Hard drive dying? Primary spins down or clunks alot.

Alright I have a ST9500420ASG for my primary it has a drop sensor but I know what the spindown click sounds like on it so I know its not that and that the spin down may not be normal at all. The spindown sometimes comes with a slight freeze that reminds me of an nvidia sata chipset i had issues with on a previous laptop.

This is pretty new as far as problems go, I reimaged the machine but also did get everything updated to where it was, I dont suspect software problems but there could still be something in a later windows update?

Anyways it sometimes once or even two or three at a time makes a hard drive like clunk. It seems like its spinning down and up as well not sure. For some reason its the one drive i can never get smart data on.

Is it dying? DOnt worry im backing up the last 100gb right now.

 

Try using QuietHDD.

 

I will give it a shot, if its not dying it might work. But im getting more of a clunk then the usual click.

and I KNOW power management would never normally cycle a disk 3 times in a second.

 

Hmm it does seem that this is an issue with this hard drive

 

try updating to the newest firmware from seagate

 

Clutch, I'm aware you're referring to the Momentus 7200.4, but my Momentus XT exhibited this exact symptom... constant audible spindown with a clucking noise. If I recall, it did this throughout August-September in 2010. I didn't think enough of it until the drive catastrophically died in October. I pulled its logic board and the pathways were brownish yellow. Possibly signs of overheating -- although the palmrest didn't feel any warmer than the previous drives that occupied that space.
Learn from my mistake and just consider it on its last legs. Clone the drive data to another and send the clucker to Seagate. If it's still under warranty, their only obligation is to replace it with a refurbished one -- not that I'd feel all that secure storing things in a refurb'd device.
In my case, I was too preoccupied to pay closer attention and lost new data spanning 6 months. My Momentus XT's predecessor was the Momentus 7200.4 and THAT contained cloned data from May, so it was like being forced to go back in time. Since restoring the 7200.4 into the notebook, it's been running OK, but now I know enough to listen for the noises.

 

what does smart say?

use hd tune

 

Smart has never said anything with this drive all my others work fine other than this one. Anyways I grabbed the special dell firmware update for this model seagate and flashed it to the drive. So far so good.

 

You need to pose this query to a Seagate specific website. At least there you can get additional feedback from a bigger group. It could just be a noisy drive, but I'd return anything that made that noise.

 

There are atleast a hundred complaints on the seagate site related to this drive along with MUCH more on apple and dell official and unofficial sites. Seagate never released a firmware update but dell did and I used dells.


Return? Heh its a 500 gb drive that things 1.5 years old now, id have 2 1TB's in there if it was within return or warranty range.

Problems solved last i checked.

 

where is the dell firmware update?

I have a 5400.6 st9500325as

 

I believe the update is only for 7200.4 models with a G on the end for the drop sensor.

It will skip drives not on the list, I had two other seagates attached tot he sata at the time. All you have todo is download the app install and grab the iso it spits out burn it to cd and run it, everything is automatic, IT WILL MAKE NOISE DURING THE RUN.

Link - Dell - Support