Seagate Barracuda LP ST31500541AS 1.5TB and loud random clicking noise

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dman777

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May 23, 2006
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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?
 
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Run Seatools hard disk diagnostics.
You may be able to push some bad sectors back.
There is a 22% failure rate on that drive according to Newegg.com, which is probably worse than actual, because satisfied people normally do not rate the product, while dissatisfied people will rate the product more often. 22% is a little high. I try to stay under 14-15% dissatisfaction rate.

 
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http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,22373-order,1-page,1-c,alldownloads/description.html

I have a ST3500418AS, that is the 1 platter 500GB model, without worries up to now.

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Dissatisfaction rate: sellers' feedback base is too small, leading to statistical fluctuations and possible abuses by manufacturers.

I prefer to use Google, through the ratio:
ST31500541AS problem
to
ST31500541AS
which generally send back hit figures like 10,000 or 100,000, more difficult for manufacturers to influence.

In your case, 5,820/294,000 hits or 2% which is good.

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Same disks shipped back to you? Just check the serial number. You got it written on your floppy when using Seatools, or on HdTune's screenshot, possibly in the hidden hardware list from Windows' hardware manager, and so on.
 
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I was just googling wondering how it could happen twice. I have the same situation. The story is exactly the same. The rate of clicking increased over the weeks and in the end, the drive would be no longer recognized by the system, just click constantly from startup. No abuse to the drive at all, it was mostly sitting idle for few weeks. Seagate diagnostic or SMART would not report any problems over that time. Though at some point finishing the surface scan with HDDScan would be no longer possible as the drive would hang during such test. But as far as I could see it would just hang randomly even doing nothing, in a way not related to reading particular sectors.
Well, that was my first drive. I already have a replacement from Seagate. Two weeks have passed and I've already heard the same loud clicking noises few times. Not again!
It's easy to find complaints on the 7200 version of those drives, those had many problems, supposedly fixed with newer firmwares, but there's very little about 5900. Actually, the terrible reputation of 7200 version was my reason to stay away from it. But apparently they have the same design flaws. As for the shipping, my second one came in a box that would easily fit 30 drives, filled with foam, perfect packaging. And as usual, I've started with all built in SMART tests to see if the drive is fine (different serial number btw, and a brand new one if we are to trust SMART data on those matters).
So, are we supposed to sit and wait again until our drives fail again and we can send them back?
 
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Google thing is not very fair as the models would have to have been released at same time and sold in the same quantities.




 
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Thanks for feedback, I originally was looking to see if there was a performance hit with this drive at 5900 vs the 7200 on typical drives. Now I think I will buy a Samsung drive instead. I used to by Seagate because of their 5 year no quibble guarantee but this sounds like my data will be at risk.



 
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I have recently bought 6 of the same 1.5TB drives. I have the same fault as you. Although so far no failures.

Loud clicking noises in more than 1 of the drives. Because there is 6 of them in an array I can't be sure wich ones are the problem.

I will try to upgrade the firmware but am not optermistic.
 
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I bought 3 of these 5900 rpm drives from Fry's a month apart. All have developed this problem. I copy 0.9 TB worth of data no prob. After some days, the clicking starts. Becomes worse. SMART, etc ok. SeaTools ok.
Seagate suggested its a hardware prob with my P4 motherboard SATA port. I put in a PCI card with SATA 2 and same problem.
It even happens at power up time.

There is something sick with this drive model.

I do have two older (3 to 5 month old) 1.5TB 7200 rpm Seagates. One has not shown this problem. (These have the newest CC firmware.) The other one showed it weakly for a while and then stopped.

At one point, the 5900 drive would recalibrate badly (the click click) on internal SATA but not on an external USB SATA adapter. Later the 5900 had the problem on either internal or external.

I think that Seagate should recall these. I bought a Hitachi 1g as a replacement. I'm afraid of Seagate and 1.5 TB.
 
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I went ahead and bought one again for the 3rd time....this time the retail version from best buy. after about 3 weeks it started clicking. ugh. talk about painfull. i wonder if this would be the same on the 2 tb version?
 
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All of mine were retail. This has to be some kind of manufacturing defect. I was afraid of the 2TB having the same trouble. So I switched to Hitachi as it was on sale and only 1 TB. Anybody know if 2TB and 1.5TB share the same firmware and hardware?
 
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The DENIAL by seagate of what MUST BE a manufacturing defect that produces drives that progressively become more and more faulty simply costs them business. I built 4 NAS devices last week each with 5 drives, we were going to go with Seagate but until this problem is resolved we will not touch ANY of their drives.
 
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Man, I can't wait to see how and WHEN Seagate begins to deal with this issue. Sucks, they were my favorite brand hd company and was the only hd company I could trust. Can't believe they would lower the quality control like this.
 
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Ordered 48 drives for a client yesterday for a SAN, guess which drives we did NOT order! Samsung are doing very well out of this problem! Vote with your feet and tell your friends to do the same.
 
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Shame on Seagate! They still sell the drives. After checking the S/N of my 3 drives on the Seagate support pages they tell me that there are no updates for my firmware and no known issues with this model. Are they sleeping or are they afraid of the bad public relations? I know they just had a similar bad hit to the market with another drive model. All those drives were ordered back home.
 
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Their attitude is that it is enough to offer a swap out warranty and even replace duff drives with previously returned duff drives. Years ago Amstrad had to pull out of the PC business because Western Digital drives failed in their computers and they later sued WD for $500m. This fault is too common, they need to do a recall or stop selling the drives.
 
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I bought two new Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 TB - SATA-300 on October 13 2009 from CDW, they shipped with the CC1H firmware. They worked fine under Windows 7, but about 30 days later I started to hear the click,click,click then the computer would lockup with Event Log errors that hard drive timed out. I ran SeaTools for DOS (boot cd-rom) which found 6 errors and fixed them. About 10 days later the computer froze again, upon reboot it wouldn't boot. SeaTools for DOS said the drive was not responding to any commands. I called Seagate Support was said there were no known problems with this drive and sent me over to Warranty Support where I paid $19 dollars to get another drive shipped so I can re-build my PC. Google search for Barracude 1.5TB freezing has a lot of hits.
 
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Ok, that's just ridiculous. My third replacement is now failing. This time there are no clicking noises (well, I've heard some, but not repeating ones, so maybe that was just power saving). But the drive keeps disappearing from the system more and more frequently and Windows logs time out errors when trying to communicate with the drive. And my previous two loudly clicking drives would disappear in the same way from time to time. Firmware is CC34 and as usual SMART does not report anything. But running software surface check will result in either no problems or drive timing out at some point.
Over past months I've tried different SATA cables and tried using drives in external USB case to have external power source. None of the drives lasted longer than 2 weeks until I could notice first problems.
Those drives should be recalled and Seagate must know about it. But I can see what they did. They did admit to firmware problems last year and later reported the problems to be fixed with newer firmwares to restore plummeting sales. But those drives must have some serious design problems which apparently can't be easily fixed. I can't imagine buying any Seagate drive ever again and I really hope this ends up badly for them for not being honest about failure rates.
 
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I have a Barracuda 1.5TB drive in my new desktop which I just bought. The very first thing I noticed as soon as I fired up the box was a loud, really annoying random clicking coming from the HD. My first thought within 30 seconds of the computer being on was - what the hell there's no way I can live with this for the next 2 years. This clicking is a a particular irritating and does not sound normal or healthy. I called the company that built my desktop and they suggested I get a WD caviar black 1TB, which is now on order. Very annoying to have to wait for a few days and then install a new HD, reinstall windows and my drivers rather than just getting to work. I am very glad I read this thread though because it confirms that this is a know issue. I think Seagate has lost my business. Too bad because I have used their drives for years.
 
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I'm in my third Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB in less than a month. The first I bought was retail at Fry's Electronics, it failed within a week. I contacted Seagate (I should have returned it to Fry's) and paid $19.99 for the expedited service. The second drive arrived, and after 3 days it was clicking again. I called Seagate again, they waived the $19.99 fee and sent a replacement that just failed today, I still haven't sent the second back, so right now I have 2 dead Seagate drives at home.

I called again, but today (12/31) is a "company holiday" and I have to wait until Monday (01/04) to contact support.

I'm buying a Hitachi today... No more Seagate for me.
 
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i have had a huge failure rate when using seagate drives. i work at a used technology recycle center/ pc refurbisher/ pc repair shop/pc sales, etc, and most of us agree that seagate is good in inventeing higher capacity drives and such, or good at making faster ones, but they are bad quality and SO MANY PCS THAT COME IN TO BE FIXED DUE TO HRD DRIVE ISSUES ARE MADE BY SEAGATE!!!
 
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I have had many Seagates without any problems before.
Now I bought Seagate Expansion 1.5Tb (ST315005EXD101-RK) USB disk. First backup with 300Gb went ok. Now when downloading 8GB photos for backup the disk is jammed for long times and makes tickling sounds. I want security with my backups and no problems so I will return this to the local reseller. Seems to be known issue for long time and still selling so this is first and last Seagate expansion for me.
 
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I purchased 2 1TB Seagate ST310005N1A1AS drives in March 2009. System is in an Antec case with 4 cooling fans and temperature is not an issue. System is for home use and does not get heavily utilized. Drives are installed in a Raid 1 array (mirrored image for redundancy). Drive 1 in the array failed (clicking and was not recognized) 2 weeks ago (mid-January 2010) and a replacement HDD ordered. While that drive was out, Drive 0 failed (same problems) this week. I'm not certain that I want to replace the Seagates,. I may scrap them and go with WD RE drives instead.
 
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