Failing hard drive.

[davidticknor]

My Seagate Barracuda HDD is starting to make an audible click noise every now and again. I believe that the drive is dying because of how many crashes I get while in games. My plugins on my browser even crash, making video watching and streaming very annoying. It's weird though because the hard drive is only a month over a year old, should it be failing this early or did I just get a bad unit?
Also, I think I will replace the HDD now with an SSD, HDD combo. Should I buy Seagate again, or should I go with another brand like Western Digital? (Also if you don't think it is my hard drive failing please let me know! This is my first home built computer so I really do not know much.)

 

[quilciri]

That sounds like a failing HDD.

Seagate's reputation is permanently tarnished in my eyes for the long term failure in the way they handled the 7200.11 firmware debacle (this issue caused around 30% drive failures in 30 different models of seagate and seagate subsidiary drives). Not only did they not recall the drives, they offered no data recovery service for their customers, and when they honored warranty replacements for the drive, they frequently sent the customers refurb'd drives *with the same faulty firmware*.

As far as consumer drives, WD Blue or black are good, as are Hitachi Deskstar.

Cheers!

 

[davidticknor]

Seagate's reputation is permanently tarnished in my eyes for the long term failure in the way they handled the 7200.11 firmware debacle (this issue caused around 30% drive failures in 30 different models of seagate and seagate subsidiary drives). Not only did they offer no data recovery service for their customers, when they honored warranty replacements for the drive, they sent the customers new drives *with the same faulty firmware*.

As far as consumer drives, WD Blue or black are good, as are Hitachi Deskstar.

Cheers!

I had no idea about any of that! Will definitely be buying a WD blue

 

[USAFRet]

as are Hitachi Deskstar.

Which used to be known as Hitachi Deathstar.
Brands and reliability come and go.

 

[quilciri]

as are Hitachi Deskstar.

Which used to be known as Hitachi Deathstar.
Brands and reliability come and go.

I completely agree that the reliability of a current model of hard drive has little to do with the reliability of previous models and current Seagate drives may be as reliable as any other.

I did not say that current Seagate drives are unreliable. I said the company itself is. Company culture is a beast that is highly resistant to change and 6 years is not long enough for a company the size of Seagate to have improved enough for me to recommend them again.

 

[ArtPog]

My Seagate Barracuda HDD is starting to make an audible click noise every now and again. I believe that the drive is dying because of how many crashes I get while in games. My plugins on my browser even crash, making video watching and streaming very annoying. It's weird though because the hard drive is only a month over a year old, should it be failing this early or did I just get a bad unit?
Also, I think I will replace the HDD now with an SSD, HDD combo. Should I buy Seagate again, or should I go with another brand like Western Digital? (Also if you don't think it is my hard drive failing please let me know! This is my first home built computer so I really do not know much.)

Before making a final decision do you think it might be wise to test the disk with Seagate's SeaTools diagnostic software just on the chance that something else besides a failing HDD might be the problem?
You can download the diagnostic from http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/item/seatools-win-master/