Seagate Barracuda LP ST31500541AS 1.5TB and loud random clicking noise

[dman777]

I have a new Seagate Barracuda LP ST31500541AS 1.5TB 5900 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive. This is my second one. The first one I had started to make clicking noises randomly. These clicking noises can be very loud. Also, the hd freezes for a few seconds when it happens sometimes. It took about 3 weeks for the clicking noises to start. They came randomly rather the drive was idle, or if I was surfing the internet. In other wards, this is not from the drive going to sleep and waking up(also, this is my boot drive). The noises were loud enough that I could hear about 7 feet away. I sent that hard drive back and got another of the same model. Now, after 3 weeks of use the clicking noises are begining. It was silent the first 3 weeks. I know it will get worse because that is how my other seagate hd got. what's the chances of this happening twice in a row? This drive(and the one before it) was used as my boot drive and I only use my system for music, internet surfing, and movies so there is no abuse. Is this a known issue of these drive models? Could it have been shipping both times(bubble wrap was used)? Or has Seagate quality hit the floor?

 

[gunnar68]

Just wanted to add that I bought two of these Seagate drives and one of them started clicking. I don't know if this is of any help to anyone but the one that started clicking stopped clicking after I started using it lying down rather than making it "stand" like in the pictures advertised.

 

[shovenose]

im sorry but seriously seagate is such a fail!

 

[eshwar_andhavarapu]

Had the same problem. For the Barracuda LP drives, Seagate has firmware CC35. I had one with CC34, after the firmware update, the drive is quiet ! Its a little tough to update firmware of external drives that have the same drives inside, but internal drives with matching model numbers, the firmware is fairly straight forward to update!!

 

[aviwil33]

Gunnar68 thanks - I tried your solution of laying the drive flat - it solved the problem for me too .

 

[Ennio]

I have Two Seagate 1.5 TB Ext. HD & they both have the clicking noise like a Time Bomb this is a 100% Design problem from SEAGATE. I try 2 TB iomega Ext. HD % it dose the same thing they are probably manufactured by the same CHINESE Manufacturing. I do video & have 15 External H Drives from 300 GB to 2TB capacity but only the 1.5 Tb & Up have these issue.
Older models that I own for years From WD, Seagate,I have no issues.
Years ago we used to say made in Japan now I wish it would have.

 

[digiquix]

I have the same issue.

- Paul

2 drives
both ST31500541AS
Firmware CC34

1st drive clicking after 2 hours
bought second drive and clicking after 1 week.

Called Seagate, was told to run seatools, clicking as usual, and NO faults detected. Ran advanced and still no issue found. 3 weeks later, drive refuses to be recognized by my mVix media player but I can still see it if connected via USB to the computer.

Seagate claims no issues and no reports of problems (Yeah right...). I just bought a 3rd.. within a few seconds of bootup, clicking!

I'm gonna call Seagate, have them take all 3 of them back... fry's won't take them back saying they have a lot of returns. Its sad, really. I refuse to use WD drives because they never last more than a year for me. This is the first time Seagate quality has come into question.. I still have 9 gig scsi-2 drives running 24hrs a day from 1997!

 

[shovenose]

everyone just by wd drives...thatll solve the problem...not just the symptoms

 

[JTag]

Clicking is most likely the drive's power management unloading the heads.

http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?p=157311&sid=82da8fd839b9699ac76e69323c4c9ac3

---
Update - confirmed - I have four 2TB drives running in a RAID5 under Gentoo Linux, hdparm -i identifies them all as Model=ST32000542AS, FwRev=CC34

All three were clicking away until, for each drive, I issued:

# hdparm -B 254 /dev/sd[a|b|c|d]

/dev/sda:
setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254)
APM_level = 254


Now no more clicking! Note that there is a Windows version of hdparm, though I've never used it.

 

[xero4zero]

Some thoughts that might help

Get a higher Watt power supply
Update the motherboard's bios
Use SeaTools for Windows check & fix your drive
Update hard disk firmware

Physical
Change the data cable
Change the hard disk's board

To my experience If nothing of the above worked it might be un-repairable

 

[redycoATyahoo]

CLICK OF DEATH causes and solutions:

This issue is a verry old HDD problem, happend more often on WD, Maxtor and Samsung between 1997-2007, and it has 2 causes:
1: (and the most common - 99%) The head (one of them) physically fells (touches) the disk for a millisecond, resulting in throwing all the heads off disks. The controller immediately detect the alignment fault, and commands the had back to the original track to continue the data transfer, where, of course, the problem reoccurs.
What you DO NOT KNOW, is that heads are kept most of the time afloat by a very thin stream of air generated by the disk spin. 3 issues affect this buoyancy: the plates' speed, the density of air (inverse proportion with the temperature of the drive) and the initial tension-friction rapport (factory made) of the head vs plate(disk).
THIS IS WHY this problem appears most of the time on low speed hard drives (GREEN) that have a factory calibration fault of friction-pressure coefficient. Very common issue in laptops, especially because movement-gyro effect.

2: the most rare: controller related issue, not going into it because is a very long cause explanation and not applicable to Seagate discussed here.

SOLUTION: After hearing the first click, THE DRIVE IS IRREMEDIABLE DAMAGED. Use an opened USB enclosure, and an exterior fan(house appliance one) to keep the drive at lowest temperature possible. Also physically position the drive on one side(sometimes helps). Get your data off the drive, and send it to warranty.

As this is a factory calibration PHYSICAL issue, there is nothing you can do to prevent it, and also it will affect the hole series of drives. Just for delaying the defect occurrence, keep your drives in a cool environment, do not stack them inside a crowded case, and if possible mount them in a 5 inch bay(adapter required).


MCC hardware

 

[Guest]

Hi guys

I have heart such random clicking noises on my ST1500DL003-9VT16L from the date of it was installed. But today I just understand that I was a stupid!!!
I have describe a full solution to remove "clicks" here. Sorry, this text originally on Russian, but you can understand translated version.

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=ru&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fsim-portal.ru%2Fforum%2Fviewtopic.php%3Ff%3D30%26t%3D841%26p%3D19970%23p19970&act=url

 

[ersin69]

i buyed this HDD on external inside Toshiba too.
some weeks later this makes probs on my brandnew samsung-TV .this i using only for TV-HD Records .
diese externe HDD mit toshiba-case hat eine LED die sofort anzeigt wenn die HDD liest oder neubooted oder schreiben tut.wenn nonstop probleme herrschen geht die rote lampe nicht aus!!!
dann schaltete ich die platte sofort aus und nach neustart kamen keine fehler bis die fehler wieder erneut zuschlugen!
immerwieder habe ich mit verschiedener SW versucht die Fails einzugrenzen .konnte aber nicht !
habe dann die HDD einfach ohne DATA-Zugriff laufen lassen !!!
fehler immens!
immer wieder gab es controller-fails ohne lesezugriff.
lesezugriffe gab es nur bei neustart mit schalter!!! SW oder controller-restarts 1000% nicht!
Scheiben-probleme hab ich nicht.
extern im toshiba-case und blaue farbe hies = ich konnte sofort aufnehmen!
extern im toshiba-case und rote farbe hies = ich musste HDD ausschalten und neustarten mit schalter!
ich denke da eigentlich ich bin im profi-forum !
spekulationen von ... denke ich da von seagate -mitarbeiter oder web-beschöniger...!
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk verfolge ich schon jahrzehnte ,baue PCs seit über 36Jahren. und "repariere/backup" HDDs
produktekauf von "Seagate" und "Western Digital" hab ich immer vermieden!!!
meine war leider in toshiba verbaut!
wieso muss man eine seagate in einer toshiba verbauen!
ganz einfach . man hatte probleme firmenseits festgestellt und hat es als case anderen firma verkauft .in diesem fall toshiba!
wäre ich toshiba ,hätte ich dieses wegen image-schädigung nicht gemacht!
Spekulation!!!
da aber niemals zur entschädigung der entkunden gekommen ist, halte ich es das es ein Deal war zwischen Seagate und Toshiba
selbst die letzte FW die ich heute eigentlich aufspielen wollte, weigerte sich um es upzudaten. bilder folgen....
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/252416-32-seagate-barracuda-st31500541as-loud-random-clicking-noise/page-2
Seagate Barracuda LP ST31500541AS 1,5 TB und laute zufällige Klickgeräusche


https://forum.acelaboratory.com/viewtopic.php?t=9739
-----------------------
Re: Seagate ST31500541AS - no capacity and every sector skipped
#50
Postby Amarbir[CDR-Labs] » 19.06.18, 20:07

Hi Thomas ,
This is your colleague Amarbir From India .The Most Common Issue With Seagate F3 Family is Inherited From The SCSI Line of Firmware "Translator Issue " . The Second Most Common Issue i See Is Continuous Allocation of Bad Sectors By Inbuilt Firmware Leading To Excessive Allocations Being Done Leading To Drive Freezing ,Third Most Common Issue i See Is Media Cache Issue .In Your Case You Should First Disable Allocations In Your SMB Sys File By ATA Mode Or System Files Modification Mode By Terminal And Check Results .
Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon ,CDR Labs [ Chandigarh ,India ]
DataRecovery - The Affordable Way In India
----------------------------------------

https://datacent.com/datarecovery/hdd/seagate/ST31500541AS+1.5TB

Seagate ST31500541AS 1 Data Recovery Information
seagate
These are some real problems experienced by ST31500541AS 1 and Seagate hard drives in general that we see in our lab. We are not affiliated in any way with hard drive manufacturers. All the information below is based solely on our experience and we do not make any claims regarding reliability of the specific model. We see mostly failed drives in our lab and therefore we don't have complete statistics.

I have a problem with my Seagate(model ST31500541AS 1). It suffered a power surge and unable to access data
Gennadiy P.
Brockville, Ontario, Canada
Seagate Barracuda drives, and especially 7200.7, 7200.8, 7200.9 and 7200.10 series have a very common problem with heads. Seagate introduced new technology in this line - special coating for the platters that was supposed to protect magnetic layer. But in fact it caused more problems than protection. Under special conditions this coating starts to flake and tiny bits of this substance stick to the head read/write elements. Reading becomes more and more unstable, the drive starts losing tracks and at some point typical symptoms or bad heads appear - clicking, knocking, sweeping sounds: , , making the data inaccessible.

heads close-up
Typically data recovery in this case involves opening the drive in class 100 clean room and replacing head assembly from matching donor. But our engineers have developed special technological process for cleaning the heads and quite often it is sufficient to temporarily repair them for successful recovery. The fact that we often don't need to order donors for such drives makes data retrieval in our lab less expensive for our customers.
Drive suddenly will not come up or be recognized on any computer. Was external, removed and have tried in new cases, with new power supplies as well with same results. Have tried switching out circuit board, with the result of the hard drive spinning and then stopping.
Paolo M.
Milano, Italia
Another common issue with Seagate hard drives is damage to the components on the circuit board(PCBA). Hard drives in general are very vulnerable to overheating, power spikes and surges. Bad power supply unit combined with power streak is usually enough to burn spindle motor controller driver(SMOOTH chip) on the logic board. If this occurs the computer would reboot itself or shutdown completely, you would normally notice acrid smell and when powered on the drive would not spin up at all.

Non-spinning could also be a symptom of seized motor on multi-platter Seagate Barracuda drives. The drive would also make buzzing sound like it's trying to spin up. Data recovery in this case requires transplanting platters from bad drive into donor in clean room environment.

Seagate laptop Momentus drives also share some typical 2.5 inch HDD problems. One of them is heads sticktion to the platter surface.

heads close-upHeads are normally parked on the parking ramp outside of the platters, but sometimes due to a fall or abnormal termination they fail to return to their regular parking position and are left on the surface. Immediately after the motor stops spinning they stick to the ideally smooth surface and it becomes impossible to release them without proper tools and experience. Don't attempt to open the drive by yourself - you will damage the platters for sure and this could make all your data unrecoverable.
Drive - ST31500541AS 1. Problem: The hard drive will not spin up at all
Laury B
St.Catharines, Ontario, Canada
There is one more problem that is typical for all hard drives: bad sectors. After some period of time magnetic media the platters are covered with starts to degrade and bad sectors develop.
Whenever the drive hits such unreadable bad sector it could start scratching, freezing, ticking and sometimes loud clicking: . This leads to further damage to the surface and causes more data loss. As soon as you start experiencing such symptoms while reading important files stop the drive immediately to prevent further data loss. In our lab we use special imaging hardware tools that are capable of reading raw sector data ignoring checksum check. That's usually the only way to retrieve as much data as possible from these sectors.

Seagate drives operate under special firmware microcode that could also fail sometimes. Typically hard drives with corrupted firmware spin up normally, do not click but still fail to initialize. Such drives could have one of the following symptoms:

HDD is not found in BIOS at all
shows up with wrong S/N or capacity,
fails to read any data or boot up operating system.
If you attempt to boot up from such drive or read any data from it you would get "Primary Master Hard Disk Fail", "No operating system found", "Drive Mount Failure", "Disk boot failure. Insert system disk and press enter", "USB Device malfunctioned", "S.M.A.R.T. Capable But Command Failed" or some other BIOS hard drive error message on boot.
One of Seagate's latest family, Barracuda 7200.11, specifically with FW versions SD15, DE12 and HP24, has especially high firmware failure rate. In such cases hard drive either doesn't show up in BIOS at all or identifies with 0 capacity. Unfortunately it is impossible to repair such drives without special equipment capable of accessing and repairing firmware modules in the hard drive firmware zone.

 

[ersin69]

after this patch
https://askconrad.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/upgrade-seagate-2tb-st32000542as-firmware-to-cc35/
Upgrade Seagate 2TB ST32000542AS firmware to CC35
JULY 20, 2011 LEAVE A COMMENT



These days, we are relying more and more on electronic files for everyday things, such as pictures, videos, bills, and mail. Because of this, the need to store these e-files is ever increasing. These 1-2TB drives are becoming the rave of data storage addicts because of the cheap cost-to-GB ratio. So I decided to take a look for myself.

I populated a D-Link DNS-343 NAS box with 4x Seagate 2TB (ST32000542AS) green drives I ordered online. They came with CC34 firmware, and having read numerous posts and discussions, I realized that it is important to check on whether or not I need to upgrade the firmware before popping them in. It was not easy, but it was not too difficult either… if you know what you’re doing, or if you have the proper guide. I will show you how I did it with relative ease.

According to Seagate, the new firmware (CC35) is advised for these drives:

ST3500412AS
ST31000520AS
ST31500541AS
ST32000542AS

However, the firmware upgrade tool does not recognize all drive serial numbers within the family product range as requiring an upgrade. If this is the case, and the drive firmware is CC34 or older, Seagate created an upgrade utility to “Force” the upgrade on their disks.

Automatic Upgrade:

1. First, get the upgrade utility ISO image at the Seagate site.

2. Make sure the Seagate SATA drive is connected to a native SATA controller.

3. Check that the BIOS is set to ATA (and not AHCI). I found out that this was necessary for a few older computers I was setting up with these Seagate green drives.

4. Boot from ISO CD.

5. Follow the prompts that will lead you through the automatic upgrade.

6. The firmware flash process will begin. Once successful you will see the prompt.

7. Power Down.

If not successful, try to force the upgrade.

How to force an upgrade:

1. Boot from ISO CD.

2. On the option screen (where you can try an auto upgrade) break the command line ([Ctrl] + [C]).

3. Press [Y] on the keyboard to confirm

4. Type the following

FDL486A -m Hepburn -f HECC358H.LOD -s -x -b -v -a 20

…then press enter:

5. The firmware flash process will begin. Once successful you will see the prompt.

6. Power down the machine

7. Repeat for each additional disk.

If you still have problems, it’s possible that your drive is not recognized. Try this alternate loader file:

FDL486A -m Hepburn -f HECC352H.LOD -s -x -b -v -a 20

This method worked for the drives that were not recognized by the [HECC358H] version.

After the upgrade, I’ve tried RAID0, RAID1, and RAID5 with these Seagate drives in the DNS-343, and I ultimately configured them in RAID1 (for the redundancy feature). I have the power saving feature disabled for the NAS box, and no issues so far. I have seen a few of my friends’ DNS-343 boxes give them problems, but I checked that the power saving feature was enabled. Once I disabled this feature, no more problems. Yes, it defeats the purpose of having a green drive, but it is a temporary fix for this problem.

I have another box I am running RAID0 loaded with 4x Seagate Constellation ES drives. These drives work fine.
iam testing now atm.