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Quick Seagate Hard Drive question (ST3120026A)

M

MSCoder610

Senior member
I had a quick question about my Seagate hard drive (barracuda 7200.7, 120GB, ST3120026A, I'm sure someone here has one like it).

If anyone has this drive, can you hear it seeking? I don't rememember ever hearing much sound out of it before, but now I can definitely hear it 'whurring'/seeking sometimes in Windows. I can hear it with my case closed, as well as with the side panel off.

Is this normal? I'm just curious if the drive might die soon, and maybe I should RMA it (or just buy new drives). A while ago I downloaded a SMART Monitor and it predicted the drive would die around December 2nd, 2004 (lol... this was about a month ago though), but then it changed its mind, and now the earliest predicted failure date is sometime in 2009. But still, I'm slightly worried.
I do run Seatools (the hard drive's diagnostic) periodically, and it's never found a problem either.

Any comments? Thanks.
 
I can hear my 80GB 7200.7 seek (in fact it's my computer's noisiest part), but that's only because I have a 15dBa adda PSU fan and an undervolted Panaflo L1A for CPU fan/exhaust! 🙂
 
yes the 7200.7 is a let down for people running a quiet rig (L1A's... ZALMAN.. especially!). no your drive is not defective heh.. thats actually how load the new barracuda is. actually i just dropped seagate an email about it, and i still have the text in the clipboard..

-ctrl-v-

Dear Seagate Support,

Because the seagate barracuda series was widely regarded as being one of the quietest drives availiable, I bought your 7200.7 series drive for my mostly passive cooled system.

However the new idle sound which emits a buzzing (diagnostics?) sound is very irritating. Compared to the barracuda IV's I would almost classify this as defect -- except it seems like it is the same for every drive.

Is this completely necessary? I have read many forums and there are others with this problem. I am unsure of the version of my firmware but I believe the drive was made in mid september, in case there has been revisions that could change this. Thank you!
 
Damn, I was considering a seagate too, that particular drive.

Anyway, does that SATAII drive work with regular SATA mobo? I heard its good, also, which drive gets the vote for quiteness? I really want a quite PC since my HD is the only thing that produces sounds.
 
I got a 200GB SATA recently and it seems noisier than the 120GB WD SATA that's about a year old, weird. They are supposed to be a little faster at least for seeks so I guess it makes some sense. These are in a Dell 8300 so not much competing noise, I'd never really noticed the WD, I can notice the Seagate. Still prefer the better realibility and warranty.


 
I just recently got a Seagate 7200.7 ST3120827AS (120GB w/ NCQ support) for my wife's new PC and it is a pretty noisy drive (it is in a Sonata so the noise is pretty noticable). I've heard that Seagate has turned off the acoustic management in their newer SATA drives. I'm not sure why, but I do remember reading something about one company threatening the others using it with patent infringement. The Seagate I have is a pretty fast drive, benching really well on SANDRA's file transfer benchmark, but you can really hear it when it spins up and starts seeking.
 
I too had the experience of the really noisy Seagate hard drive. I had bought a Dell (please don't flame me, I have built my computers for the last 12 years and I simply wanted a new computer without the effort----but of course, I was wrong). The drive made a rachety sound during seeking. I thought it was odd. After some playing around, I noted a setting in the bios. On my Dell, it was "Performance" with a sub selection called "Hard Drive Acoustics". There were 4 settings to choose from. "Bypass", "Quiet", "Recommended" and "Performance". After selecting each one and rebooting, I found "Recommended" to be nearly silent with most of the performance. It had been set to "Performance"

Each bios is different so you will have to look for a setting like this to try out. I havent run any bench marking but it appears to be as close to full speed as it can be.

For the comments on staying away from WD...hogwash. I have used nothing but WD and Maxtor in my building years and I have never had a WD drive fail. The Seagate is an 80gb 7200 rpm but I also have a WD 160gb 7200 rpm drive in the computer which performas flawlessly. My computer runs 24/7 and it is usually doing high drive usage tasks. Maxtor just plain sucks. This is my second Seagate drive and I'm disappointed with the noise but satisfied that I was able to get rid of it.
 
Well WD does not use Fluid Bearings but is VERY reliable and runs pretty fast.

As for Seagate only on the SATA drives have they turned off the quiet seeking. People have tried flashing the SATA with newer firmware and what not but they cannot turnt he quiet seek back on. The PATA drives will be a little louder than the IV's but still you should barely be able to hear them seek and you shouldn't even be able to hear them run unless your ear is right next to it. I have the SATA version and i can hear it seek and BARELY hear it running.

-Kevin
 
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