Problem with Seagate 2TB drive

ferret face

ferret face

ferret face

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Hi Guys

I'm having problems with a seagate 2tb LP drive I bought. It somtimes makes a clicking sound and when I watch video files they often skip.

I have run HDtach on the drive and heres the results, do they show anything wrong:

seagatehdd.jpg



Cheers Ferret
 
Cheers NickK

But was is a thermal recalibration and how do I check the temperature?

:)


ok just googled thermal recalibration and if it is this causing video skips and pauses then its a terrible implementation as it renders my HTPC useless, is there any way to switch it off?
 
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If you have something that can read the SMART report from the hard drive then you should be able to find out the temperature reported by it.

You can't switch of recalibration. If you did the drive would corrupt itself if the temperature changed. If the drive has enough cooling (hence check the temps) then it may not recalibrate.

There could be other issues such as another application accessing the drive which may cause stuttering.
 
I have this HDD. I use it to store all my movies (divx/xvid/mkv).
When im downloading something which is going full pelt on my 20mb connection and am watching a mkv it does sometimes stutter but i think that might be an issue for my C:/ not being able to read and write data fast enough (like 20 simultaneous downloads from newsgroups). When I stop the downloading the movies play fine.

Temperature wise it sits around 28* - 32*C - using DTemp to monitor it.
It does not click.

I would check your temperature
 
cheers guys


The drive passes smart test and passes seatools tests, also the temp is 30 degrees....so I'm not sure what the problem is, its got me stumped?

Really annoying tho as everything I watch will stutter and pause for a second at some point. Also I can hear it clicking sometimes esp when i boot the pc up.

Any more ideas?

Cheers
Ferret
 
If it clicks during spin up/booting it could be your power supply is nearing it's limit. When the HD finds it doesn't have enough power it will emergency park the heads.

Booting is when all the motors (fans, etc) all spin up. A motor draws more current (power) when it's under load, such as spin up, and if there's a lot of things attempting to spin up then the PSU could be struggling.
 
Cheers guys but its a bare bones system, hasnt even got a gpu or sound card as they are onboard, so I cant see the PSU struggling.

The drive is still pausing while playing video files, I'm gonna take it out and put it in my main pc when I get a minute to see if it does the same thing.
 
One thing I always recommend to people with (potentially) failing HDs is to use the Smartmontools UNIX utility to run an extended SMART test on the drive. If aren't using the Linux (or other UNIX clone) as a boot OS you can run it natively by using CYGWIN in Windows (which works BTW in all Windows flavours including Windows 7).

I talk you through the process if you think this might help! After all if you can prove there is a SMART failure (with the extended test) then you have the option of RMA'ing the drive.

Bob
 
I did some research on this drive!

Its a very common cause by the way. Most people think its a fault and RMA their drives but people have found that using a different SATA cable or a different PSU connector solves the issue.

Well, I changed the PSU molex to a different one and now drives not making that clicking noise which it did when it was being accessed. I've ran loads of tests on the drive and it passes all of them!
For the last few days it was making that clicking sound when I was extracting files to it and generally when it was being accessed. I've had it a few months and it didn't do it before so its strange.

Maybe something to do with my PSU?
Not enough power available?

I have a 480W PSU and I run the following:

Core2Duo (not overclocked)
3x SATA HDD's
DVDRW
Fan controller
2x 120mm Fans
2x 140mm Fans
2x 1Gb DDR2

SMART Report:

99939624.jpg
 
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photoshop said:
Its a very common cause by the way. Most people think its a fault and RMA their drives but people have found that using a different SATA cable or a different PSU connector solves the issue.
Click to expand...

It won't be to do with the loading on your PSU. Fans, normal SATA HDs (i.e. not 15K SCSI drives), stock Core 2, DVD-RW all present quite a light load to the PSU. The main load on any PSU these days would an OC quad core CPU and discrete graphics cards.

Connector issues are simply to do with quality of cable plugs. Especially with the data cables I always use high quality, latching SATA-2 shielded cables (throwing away those stupid red cables that some MB manufacturers inflict on us). The wires are carrying signals switching at multi - GHz after all!! Been through all of this with the early SATA cables (which were ****) - myself!! :mad:

Also with power cables it is best to use plugs with gold plated pins as the quality of the connection my drop with surface corrosion on regular metals. A lot of PSU manufacturers will supply them as standard. The standard SATA power connector is not nearly as beafy as a molex power connector - with much smaller contact points - so really benefits from plating. A power connector or one that is dirty (* using isopropyl alcohol can help here!!) will have some resistance - for a device drawing any power this can potentially drop the voltage rails below the ATX specification. Just look at PC Power & Cooling PSU's - they avoid using modular cabling as they feel it can potentially degrade the power supply voltage rails.

Bob
 
This is making me cautious of Seagate, not touched Seagate since a range of 7200.11 died on me, but often had clicking Seagates, pause always followed.

I want a 2TB drive, might wait on the new WDC Green 2TB
 
r0cky said:
This is making me cautious of Seagate, not touched Seagate since a range of 7200.11 died on me, but often had clicking Seagates, pause always followed.

I want a 2TB drive, might wait on the new WDC Green 2TB
Click to expand...

Well i have another 1.5Tb Seagate sat next to my 2Tb and thats working great and been doing so for 18months!

Like i said, my 2TB seems to be ok now.
Think i need to get a new PSU as this one i have is several years old (Tagan 480W) and might be running out of steam.

If it was the HDD then it still would be clicking after i changed the power connector which it isnt.
 
r0cky said:
I want a 2TB drive, might wait on the new WDC Green 2TB
Click to expand...

I have a couple of HGST 2TB drives and these are quite nice. One was DOA (but that means nothing - since it wasn't shipped in a clamshell). I prefer a drive to be totally DOA than suffer infant mortality after 3-4 weeks like one of my Seagate 7200.11 1Tb drives!! That's when you start losing data - if you aren't careful about backing up... :eek:

Bob
 
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