Is it normal for a brand new Seagate Barracuda HDD to make clicking sounds???...

Associate
Joined
11 Sep 2008
Posts
203
Location
Skynet
Received my Seagate Barracuda hard-drive this morning, and have already installed it into my rig, but is it supposed to make a clicking sound when I switch the PC on??? :confused:

It goes "tick, tick, tick", then there's a quick pause, then "tick, tick, tick" again. After that, it doesn't make any other "ticking" or "clicking" sounds.

Just a bit concerned, because I don't remember hearing a healthy hard-drive do this before, but it could have dodged my memory.
 
Usually ticking noises are a bad sign, I would strongly advice you to run Seatools on the drive with the Complete or long test cant remember what it's called, if it passes that with no errors the drive should be fine.
 
I've downloaded and installed Seatools... Do I want to run ALL of the tests, or just specific ones? I'm not entirely sure what they all do...
 
Well.. my hdd from overclockers blew up a few weeks ago and they replaced it. This one makes no clicks. The old one didnt.. but still, just because its quiet doesnt mean its less faulty. It was only 2 months old, had a lot of info on it, then suddenly kaput.

Please insert bootable media.

T_T
 
Well.. my hdd from overclockers blew up a few weeks ago and they replaced it. This one makes no clicks. The old one didnt.. but still, just because its quiet doesnt mean its less faulty. It was only 2 months old, had a lot of info on it, then suddenly kaput.

Please insert bootable media.

T_T

I guess the only way of being able to tell is by running these diagnostics tests and waiting until something either happens or doesn't happen...

... Probably shouldn't put anything important on there, either.
 
So far, every test using Seatools has passed... It's now doing the "Long Generic" test, which is taking a fair amount of time. Are there any other tests I should run after this one?
 
So far, every test using Seatools has passed... It's now doing the "Long Generic" test, which is taking a fair amount of time. Are there any other tests I should run after this one?
You could use some HDD performance test tools for running tests for whole night, "infant mortality" should show easier when HDD is stressed.
Also running some tool made for secure erasing of HDD could do that (multiple overwrites) but performance test tool woudl be probably safer in case you havedrives with actual content.

This boot CD has lot of different testing tools:
http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd
 
I bought a Samsung F1 prior to this HDD, and ended up getting a boot failure with bad sectors on it... Now I have a clicking Seagate. Personally, I'm inclined to blame OC for the lack of sufficient packaging and warning labels on the outside of the boxes they ship their hard-drives in. RULE #1: If you're shipping sensitive hardware, mark and package it accordingly, for Christ's sake!

But OK, it could have nothing to do with how they were handled in transit... It just seems like too much of a coincidence, that's all.

Not sure whether to try a different hard-drive manufacturer, or a different dealer...
 
I've got a 3 1/2 year old seagate 300GB 7200.8 which is dead silent and going strong, two 1 1/2 year old seagate 500GB 7200.9 in RAID 1 which make "clicking" noises when seeking (have done since I had them) and two 6 month old WD 640GB's which are dead silent all the time and fingers crossed, no problems yet.

All of the above were sent to me in very good packaging (WD's were from OCUK).

Oh and in the past I have had a 80, 120 and 200GB IDE seagates and they were dead silent too. An 80GB sata one (about 4 years ago) which I got for my bro was very loud like my 500GB's and I think seagate went down hill from then regarding noise.
 
Last edited:
I got my fair share. My poor WD 320GB 2.5" wasn't so lucky with its packaging ;) However its been fine for 8 months so far!
 
I'll call Seagate in the morning and see what they say... But I'm not going to put up with a refurbished replacement if there is indeed something wrong with the one I currently have. Nooo way.
 
I have a Seagate 320GB 7200.10 which ticks a fair bit. It's been running for over a year now though and hasn't done anything wrong yet...
 
All my hard drives tick and make weird noises and I have various makes and sizes in my build. I have the odd write failure every now and again. I'm pretty certain my hard drives make weird noises because my mickey mouse q-tech 500w psu is struggling badly with powering my 10 hard drives plus the rest of my system.

When I can be bothered I will upgrade my psu, until then I will put up with the noise and unreliability. As with my system, your hard drive reliability me be down to a dodgy psu. I know its my psu causing the noise from my hard drive because if I unplug a few unnecessary items from my psu the clicking noises go away and the remaining hard drives perform perfectly with no write failures.
 
i had 2 x 120gb seagate sata drives both made clicking sounds when they were near death.

RMA'd them and seagate sent me 2 repaired drives back of the same model. The one drive i have opened which is being used at the moment is now making clicking sounds. Yey.

Send an angry email to seagate as i cant be bothered paying yet again for postage so they can send be a 'repaired' drive back.

Funnily enough t-800, my samsung F1 640gb that i bought 3 months ago was giving me boot disk failure so i think thats broken. All drives bought from ocuk.

Getting pretty annoyed with hard drives at the moment.
 
I have the same drive and i'm sure something stir's inside the case, never really thought about it but reading this has made me all paranoid, how long does seatools take to do it's stuff?
 
Back
Top Bottom