Seagate hard disks suffer from "click of death"

Same with FreeAgent

I bought 3 1.5Tb FreeAgent drives earlier in the year. All 3 clicked themselves to death in about a week.

Seagate replaced them and they have been fine since.

They clearly have QA issues.

By iwilson on 27 Oct 2009

"reports on the forums suggest the company is replacing customers’ faulty drives".

I would hope there is no other option. If a drive fails in such a short space of time there should be no question of it being replaced?

By halsteadk on 27 Oct 2009

Maxtor were terrible

Maxtor discs were really terrible with a failure rate of 5 out of 8 discs over two years at our office.
As soon as I heard that Seagate had bought out Maxtor, we stopped buying Seagate discs as well, because you have to assume they are using the maxtror factories to make Seagate branded discs.
Looks like I predicted correctly. Labelled "Seagate" but clicks and dies like a Maxtor...

By cheysuli on 27 Oct 2009

A pedant strikes...

"I would hope there is no other option. If a drive fails in such a short space of time there should be no question of it being replaced?"

Surely "there should be no question of it NOT being replaced"?

Or, even better, "it should be replaced without question, immediately."

By JohnGray7581 on 27 Oct 2009

Just Great!!!

Sitting listening to a replacement clicking right now, think I'll take it back to exchange for a different make as I bought this for backup, not much good for that if it's going to die

By mauriceheath on 27 Oct 2009

Love the "click of death". Sounds like something out of a Stanley Kubrick movie. Will stick to Western Digital myself. Love their Green Power disks.

By c6ten on 27 Oct 2009

Dan

My Samsung Spinpoints (250GB) click rather alarmingly every now and then. They whirr loudly, go silent for a second, then click, and then continue as usual. If media is being played from the disk, the music stops at the end of the whirr and continues after the click.

So far, they haven't failed, but I'm somewhat worried after hearing this. Should I be?

By dangermouse425 on 29 Oct 2009

Click of Death

Wonder if it is a heat problem. I brought some external esata caddies to bit and internal drive in to make my own external drive. Though the cases were metal, the drives were mounted in a plastic tray, which of course means that the drive can only lose heat through the air inside the caddy. I haven't as yet had any drive failures but I usually only have them on for a short time.

By birdmaniw on 29 Oct 2009

It's a worry but read the seagate forums for advice

I'm not going to justify the lack of response from Seagate or the possibly cynical retailers who have discounted these drives to very tempting levels BUT the drives may not be at fault as some people in the forums mentioned have found that the problem was the usb cable supplied with the drive - try swappping it for a better(choked) or even just a shorter cable and the clicking goes away

By Rahere on 1 Jan 2010