Concerned about my new hard drive [Samsung Spinpoint F3]

twbg4cq

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May 27, 2010
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Hi,

I just bought a HD 1T|SAMSUNG HD103SJ about a week ago.

I started backing up some data on it, and it makes a noise that worries me. It sounds like a click.

From reading various tech sites, I've known for a while that clicking is always a horrible sign of drive failure, but I'm not totally sure if that's what's happening, because it could just be the read/write head parking/unparking itself (which is normal), right?

It doesn't click over and over again. It's just as I start to read or write data on it, I hear it make the sound just once.

I downloaded the ESTOOL and ran the Drive Diagnostic function. Everything passed.

Also, I listened to every single hard drive sound file on http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php Thankfully my drive doesn't sound like any of them.

In fact, after listening to all of those sounds, I decided to make a recording of my own. You can listen to it at this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TStIeRD-F94
You'll hear the drive start to speed up for the first 7 seconds and then the click sound somewhere between 8-10 seconds

For those of you out there that own an F3, do you encounter this also? Is this normal?

Any suggestions? RMA?
 

elel

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Jun 18, 2009
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Hmm... that does sound odd. I have only western digital, but none of them make a click that loud. It seems that somewhere I heard that it might be the drive re-calibrating itself, but I don't know for sure.