate for a number of reasons. Physical trauma (ie your friend's foot) tops the list. Simply moving them around a lot, picking them up and setting them down subjects them to far more stress than mounting them inside a case that rarely moves. Constant plugging and unplugging. Also temperature variation. Going from room temperature to freezing conditions outside in winter then back to room temp, or from room temp to 50+ C in a hot car in summer.

I don't put a lot of stock into the Backblaze reports. For one thing, they were operating consumer drives out of spec. The Seagates they were using were vertically oriented (connector side down) in a tightly packed cluster, which they were not rated for.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/backblaze-storage-pod-partially-assembled-large.jpg

You can imagine the additional heat and vibration that subjected them to. They were also using consumer drives with enterprise level workloads. People make the case that a consumer drive that stands up to those conditions should be superior. But when you're operating outside of spec, it's targeting specific failure points and not overall reliability.

Every drive maker has produced lemons. And after the 2011 Thailand flooding there were some really bad ones. Rather than pick a maker, it's best to look for a specific model with a low failure rate. Unfortunately, it takes a few years to know how they'll hold up. Hitachi had a great reputation, but they no longer make drives. They sold their HD division to WD and Toshiba.

One last thing, how many power on hours did your drive have? Seatools will tell you. Most portables sit around unused for long periods of time, but yours sounds like it was always connected. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing, but it is a factor.

That's another thing I haven't done.. kept it vertical. It's been sitting flat on the floor all these years. I honestly don't know how old it is, but I'm going to take a guess and say 4 years or so.

 

[RoyA2015]

Every drive will eventually fail. And within every batch of drives some are going to fail early and some will last longer than expected. They call it a bathtub curve, because of how it graphs. The failure rate starts out high, due to uncaught manufacturing defects. It drops failure quickly as those get weeded out, and remains fairly stable, until they start wearing out due to ageing and usage then the failure rate climbs again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve

External drives experience a higher failure rate for a number of reasons. Physical trauma (ie your friend's foot) tops the list. Simply moving them around a lot, picking them up and setting them down subjects them to far more stress than mounting them inside a case that rarely moves. Constant plugging and unplugging. Also temperature variation. Going from room temperature to freezing conditions outside in winter then back to room temp, or from room temp to 50+ C in a hot car in summer.

I don't put a lot of stock into the Backblaze reports. For one thing, they were operating consumer drives out of spec. The Seagates they were using were vertically oriented (connector side down) in a tightly packed cluster, which they were not rated for.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/backblaze-storage-pod-partially-assembled-large.jpg

You can imagine the additional heat and vibration that subjected them to. They were also using consumer drives with enterprise level workloads. People make the case that a consumer drive that stands up to those conditions should be superior. But when you're operating outside of spec, it's targeting specific failure points and not overall reliability.

Every drive maker has produced lemons. And after the 2011 Thailand flooding there were some really bad ones. Rather than pick a maker, it's best to look for a specific model with a low failure rate. Unfortunately, it takes a few years to know how they'll hold up. Hitachi had a great reputation, but they no longer make drives. They sold their HD division to WD and Toshiba.

One last thing, how many power on hours did your drive have? Seatools will tell you. Most portables sit around unused for long periods of time, but yours sounds like it was always connected. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing, but it is a factor.

External HDD Stats
http://i.imgur.com/K51ICmP.jpg

Internal HDD Stats : http://i.imgur.com/MOptX1C.jpg

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

I don't think a vertical orientation is bad per se. But you can see from the picture they're all sharing the same backplane, which means they're all sharing vibrations through their connectors. Also heat, despite the fans. There are drives which are rated for exactly that sort of installation, so it's curious that Backblaze chose to use drives that weren't rated for it.

In any event, the power on hours isn't bad, 10,222. The internal has three times that. But it's definitely seen a lot of use, 176 TB read, 2 PB written. The more troubling thing is the temp of 57 C. That's almost 20 degrees hotter than your internal, though it is a 7200 vs 5400 rpm. I think the max temp for that model is supposed to be 60 C (50 C for the laptop drive), so it's right up near the limit. Prolonged usage at those temps can definitely shorten life, as Unolocogringo pointed out. Regardless, by 3 years most drives start experiencing the upwards curve of the tub anyway. Moral of the story, if it's important, it should be backed up.

 

[DSzymborski]

Yup, having a constant backup solution is an imperative for data that's important to you - it's a basic part of PC ownership, no different than changing the filter on your furnace or the oil in your car. You don't even need to have two hard drives necessarily given how much free or inexpensive cloud storage.

I have very important files that affect my livelihood and I personally have them on multiple PCs, optical media, nightly backed-up cloud storage, and on an encrypted flash drive in my safe deposit box. There's no hard drive you can't worry about because physical devices fail - if your data is important to you, then treat it as if it's important to you.

 

[RoyA2015]

I don't think a vertical orientation is bad per se. But you can see from the picture they're all sharing the same backplane, which means they're all sharing vibrations through their connectors. Also heat, despite the fans. There are drives which are rated for exactly that sort of installation, so it's curious that Backblaze chose to use drives that weren't rated for it.

In any event, the power on hours isn't bad, 10,222. The internal has three times that. But it's definitely seen a lot of use, 176 TB read, 2 PB written. The more troubling thing is the temp of 57 C. That's almost 20 degrees hotter than your internal, though it is a 7200 vs 5400 rpm. I think the max temp for that model is supposed to be 60 C (50 C for the laptop drive), so it's right up near the limit. Prolonged usage at those temps can definitely shorten life, as Unolocogringo pointed out. Regardless, by 3 years most drives start experiencing the upwards curve of the tub anyway. Moral of the story, if it's important, it should be backed up.

Seems to be running cooler this morning.
Internal : http://i.imgur.com/CsXHL6O.jpg
External : http://i.imgur.com/r2JkjNt.jpg

Running at 28°C

Is it wise to take it downstairs and clean it with the air compressor today?
I'll definitely get another external HDD when I get a chance. Backup everything onto the new HDD.
But yeah, I was shocked to see that 2.03PB of data was written to the drive. That's NUTS !!

Thanks for all the help on this from everyone. I'll just get another drive and backup everything if I make it.

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

The heat will vary according to use and ambient temps. File copying is usually the most stressful. As far as cleaning, use common sense. If the external case has air vents that are dusty, by all means gently wipe them out or use a little air. But don't go crazy, non-helium drives have a very small opening with a gas permeable membrane to allow for heat expansion. Sudden changes in air pressure could damage it, allowing dust inside.

And if you can't back it up right now, I wouldn't recommend using it. At all. There's no telling how long any hard drive will last, so when you get a little advance warning consider yourself lucky. Imagine how you'd feel if it only had a little time left, and you spent them watching a couple movies rather than backing it up.