Man,
I have the same problem. I got the 20.5gb, put 3 partitions on it, and then all I heard was constant click, click, click, beep! noises, which are read/write errors. I sent it to the vendor where I got it, some mexican dude said "oh, 3 partitions cause trouble." and sent it back to me. I put 2 partitions on it and it's okay but it is loud, louder than my 4300 WD drive. But, Sandra 2001 benchmarks for the 1st partition are 16000 and 19000 for the 2nd partition and the Drive Test shows no errors. I applied the patch, but it's still loud. I even emailed IBM about it, and they said it was probably mounted wrong, yeah okay. Plus, they only refund bad hard drives with refurbished ones, too. It's all at their web site.
Here is the tech e-mail:
Hello. There are a few reasons for this. Improper mounting is the most
common. It can cause vibration noise or repeatable run out. It causes
echoing noises in the case and read/write errors which is what the clicking
comes from. It will lead to data loss if not corrected. Try remounting
the drive, or different scrws.
Also, some systems do not secure the drive well and vibration noise and
repeatable run out can occur even if the driv is properly mounted.
There is also the chance of a write/splice or shutdown problem. This is
where the cache onth drive is not being flushed on a shutdown, resulting in
a wrote splice,which is half-written data caused by the writing process
being abruptly stopped. This will cause clicks or beeps, which are retries
on the splices areas, inability to boot and bad sectors appearing in
Scandisk.
The culprit can be Windows 98/ME, the Promise 100 card, or both. Promise
has an updated driver for their issue.
Microsoft has a patch if the issue is theirs.
Hope this helps.
