Hard drive acting really funky

[LiekOMG]

Ok, i just bought a new Seagate 80gb hard drive, cause everyone has been praising them for how fast and silent they are. I installed it, and for the first day it worked really well, and was extraordinarily quiet. I loved it. However on the 2nd day, about every 1-2 minutes, the hard drive will start working really hard - it sounds kinda like when you exit out of a game and if you were low on memory, how it releases all the data from the page file, like a steady grinding sound. However, i'm not playing any games, and i'm not low on memory. I even checked activity monitor, and the HD access isn't something that the OS is aware of, so its something the hard drive is doing completely on its own.

My only guess is that perhaps the hard drive is overheating, and running some self tests? But it starts doing this as soon as i turn the computer on, even before its had a chance to warm up. I'm really at a loss here. Has anyone ever seen anything like this before, with any brand hard drive?

 

[LiekOMG]

No one?

 

[eLinux]

If in doubt, and you bought it recently, I'd switch it out...

 

[Thor_Sevan]

I would say check if DMA is enabled in your HD IDE channels in IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers.

THor_Sevan

 

[Blastman]

I have had a 80GB 7200.7 for 8 months now and I had the same issue. A kind of ? ?clicking/seeking? ? sound when the drive is just idling and not being accessed. There was a thread about it at storage review about 7 months ago and we never resolved the issue. When my drive was new it did this quite often. As soon as you accessed the drive the noise quits for a while, and then would come back every once in a while.

Currently, after using the drive for 8 months the noise has pretty well disappeared --it now hardly make that noise anymore. And if it does it?s only a little bit and much more subdued.

The drive has been reliable and otherwise there have been no issues with it. It seems like it?s just some quirk with that line of Seagates drives.

 

[LiekOMG]

Originally posted by: Blastman
I have had a 80GB 7200.7 for 8 months now and I had the same issue. A kind of ? ?clicking/seeking? ? sound when the drive is just idling and not being accessed. There was a thread about it at storage review about 7 months ago and we never resolved the issue. When my drive was new it did this quite often. As soon as you accessed the drive the noise quits for a while, and then would come back every once in a while.

Currently, after using the drive for 8 months the noise has pretty well disappeared --it now hardly make that noise anymore. And if it does it?s only a little bit and much more subdued.

The drive has been reliable and otherwise there have been no issues with it. It seems like it?s just some quirk with that line of Seagates drives.

Wow, this is EXACTLY the problem i'm trying to describe. I thought I was the only one in a million. Do you know of any place I can read up on this issue. It doesn't seem to affect performance or anything, but i'm nosy, and i'd really like to find out the cause of this. I'm going to call Seagate on monday to see if this is a known issue or not, but all they will do is probably ask me to send it back to them and get a replacement.

 

[Blastman]

Like I say, I haven?t heard of any reliability issues with the drives and mine seems fine. You might check/serch the forums at storagereiew.com.

The only thing that disappoints me a little with the drive so far is that the performance of these drives is just ok. The latest Maxtor and WD 80GB/platter drives are 25- 30% faster in heavy IO situations. Seagate seems to have ratcheted back the seek times on these drives so much to keep the noise low that performance suffers. Either that or they messed up the write routines. The 7200.0 80GB 2MB drives could be made on a different manufacturing line than the other drives from Seagates because the SATA and ?PLUS?8MB? versions of the 7200.7 don?t suffer from that 25-30% performance drop like the 80GB 2MB version -- they are? just as fast as the Max?s and WD?s. If I was to buy another 80GB drive now my I might consider the WD as they have a new line out with FDB?s and are close in quietness to the Seagates. Seagate does not make 80GB ?PLUS? model so one would have to get the 120GB version or go with the SATA 80GB to avoid that 30% performance drop.

Also, Seagate has just announced a new line of 100GB/platter 7200.7?s so I?ll have to check storagereview.com to see their tests and how they perform.

 

[Amorphus]

your harddrive is a secret neo-islamic terrorist plot to blow up personal computers all across america! :Q