Seagate 7200.12 clicking ... now fine?

[Jay_S]

I bought a single-platter 500GB seagate 7200.12 about a year ago. It's been OK. It's a little noisy (general whoosh) but suspended it's OK.

About 2 months ago, I noticed it making some rather loud clicking noises. But nothing too bad. They would come and go periodically. As they got more frequent, I ran HDTune and - whoa - 60MB/s reads? OK, poor performance + loud clicking = a problem somewhere, right?

Next I ran SeaTools. SMART test reports no problems. Short test reports no problems. But the long test just hangs. For over a day - no progress. So something's wrong.

So I start looking into RMA. And I need a SeaTools error code. But since SeaTools didn't finish or give me an error code, I have nothing. I found this site:

Self-Service SeaTools Test Codes
http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/supp ... codes.html

Do I pick "noisy" or "poor performance" ... hmm. I picked "poor performance" thinking it's more objective. After all, I have HDTune data to back it up. With the RMA number, I'm preparing to box up the drive.

Not wanting to way 2+ weeks for a replacement, and itching to jump into the SSD world, I pulled the trigger on Newegg's $239 OCZ Agility 2 120GB shell shocker. It arrives tomorrow - I can't wait.

Before shipping the Seagate back, I decided to secure erase the whole thing. Using an Ubuntu live CD: shred -vfz -n 3 /dev/sda (this writes random data across the whole drive three times).

Then, for giggles, I reinstalled Win7 Ultimate x86. Downloaded and installed HDTune. And I'm basically back to full performance! And it's not clicking! WFT!



What should I do with this drive? If I send it in, the replacement comes only with a 90-day warranty. But I still have the balance of 3 years (something around 2 years) left on the factory warranty. Should I hold on to it until it really fails? I'm hesitant to trust it with anything important.

[MikeC]

Hang on to it, use it for non-critical apps or a spare PC. 90 days is a joke.

[Strid]

I don't know windows, but I'd try to at least check it for bad blocks. If you can find any, it's a sure RMA!

In Ubuntu do this:

Code: Select all

sudo badblocks -nvs /dev/sdX

where "/dev/sdX" is the harddive and "-nvs" is the non-destructive read/write test of badblocks. It'll probably take a full day or so to scan all 500 GB. Never trust that particular harddisk again with any data you can't loose, though.

I don't know Windows, but if there is an equivalent to badblocks of linux, you can probably use that tool instead. But badblocks will print the number of every bad block, so it is really useful when RMA'ing something.

EDIT: 90 days is joke, but it is still better with 90 days of warranty on a functioning drive, than 3 years you can't use on a malfunctioning drive, no?

[Jay_S]

Thanks for the comments.

Followup and conclusion: turns out I mis-read the warranty terms.

Instead of forfeiting the balance of my 3-year factory warranty:

Q. How long is the limited warranty for the replacement drive?
A. The remainder of the original limited warranty or 90 days, whichever is longer.

Source: http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/s ... =202271#16

I contacted Seagate to explain the situation. The rep agreed that the drive should be returned. It's shipping to Seagate today.