Seagate ST31500341AS (Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB) dead on arrival (clicking)

[Xearo167]

Every barracuda 7200 RPM seagate drive i owned or came across died... my first one was a 40 gig model... and yup.. 3 months later it don't even power up... second was the big brother... same model just 80 gigs... it died randomly one morning before I went to school.. SEAGATE SUCKS

[nickdacomputerbof]

seagate harddrives are the worse on the market i have gone through 3 failed seagate drives and where i work we ship alot of hp desktops, hp went through a phase of shipping seagate drives in their desktops out of 10 machines must of had about 5 back DONT BUY SEAGATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!­!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Western Digital all the way :)

[ikari87]

@nickdacomputerbof Funny, I bought this Seagate drive because my Western Digital died after 6 months of barely being used (since it was an external drive). And besides this one, I have never had problems with Seagate, I even have a working 11-year-old 40GB drive :)

[Xearo167]

@ikari87 them external enclosures are cheap and now days they use a SATA to USB converting chip.. better off taking the drive out and putting it on a real controller... I did mine that way and I have had it for almost two years.. excluding the time my dad had it *3 years* in the enclosure with constant use.

[lmadope]

Seagate makes the crappiest hard drive go to Newegg Bestbuy or Walmart's web site and read the user comments on Seagate internal and and external drives

[lmadope]

Seagate makes the crappiest hard drive go to Newegg Bestbuy or Walmart's web site and read the user comments on Seagate internal and and external drives

[Brickstin]

Have you tried.. Connecting the SATA cord along with the power? some Firmwares on different models of hard drives will only power up if there is a SIGNAL detection from the SATA connector as well I have a western digital HD and its sata and in order to power up the hard drive itself.. I have to have a signal going to HD.. DO that first then Post back here to me to find out if that worked. (Good luck)

[ikari87]

@Brickstin as I mentioned in previous comments, I got the drive replaced by Seagate with a new/working one in February. And it has (almost) no problems.

[Brickstin]

@ikari87 yeah Im sorry I was just wondering if you had tried that back then when you first got it. and if you ever get a new sata drive wouldn't hurt to test it like that the way I asked too. Sometimes.. when you get Hard drive orders from the mail. IT really sucks because the carriers can sometimes be careless and the drive gets a bad static shock.. Killing the controller card on the hard drive =/ Glad you got your 1.5 replaced. I have one too.. its an LP model.. *Prays nothing goes wrong* >_<

[ikari87]

@Brickstin thankfully the second drive was send in a incredibly "careful" box :) I think nothing could go wrong inside. By the way, the drive tends to overheat when it works long, be careful at its temperature.

[Brickstin]

@ikari87 Yes I strongly agree with you thank you for that advice but I kinda already knew that : it's no problem I am one step ahead of you. I went ahead and mounted a Hard drive cooling fan kit on it to keep it at low temp. I'm sure you got a Hard drive cooler too? And if so, watercooled or fan driven cooled?I have Ultra cooling fans product.

[ikari87]

@Brickstin i got a thermaltake cooling case - it's a one big black radiator for the drive, weighs about 600 grams and makes it a 5.25" bay size cold black box.

[27December1975]

My died yesterday. Very bad drive, because she hold only 2 years.

[ikari87]

@27December1975 i have put my in a 750g one-big-radiator cooling case. it should help. the drive tends to overheat.

[27December1975]

@ikari87 I see, thx. Maybe I do that same^^

[ikari87]

@27December1975 i did that when I came back from a trip, the drive (the replaced one) started to click just like this old one on the video, except it STILL WORKED and reported NO ERRORS (!) and I noticed that it's damn hot, you could fry an egg on it. When I turned the computer off and let it cool down, the problem was gone. Therefore I decided not to let it overheat ever again. By the way, SMART tools said the drive never exceeded critical values for any parameters except temperature

[27December1975]

@ikari87 Maybe can a microwave repair this in one hour lol

[ikari87]

@27December1975 try it then, and report any success, if encountered. Looking forward to your research results :P

[27December1975]

@ikari87 Eh I think this is was for the MythBusters xD

[SOLIE6226]

that clicking noise is a built in extra that seagate was hoping would take off for the Mp3 crowd it's a built in Metronome to help Sync the Music thats downloaded to it ! Seagate failed

[21boxhead]

Samsung F3 outperforms all Caviar Blacks even 64mb version! and also sea-crap

[NateGillson]

My hard drive is nearly 5 years old and it's a Seagate Barracuda (albeit an older model that doesn't have this special magnetic coating. When I buy an exterior hard drive and a new computer, i'm not getting a seagate thats for sure.

[DosesOfTruth]

Yes, this HDD is absolute crap!!! Just had one fail on me yesterday and it was purchased less than 5 months ago. Other Western Digital and Samsung drives in the same PC at least 2 or 3 yrs old are still going strong. I wish I would have known, I had some major files on it and I wont' give up until I fix it or it's totally bricked!!!! lmao

[fronkenpoop]

I've had the Seagate death-click too...

Historically I bought Seagate for years.After having 3 modern barracuda drives fail in 6 months I vowed I would never buy another Seagate HDD. I took one the failed drives to a specialist for data recovery, and they were inundated with Seagate units. They recommended Samsung drives, as they saw very few of the HDDs in for recovery (maybe because they exploded on failure- who knows). I took the hint and have Samsung drives now, which have all been fine.

[tilt1981]

I have the exact same model and it has started making the same clicking noise today. Luckily it will recover after some tries so I have time to backup data. I've owned and used this drive for less than 6 months.

[liquidoxygen0]

That's head damage. The special magnetic coating designed to protect the platters actually begins flaking after a short time, and this quickly becomes stuck to the heads. I think you'll find that when the drive is opened up that the platters are ruined, and the heads are wrecked.

[ikari87]

Well, if I opened it, they would certainly never replace it. I got the same model from Seagate, but working. I just hope my drives wont die...

[liquidoxygen0]

ikari87: Same model? That drive won't take long to fail on you. You shouldn't rely on it to store precious files, since these drives also have a high rate of firmware problems.

[ikari87]

Yes it's the same one... But I try to convince myself that once returned directly from Seagate, it should be a triple-checked, double-fixed one. Right? Please tell me it's so ;-). The exchanged drives hasn't exposed any problems yet, neither hardware nor firmware (and it's almost a year now)

[liquidoxygen0]

ikari87: Well, I've heard that Seagate have simply sent back previously failed drives that have been refurbished. Stay away from their Barracuda range if you want to be able to store data reliably.

[hustler6t9]

let me explain something, this hdd was dead fair enough, bt check the forums theres a firmware issue with these drives! how do i know? i had 4 1 TB seagates fail on me at the same time with the BSY issue! check this! ur hdd is affected! go on the seagate forums if you don't believ e me type in 7200.11 failure in google! since then i sold my hard drives bought western digital. too late for my data i lost it all! back ur shit up now!

[ikari87]

I know about the firmware problems. My new drive is not affected. It has the new firmware.

[AlxFitz]

Same thing happened with me but after contacting technical support they arranged to have it picked up and returned free of charge with all the data intact.

[ikari87]

Oh, and by the way, it was a brand new drive...

[GustavoFire]

que cagada :(

[ikari87]

Whoa! Nice story. Kinda creepy, actually. I never had such issues with my drives, nothing exploded nor smoked in my PC - and hopefully it never will. After I got the drive replaced, it works really nice :)

How do you manually activate a drive anyway?

[Voyeurisnotiseur]

Have exact same drive and i put all my vids on it.

it gave me some trouble (or XP) to find the drive, had to manually activate it many times.

then it got lost in my popcorn hour player....

and one week later it completely died!

something exploded on the controller a plop! and hissing sound + smoke came off it....

this is my first drive ever to die so soon after purchase. and the first that dies of an electronic fault. ill trade it in for a Hitachi (old IBM) i dont want a "green" version either!

[mrjustin5]

Since 1995 I've been a loyal customer of Western Digital, then I had 2 of their most expensive "entry level enterprise-class" WD5000YS RE-2 drives FAIL and even the replacement drive they sent me - THAT one failed right from the start!

So, 1.5 years ago I abandoned Western Digital after 3 major HD failures. Now I'm using Samsung (Spinpoint F1) in 1TB and 750GB.

I suggest ALL of you - GO BUY Spinrite 6.0 and test your drives. Its $89 but it pays for itself over and over. Scan drives often!

[Scoutfu]

I got one of these today, started copying stuff to it and after 30 minutes .... it died!

What a load of shit!

[ikari87]

If it worked at all in the beginning, you probably have one from the line with bad FIRMWARE (not hardware). You should check for it on the net and do a firmware update. It may totally solve your problem.

[Scoutfu]

Seagate firmware checker said an update wasnt need when i checked my serial in it :/

[ikari87]

I got it replaced. No problems now too. Let me quote: "For every hard drive that lasts 20 years without a failure, there's one that fails before you even start it". I got that one.

[mumtazakbar]

I am using this Hardisk. no problems at all

[OriginalJosh01]

i have the Seagate 1.5tb working fine in my pc. i also have another 500gb Seagate harddrive hooked up. thats gives me a total of 2tb! like many, i had sort of a hard time getting my pc to work with the 1.5tb. but i eventually got it going! now i have no problems, and its 100% awesome! even if i didntt have the 500gb drive, 1.5tb is obviously enough!

[ikari87]

Lucky you :) I hope i'll get my drive back and it will work for years, as other seagate drives that I have. And... 1.5TB is enough TODAY, but I'm sure we can fill it up easily. It always seemed sooo big when buying a new drive, and later... ;)

[OriginalJosh01]

yea thats true. when i first got my 500gb, i was like that and thought it wouldn't fill up. but here i am with a 1.5tb! lol. I have 6gb of ram (using widows xp 64bit). I have a nVidea geforce 8500 graphic card. i think every thing is good, but i want a better graphic card! what kind do you have?

[ikari87]

Um. Athlon XP 2000+, 1 GB of DDR400 and GF6200 (AGP, of course, no PCI-E in this old system...)

[quinny707]

ITS A BOMB!!!!!

[ikari87]

lol, that's a good one :)

unfortunatelly, i have even more problems regarding this drive now...

[quinny707]

Whats wrong with it now?

[ikari87]

I've returned it to the shop for replacement (it was still on warranty, it was brand new...) and... the shop suddently went bankrupt before I got my new drive. I have neither the drive, nor the money. Have no idea what to do. I'm trying to contact seagate if the shop returned the drive to them and if we can continue without the shop...

[quinny707]

OMG thats well unlucky hope u get a replacement or your money back what shop was it that you got it from?

[EgonFreeman]

Building HDDs with that much capacity on so few plates is a tricky process. The failure rate (pre-distribution) is significantly higher, and it's only because the manufacture costs have gone down in general that these things became feasible in the first place.

So, we're still safer with a few smaller disks, it would seem (not that I'm complaining).

RMA that shit. :D Also see the "Seagate Hard disk failure (meets marker)" in Related. That would be it. When it's go time, it's go time - right?

[auditlog]

czułem tą grozę...