Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

[Krankshaft]

I've had plenty of hard drives fail on me over the years for various reasons but I found this one a bit odd.

At first I thought it was a relay two distinct clicks every now and then.

I was busy so I ignored it thinking it was the UPS going into voltage clip mode.

Two days ago it was really annoying me so I decided to see where it was coming from and it was the drive. It's a Seagate 1tb Sata purchased late 2009.

It's been emitting the click of death randomly but the drive is otherwise fully functional. Usually by the time I hear this the drive is totally dead.

Well this is a rare one a drive giving me a warning for once. I counted my blessings and updated the files on my backup drive. The last update on my backup was in July so it wouldn't have been too far of a trip in the Delorean if it had died .

I have a replacement from Seagate on the way. Even Seatools said the drive was bad during a Short Drive Self Test.

In most cases for me when I have to replace a drive it's usually because the bearings go bad causing excessive noise, the drive develops bad sectors out of the blue, or it just flat out dies with no warning usually followed by the actuator clicking.

How often do you guys see this random clicking before a complete failure?

I've heard it's the sound of the actuator returning home because it loses its position data when its over the platter.

[c_hegge]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

I've seen that on a WD drive recently. It would just click from time to time, but it held up long enough to get the data off it, but it died shortly after.

[momaka]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

How often do you guys see this random clicking before a complete failure?

I just saw one like that 2 weeks ago at work. It was a Seagate SATA drive, not quite sure what model and size... most likely a 160 GB 7200.8. The drive wasn't clicking but rather beeping randomly. At first I thought it was something else, but then I went to plug in my flash drive with my utilities and noticed the noise was coming from the computer. When I checked the SMART log, the bad sector count was sky-high, up in the 1000 range as was the current pending sector and event count. My boss wasn't there that day, so I told another co-worker of mine to tell him about it. However, chances are that if that computer is working, the drive is probably still in it. If it's still there next week, I'll grab a copy of the SMART log.

Other drives that do this click-before-death are the old IBM/Hitachi IDE Deskstars. I can confirm that since I have 2 of them - a 305030 30 GB and a 307020 20 GB. The 305030 has some problems with the write heads as I can get it to click sometimes only if I give it many small files to write (like 100 or more). Every time it clicks, the bad sector count goes up by 1. I'm still using that drive, though, as it's been working fine for 2 years already (it's the main drive for my Pentium III HP desktop). There are only 20 bad sectors on that drive, 2 of which happened in the last 2 years (basically when I got that computer). For an 11 year old HD with 23000 power-on hours, that's not that bad at all.

The 307020 is from the IBM 75GXP models, which are notorious for going bad. That one I bought used on ebay way back in 2004. It has 102 bad sectors right now. Clicks usually once a month if I'm using that computer regularly (which I am not anymore). I got nothing important on it, so I'll just keep running it till it dies.

I've heard it's the sound of the actuator returning home because it loses its position data when its over the platter.

Yes, I think that's correct.

[ratdude747]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

funny, i was recently gifted a 40gb hitachi desktar made in 2005. it is an ATA model.

no bad sectors, in fact, it has a perfectly clean bill of health as per SMART logs. not bad, considering it was shipped USPS from S. Cal. to my place.

[momaka]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

funny, i was recently gifted a 40gb hitachi desktar made in 2005. it is an ATA model.

no bad sectors, in fact, it has a perfectly clean bill of health as per SMART logs. not bad, considering it was shipped USPS from S. Cal. to my place.

IIRC, that one is too new to have those problems. Most of the problematic Deskstars are the ones made between 2000 and 2003, with the 75GXP leading as the most failure-prone HDD model.

[Scenic]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

dunno if 75GXP = DTLA, but the models starting with DTLA-xxxxxx are the ones that ruined IBM's reputation. The follow-up 180GXP (? .. IC35LxxxAVxxxx models) weren't much better.

I still have a DTLA-305040 (40GB 5400rpm) deathstar that makes a click-feep sound every time it has to read a lot of files. Especially a bunch of small ones. It refuses to die completely though.

It's currently in one of my ancient Powermac G4's click-feeping along..

[Ami Sapphire]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

dunno if 75GXP = DTLA, but the models starting with DTLA-xxxxxx are the ones that ruined IBM's reputation. The follow-up 180GXP (? .. IC35LxxxAVxxxx models) weren't much better.

I still have a DTLA-305040 (40GB 5400rpm) deathstar that makes a click-feep sound every time it has to read a lot of files. Especially a bunch of small ones. It refuses to die completely though.

It's currently in one of my ancient Powermac G4's click-feeping along..

Wow, I obtained a 180GXP hard drive some time ago. It is a 60GB IBM Deskstar version. Still works well, considering it's in my current web server now.

[momaka]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

dunno if 75GXP = DTLA, but the models starting with DTLA-xxxxxx are the ones that ruined IBM's reputation.

Not exactly. 75GPX is just a particular model group from the DTLA family. The DTLA-307020 I have is a 75GXP, while the DTLA-305030 is a 40GV.
Probably not much difference between the 2, though, since they both use glass platters which are very prone to failure due to thermal-cycling.

I still have a DTLA-305040 (40GB 5400rpm) deathstar that makes a click-feep sound every time it has to read a lot of files. Especially a bunch of small ones. It refuses to die completely though.

Lol.
Sounds like your has the same problem, but with the read heads rather than the write heads (either that, or the pixie dust on your platters is starting to come off ). I can run many virus and spyware scans on mine, and it won't do the click-beep sound.

The click-beep sound aside, is yours ridiculously loud too when reading/writing? Mine sounds like there are a 1000 gnomes inside banging on anything and everything with tiny hammers . The bearings are pretty loud too.
... but it still works.

[kc8adu]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

the click is a bad sector retry and sometimes a reallocation.i tend to watch smart to see these failures coming.1 or 2 reallocated sectors is no cause for alarm.
a bunch with more in curently pending means back it up now!

[Scenic]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

i found an old video with another one of those 40GB DTLA's (i had 4 of these at one point).
Some guy i know from another forum wanted a retro-mac for whatever reason, so i gave him one of my Powermac G4 400's in exchange for an old laptop he had lying around (Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 PIII 850).
I told him there was no HDD, but i put one of those DTLA's in there just for demo purposes and said that it's probably going to die soon (i knew i wouldn't be able to sell them, so i tried getting rid of them this way )

This video was kind of a demo video before shipping the machine to him
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH0CkeZJLGU
(ignore the supertux fails )

I started a game and before it loaded up, attempted to change the volume.. HDD made the click-beep and went along as if nothing happened lol

The spindle motor the one i still have isn't too terribly loud, but reading/writing.. ugh..
You can kinda hear it in the video (and no.. the powermac wasn't opened up when i shot the video)

[Fud]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

The click of death sounds totally different than a hard drive working normally. It wasn't mentioned if that was an external or not but i'll tell you what happened to my Maxtor once touch that started making that noise out of the blue and was left on all the time even though it was a backup drive.

Ends up people i know bought those same deals at costco for cheaper externals and at the same time more than a couple people i know that bought from there had theirs fail too in even less time.

Once the clicking started i shut it off then started it then it kept going and going and damaging the platters seeking. I tried everything like putting it in the freezer to get the data off and that didn't work, then someone told me you can drop it on a flat surface about 3 inches flat and that would unlock the heads.

No luck it was gone before i could transfer anything over that was needed, so then i took the thing apart and noticed the fan inside was only a bit bigger than a size of a quarter and hardly any vent holes at all for circulation. Then looking into it further it was maxtor and seagate or WD that merged with them at the time and they were mixing up parts and many many people had them die in months or less.

Never had that happen to an internal but the clicks are very obvious. So learned my lesson and the new external is only on during backups then unplugged, the new external is a seagate and not going to take chances with it on all the time with tiny holes for vents either.

They do make better enclosures for external seperate though that are well ventilated.

[momaka]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

There are only 20 bad sectors on that drive, 2 of which happened in the last 2 years (basically when I got that computer).

Aaaand make that 21 reallocated sectors and 31 in the Reallocation Event Count (was 30 before). Current Pending Sector is still 19.

I was doing a massive write operation again with a WAV audio file in WavePad. I didn't really hear when the drive clicked, though, as I had headphones on and couldn't really hear much. It's just like Scenic's HD though - it clicked and then continued as if nothing had happened.

Oh well, I'm still going to keep using it. 23183 POH and 3181 power cycles is not enough. I have my data on other computers, so I don't think I'll lose much.

[Scenic]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

Seems like it really depends on your luck how long a HDD lasts.

For example, I've got 2 identical Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120GB SATA HDDs (Model ST3120026AS).
One has 2285 power on hours (95 days .. almost nothing) and 1 pending + 1 bad sector, the other has 42102 power on hours (1754 days.. that's almost 5 years! ) and no bad sectors at all.
The UDMA CRC error is from a flaky connection (crappy SATA cable)



Temperature difference is because one was running for over an hour, the other was just connected for a few minutes.

[kc8adu]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

just sent in 5 for replacement.customer called me about clicking.all had hundreds of bads and more in pending.lucky for them i told them to back up as these were failure prone.

[dood]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

You all aren't making me feel good about my 2tb drive purchase the other day.

[kc8adu]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

i cursed another by replying to this thread.a neighbor had me come over and look at a pc.
just dropped dead.no boot.tried to mount the drive in another pc to get the /users moved but no fs.have it home now and health is ok with 1 reallocated sector.running a logical recovery now.

[Krankshaft]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

I ended up buying a replacement Seagate 2tb too ! Got it for 125 shipped blew the local prices out of the water I figured due to the shortage which some are estimating will last from mid to the end of 2012. That prices were only going to get higher. The drive is made in China with a 3 year warranty.

Used the replacement 1tb as extra storage to store recorded shows from my HD tuner card.

I figure both Seagate and WD have the same chance of having a mechanical failure. Anyone who says "I'll never buy Seagate" or vice versa is just lying to themselves that the other brand is any more reliable. If any failure is brand or series specific I'm sure both brands have their ups and downs in that regard.

I've noticed as of late though that WD seems to charge much more for the 7200 RPM models and forces you into the "Black series" with it's higher price tag if you want a drive over 1 TB.

I'm not interested in their "Green" 5900 RPM crap. Putting the slower seek times of a lower RPM drive aside a HDD motor like an engine gets most of its wear during start up and I've heard these drives go into a non OS controlled "sleep mode" constantly. Not to mention constantly having to wait for the drive spin up and become "ready".

[kc8adu]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

guess i will have to cut apart a fdb.i always heard they were a ceramic material.
what the "fluid" is i am not sure.are they surface to surface contact when stopped like an engine?oh and the motor life is not the concern on the wd green.head stack load/unload cycle life is.while i agree the headstack is safest on the parking ramp these drives do an insane number of load cycles a day.

[kc8adu]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

well the 1tb for my neighbor is a 100% save.
got everything back although the recovery is full of malware.going to overwrite the drive and see if smart changes.it looks ok now.maybe corrupted by malware?

[Scenic]

Re: Seagate 1tb Click Of Death

I'm not interested in their "Green" 5900 RPM crap. Putting the slower seek times of a lower RPM drive aside a HDD motor like an engine gets most of its wear during start up and I've heard these drives go into a non OS controlled "sleep mode" constantly. Not to mention constantly having to wait for the drive spin up and become "ready".

Uhm.. none of the drives do that on their own

What regular WD Greens (and only these) are notorious for is parking their heads after a 4 second timeout on a plastic ramp to the side of the platters (supposedly reducing friction and saving power. BS if you ask me).
Because they do that all the time, the drives die early. I've seen 1 year old 1TB WD Greens with 400-500k head parking counts in SMART. No need to explain why they had trouble reading and kept losing the partition table. Out of head alignment from all the parking crap.

AV series Green drives (WD calls them AV-GP) don't have this head parking timer in their firmware. Actually none of the other series (Black/Blue/AV(-GP)/Raptor) do.

The raw SMART value "C1 Load Cycle Count" = number of head parking cycles. If you ever get a non-AV series WD Green, you'll notice that this value is tons and tons of times higher than most other harddrives.

Ideally, "C1 Load Cycle Count" should be somewhere near the raw value of "0C Power Cycle Count" or "04 Start/Stop Count". If Load Cycle count is somewhat higher (like a couple hundreds) it's probably still fine. Might have been sent into standby mode quite often (windows power management settings). But if it's significantly off (multiple thousands to values over 10k), it's very likely it uses this stupid head parking timer. If that's the case, treat it like a raw egg or simply get rid of it ASAP. They will still work fine (at least for some time), but that head parking value in SMART is basically a death counter. Avoid putting any important stuff onto drives with high load cycle counts.

The performance of those green drives really isn't all that bad. Especially if you consider the price (before the Thailand stuff) and how cool they run. Most of the time these green drives don't even need a fan and still stay near or below 35°C.

One of my data b*tches..
http://bambooz.pytalhost.net/badcaps/WD10EVDS.jpg