Worried I might be killing HDDs

zero-one

zero-one

zero-one

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Hiya

I've had two hard drives die in the past six months, both with the same problem. The first was a Seagate 250GB (model number ST3250410AS) and the other was another Seagate - this time a 500GB (model number ST3500410AS).

Both started clicking now and again and when i did a CHKDSK they both came up with 4kb of bad sectors and found some bad clusters in files in \Windows.

As they've both gone in exactly the same manner i'm worried it's something i'm doing. They aren't under what i would call heavy use. On for around 6 hours a day, general surfing, gaming etc.

I use CCleaner once a day and use Auslogics disk defrag once a week. Are there any problems with this software? Am i using them to much?

They were installed in AHCI mode. I can post my BIOS settings if there could be any problems there.

Spec of pc is in sig (except the hard disk, obviously)

Any help much appreciated
 
Temps too high for them perhaps? Mine are both on 24/7 and have been for 2 years, no issues.
Other than temps or you just got unlucky with 2 drives that have failed naturally I don't know.
 
Another vote for case ventilation and temps. If they are dying at roughly the same age/time then it could be heat releated.
 
Probably a coincidence. I've found Seagate drives to be hideously unreliable in the past two years.

Buy a Western Digital next time.
 
I have had this HDD (ST3250410AS) since it first came on the market, it runs around 10-12 hours each day and not had any problems with it so far, without knowing your pc case/hdd temps etc., it would be hard to say whether or not it is heat related, but I would be more inclined to think it is just a random coincidence that 2 Seagate HDDs have died in the past 6 months...

Next time you buy a HDD, buy a different make...
 
Thanks for the replies chaps.

It didn't even occur to me it could be temp related. Both drives were in a bay by themselves in the front of an Antec 900 with a 120mm fan blowing air across it. Is that okay ventilation?

With regards to drive noise - you can actually hear the head drag across the platter! It also clicks a lot - i'll check out that website when i get home.

Are the Western Digital Eco drives any good?
 
Are they on the Intel controller or attached to a PCI card? If the former, nothing much to add...if the latter I've seen some older cards throw up errors like this on these drives (think it was a Promise based card IIRC).
 
I don't know what you might be doing wrong :(. I will say that I use 2 of the same drives and one of them has been switched on for a total of 12062 hours and has had zero problems, I think HDD are really often just luck based for reliability :/
 
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