HDD makes clicking and spinning sounds and freezes for like 5 minutes

[stefansimion05]

Hello. I had a old hdd which failed (i still dont know why). Before dying, it was regularly freezing and making noises. I assumed that this is a problem of the hdd, but today i've replaced the hdd with a new seagate barracuda 1TB. Everything was good, i installed it with a windows 7. While I was looking through the windows updates, after i ve installed all the drivers, the hdd started acting like my old one: it froze, and it made spinning and clicking noises. I m pretty sure that the problem isn t the hdd as it is new. Mobo: intel dq57tm

 

[stefansimion05]

i also have warranty for it but before using it, i want to make sure if the hdd is faulty or not
im runnin it by the IDE mode in BIOS, i ve tried once to switch ti AHCI but i ve got a black screen

 

[stefansimion05]

i've succesfully edited something in the registry and i've switched the SATA mode to AHCI; also changed the PSU cable from the CD Rom into HDD and unplugged the CD rom; placed the hdd in the SATA 0 slot; since then, i didn't have issues anymore, but i think that this will only help just for the moment

 

[fry178]

Ahci has to be enabled BEFORE installing windows.
I recommend doing a clean install again, so you wont have issues later on.
Unfortunately Seagate drives (consumer) tend to fail more often, even new ones.
A friend used it for once weekly backups of the OS from the pc used as server, it died within a month.

Dl crystaldiskinfo, as it can show if the drive is good (blue background on drive letter) failing (orange) or bad (red).

So far i have tested at least 100 drives at work and at home, and it was always "right"..

 

[popatim]

AHCi does not have to be enabled before installing windows. The AHCI driver needs to be loaded and the registry edited to use it before switching the mode in the bios.

Seagate drives do not generally fail sooner then other drives. Everybody makes something that is/was crap. I have a external 3TB drive that was used for backup for 7yrs. Its retired now and I expect good life from the 8tb Seagate replacements. The secret is to read many reviews first.

Good advice on checking the drives SMART health. I like Crystaldiskinfo as well.

@ stefansimion05 - please make sure you backup anything important to another device, preferable one that you can disconnect from the pc and power. The more backups you have on different devices, the safer your important data is.

 

[fry178]

well, for anyone that doesnt know how to setup bios prior to install, i rather not have them mess with registry and possibly make things worse.
and your info might be valid for enterprise (even there they tend to fail at a higher rate except for +4TB sized drives), but not so much for consumer drives.

i worked for years in multiple different shops/stores and seagate next to maxtor had the highest rate of (defective) returns.
and once they start going bad, most cant be "recovered" to a healthy state by full format/mbr delete, as i was able to do on WD and Samsung.

Sure, its only me, but fixing about +1000 computers a year gives me more relevant data than reading some reviews...

 

[popatim]

That may be cause Seagate sells more OEM drives then WD. Worst drives were the Bigfoot drives back when I was a big consumer level pc tech. I will admit that I prefer WD drives but that's mainly because I've always gotten treated extremely well when needing warranty services rather then having much less in the way of drive failures (which reminds me of the ears series of wd drives that i had a high failure rate on LoL)