A really noisy (new) Seagate drive...

[AtlantaBob]

It's a Seagate st3300622a (300 GB, 16MB 7200). It's in an external Rosewill enclosure.

Sometimes when the disk is accessed it's awfully noisy--but I think that's only when it's seeking (e.g. when it does a full surface scan in chkdsk it's generally a lot quieter than when it presumably is seeking data in different parts of the disk -- dir /s). This doesn't seem to be just an enclosure thing--I had it as an internal drive as well, and it was significantly louder than a 7200 WD 80GB drive.

I've tried running the Seagate diagnostics on it -- twice it's hung up on the very last part of the full drive scan. But it didn't report any errors before it failed. The Seagate SMART test reports that no thresholds have been exceeded.

Obviously, I'm hesitant to store any data on it. But I figure if I go to Seagate saying, it's loud, they won't replace it. Any suggestions for either a) dealing with Seagate or b) "burning in" the drive so I could feel comfortable with it?

 

[oynaz]

If it crashes the Seagate diagnosytics, it is probably flawed in some way. RMA it. I can not imagine Seagate making any fuss over a drive which crashes their own diagnostics program.

 

[AtlantaBob]

I know that I'm being unreasonable, but I don't really like the idea of getting a refurbished drive.

Windows chkdsk /f /r just returned no errors. I really feel like going with oynaz's advice, I'd just sort of like to hear another concurring opinion.

The $80 for a new drive shouldn't be that much of an issue, but, I'm a starving grad student and all... Thanks again.

 

[AtlantaBob]

Sorry... but bump?

 

[Rubycon]

Try taking it out of the enclosure. I'm not familiar with that brand but it could be amplifying the noise of an otherwise healthy drive making is sound bad.

 

[Auric]

Seek noise is "normal" for Seagate as they fail to offer AAM. It may indeed be more noticeable in certain mounting situations.

Remove it from the enclosure and connect it directly to run the diagnostics as the enclosure itself may be the cause of the hang. Then you know for sure whether it needs to be replaced or not. If so, then sell the refurb they replace it with and buy a quiet drive. If not, well... you may want to do that anyway.