PC hardware: Three brand-new hard drives - Loud Clicking Noises
Maxtor Drives
by julez - 2/26/05 5:35 AM In reply to: Three brand-new hard drives - Loud Clicking Noises by HarvI too have had one Hard Disk Drive from Maxtor which has gone faulty. It only seems to be on very recent production models, however I have found Maxtor to be one of the better customer focused companies and I am sure they will replace the drive for you.
REGARDS TO MAXTOR!
by REACHMEBRIDG - 2/26/05 8:02 PM In reply to: Three brand-new hard drives - Loud Clicking Noises by HarvHI, A SIMPLE ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION IS YES, GO WITH WESTERN DIGITAL OR IOMEGA. I HAD THE SAME PROBLEMS WITH 120G MAXTOR.AFTER ONLY A FEW WEEKS I TOOK IT BACK. THE SEEK TIMES ARE SLOWER ALSO COMPARED TO OTHERS. I BOUGHT MINE FROM FRY'S ELECTRONICS. I ONLY SPENT 12 DOLLARS MORE ON MY W.D. 160G. THE NOISES ARE VERY FAINT NOW. GET THE IT SOON BEFORE ITS TOO LATE.GOOD LUCK
THE C.
Western Digital..no better...
by Exotic_BMale - 2/26/05 11:59 PM In reply to: Three brand-new hard drives - Loud Clicking Noises by HarvI purchased (2) 200g WD Caviars Hd's (8mb Buffer) and exactly the same thing happened w/ those as you explained. (Loud clickling then <in my case, stalling during operation). *By the Way, those also were purchased from a certain "Egg"centic Distributor.
They both were replaced by WD and the two replacements were worst?!! (refurbished of course? 
I am now on my 3rd set (and 3rd time starting from scratch <no backups my fault, I know>.
The last call to C/S the TSR tried to tell me that it was normal as well? I asked to speak to an "Upper Level Tech" (which he did "begrudgidly") and he explained that drives that size ran hot and that one exhaust fan was not enough? (Nowhere in WD's literature mind you). He was nice enough to upgrade to two 200g's to 250's.
Now with 2 fans blowing across the drives and 1 for heat disbursment..Finally..a month w/ o no Crashes..no Clattering..
EBM
P.S. Sent it backkkkkkkkkkk..HD clatter (fresh out of the box) is NEVER a Good Sign.
Alternative Drives
by davmax - 2/28/05 2:12 AM In reply to: Three brand-new hard drives - Loud Clicking Noises by HarvI have long supported the use of Western Digital hard drives even when Quantum drives were the most popular.
WD do have problems, I have replaced many , one the other day that had a mechanism failure after three years.
I have had a long run out of my IBM Deskstar four years now and still going. More recently I have purchased a Hitachi 80Gb that is quiet and fast.
A major problem with IBM Deskstar drives about four years ago was due to internal condensation. This has been fixed.
Hitachi Deskstar drives are good.
A local dealer stands by Samsung drives with low return rates. Most local dealers promote WD drives.
I've had the exact same problem. 3 noisy drives in a row.
by amcg - 5/18/05 4:07 AM In reply to: Three brand-new hard drives - Loud Clicking Noises by HarvI've installed three Maxtor 160 Gb drives (one original and two replacements sent by the company) and all have suffered from the same noisy clicking sound when asked to perform a task.
The one good thing that I can say about the company is that their customer care team are very good about responding to queries and sending replacements. However, when the replacements are just as bad as the originals it kind of takes the edge off it.
Personally I'm not getting a Maxtor drive again.
160 GB Problem
by MKorkowski - 5/24/05 8:49 AM In reply to: I've had the exact same problem. 3 noisy drives in a row. by amcgI have had Maxtor drives FOREVER. The last drive before this 160GB unit was a 40GB. I was surprised that the NEW drive was way more noisy than the OLD one. What happens is at times when the drive is doing an access I hear like a ''clunking'' sound. At that time I get a ''pause''. A couple of times it has done this-mostly when loading Windows Xp and it has paused for ''minutes''. After looking into it I saw that the IDE controller had defaulted to PIO mode instead of the proper DMA MODE 6-which is correct for an ultra dma 133 unit. I have read posts everywhere to try to see what is going on and I am convinced it is some sort of MAXTOR RECENT manufacturing problem. What makes me angry is that the fact is most people these days have HUGE GROUPS OF FILES, and just changing out drive is way to time consuming. W all know with windows xp it is worse becasue of the fact you must have the ''default'' IDE controller drivers installed prior to swap or risk the blue screen of death. In Maximun PC magazine there has been recent informamtion on SEAGATE PROBLEMS AS WELL. My fear, and your case confirms it, is to get another drive and then go through it all over again!
MAXTOR 80GB EXT HARD DRIVE
by flowerpower - 10/11/05 1:30 AM In reply to: I've had the exact same problem. 3 noisy drives in a row. by amcgA couple of weeks ago I bought a MAXTOR 80GB ext hard drive.Within days of setting it up, the light went out. I took it back to the shop and they gave me a replacement immediately, no questions asked. On 5th Oct I set up the 2nd Maxtor 80GB, and by the night of the 8th Oct I noticed that the light had gone out on it too.I returned it to the store on 10th Oct and we tried to figure out what it was that I was doing wrong. Also, we found out that it was the power cord that had malfunctioned, and not the actual hard drive unit. The only thing we could think of that maybe I should NOT HAVE DONE was to leave the unit plugged into the power 24/7. It never occurred to me to only turn it on when I wanted to use it. I assumed it would be ok to leave it plugged into the power all the time. There were NO such instructions cautioning me on what I should or should not do.
I would like to hear from anyone else who has had the same problems or if they think that it is ok or NOT ok to leave an external hard drive plugged into the power all of the time.
Maxtor One Touch II External 200GB HDD
by owlsquest - 12/11/05 10:25 AM In reply to: MAXTOR 80GB EXT HARD DRIVE by flowerpowerOn 15 October 2005, I purchased a Maxtor One Touch II external 200GB HDD. This purchase was based on previous experience with a Maxtor 40GB External HDD and a Maxtor 80GB HDD, both of which were still functioning perfectly after 4 and 2 years, respectively.
When I hooked up the 200GB drive, it immediately “took over” the drive letter for the 80GB drive and at the same time the 40GB drive disappeared altogether. I tried to reorganize the drive letter to no avail. I assumed a conflict , switched the 80GB over to my other notebook where it was recognized immediately though it was now very sluggish. Powered down everything for night, assuming it had been a glitch. Next morning, more errors showed up. Drives on all three Maxtors were not being recognized and message stated problem was due to an I/O device error. Separately hooking up each drive to either notebook found the same message.
Spoke to my workplace Info Tech and he said this was recent problem that had been found with Maxtor One Touch. He pulled all the drives out of their casings and was able to get a desktop PC to recognize them with appropriate drive letter but still couldn’t open them. Found on Maxtor Knowledge Base a description of problem with outside links for help. All 3 Maxtors were FAT 32 format. Seems odd that the Maxtor KB states that one of the "most common reasons is using FAT32 as the file system in a Windows 2000 or XP system", as I have been running XP for over 2 years with no problems on the 40 or 80GB HDD.
My Info Tech checked out external links and found GetDataBack (no relation to company or financial incentive) the best to salvage my drives. The program can be run without purchase so you can check whether the drive is salvagable. Program cost $120 US as I wanted to cover FAT32 and NTFS formats. We were able to save almost everything (7 years of thesis work, photos, financial date). Word of caution on GetDataBack; make sure you don’t ask to recover files that you had previously deleted on the drive. The 36GB database spiraled to over 400GB before we realized what the problem was. Also a separate HDD is required to feed all the recovered data to. I used a drive at work that was unhooked from the network.
For now, I have a Western Digital 200 GB external where everything is housed. Maxtor 200GB has been returned to vendor and I will never buy another Maxtor again.
Same grief with Maxtor One Touch II 250 GB
by szeoli - 5/8/06 7:41 PM In reply to: Maxtor One Touch II External 200GB HDD by owlsquestJust wanted to confirm same difficulty with the 250GB. Thanks to the post I am responding to, I will try to find the fix on the Maxtor Site, if any exists for the the 250 One Touch II. sz
hard-drive
by super_glue - 1/14/06 11:06 AM In reply to: Three brand-new hard drives - Loud Clicking Noises by Harvi am having the same problum with one of my hard-drives. although i have not contacted any of the manufacturers since it is an old system. the hard-drives are maxtor as well. a good brand. but the system is older as i said so i have no need to complain. or get new ones. i'll just use the computer till it dies i suppose. the noise started just recently while running norton antivirus. i don't think it is a normal sound for the drives to do that. i would switch brands and give it a try. after all you wouldn't want to trust that the noise is normal then lose the drive and all of its info. i would go with western digital. i have another computer with two 10 gig hard-drives. they work great. i run that system 24/7 never turn it off.
hope this helps
Bad HDD noises, Recovery CDs, Data Recovery, MBR , SMART
by tx1138 - 2/22/06 12:25 AM In reply to: Three brand-new hard drives - Loud Clicking Noises by HarvThe geiger-counter seek noise that I have heard some HDDs make [one was a Maxtor and it did fail see details below], I have had work PCs with HDDs that made the same noise and those did not fail, [make unknown].
My PC supplier went down the pan [taking my PC's paid-for extended warranty and support with it].
My very noisy home PC [fans] started making intermittent clicking noises for about a month, I knew that this might be the signs of an impending HDD failure, but I [stupidly] thought that it might also have been a fan. However, because of the intermittent nature of the sounds and the noise of the fans, I could not be certain where the sounds were coming from. So I ran a backup, but with CDs it's such a pain, [no DVD writer at that time]. So I ran HDD diagnostics, looked at the HDD SMART monitoring software, all assured me that no TEC was predicted for at least several years, well you've guessed, I shouldn't have believed these [I still thought it could be a fan - DOH!] and the HDD let me down!
Do not rely on HDD monitoring software! These utilities may predict a failure, but failure to identify any problems does not indicate that no problems are present.
The problem was that the MBR of the Maxtor DiamondMax 16 60 GB HDD in my two-year-old PC became corrupted and the PC would not boot, [I think the message was 'Boot Disk Fail']. Using the free Bart PE based bootable UBCD4Win rescue CD, [www.ubcd4win.com], [A43 explorer] I was able to determine that the data was OK. However, because I had not sufficient confidence in my diagnosis and the consequences of getting it wrong seemed so bad [loss of data], so I held off MBR repair until a new HDD was installed. Then I transferred data and settings to the new HDD using UBCD4Win [A43]. The HDD was later diagnosed as close to death [The actual description was the 'drive is failing'] with Maxtor PowerMax utilities from the free DOS-based [yes I know it's really linux] UltimateBootCD, [www.ultimatebootcd.com]. The bearings are failing [my diagnosis based on the sounds that it made].
I now know that you can listen to your HDD using a screwdriver or similar object pressed between your ear and the case of the HDD, but you will need to extract the HDD from its bay [PC switched-off while you do this]. Used in this manner it allows you to listen to the HDD, [it screens out the airborne noise while conducting the sound to your skull, much like a mechanic working on a car engine or a physician's stethoscope]. The sound from the bearings isn't loud like the '.wav' file and was completely inaudible above the fan noise, but might have been heard in a quiet PC.
Download the sounds your HDD should never make from: -
'http://www.hitachigst.com/hddt/knowtree.nsf/cffe836ed7c12018862565b000530c74/4b1a62a50f405d0d86256756006e340c?OpenDocument'
- exclude the quotes
This has led me to believe that there was a dual failure mechanism [the bearings could only be heard above the fan noise using the 'screwdriver' method], but the clicking sound was clearly audible, but since it only occurred every now and then, unlike the relevant '.wav' file, I was unable to be certain of its origin. Normal HDD bearings will be inaudible in an operating PC. If your HDD makes sounds that even remotely resemble these examples [mine did], you are already neck deep in the smelly brown stuff, and the level is rising rapidly!
Hope this helps
PC Victim
Western Digital Drive
by stephen7144 - 2/22/06 6:29 AM In reply to: Bad HDD noises, Recovery CDs, Data Recovery, MBR , SMART by tx1138I am wondering what level of help I could reasonably expect with a drive problem. This WD 250 GB usb drive had worked fine when last used about 8 months ago. It has been carefully stored and now will not be recognized in Windows explorer. The computer "beeps" when the drive is connmected and the device manager recognizes that there is a usb device without drivers installed. The Windows new hardware wizard tries to install the drive when first plugged in and is unable to. I have two other WD usb drives that work without problem. The blue power indicator light does not come on with this problem drive. I have had little useful help so far from WD. The diagnistics they want me to run can not be run because that program casn not see this drive. How do I determine if there is something wrong with either the power connection to the drive or the usb connection to the drive? How far into checking these things out can I expect WD to go? The web page seems to say if the diagniostic tests fail then the drive is bad and they go no further in discussuing how to investigate the real cause of the problem. Has anyone had similar problems that were solved?
Potential Solutions
by tx1138 - 2/23/06 12:40 AM In reply to: Western Digital Drive by stephen7144Stephen,
a) Can you swap the PSU?
b) Can you swap the USB cable?
c) Can you remove the HDD from its enclosure?
Either of the first may resolve the problem.
If neither [individually or combined] help, search the forums.
Otherwise, unless WD can help, you seem to be stuck with a dead HDD, so read on: -
I'm guessing that this is most probably a standard HDD housed in an enclosure with power connector, LED and USB interface
If this is the case, open the outer enclosure and establish whether you can extract the HDD. If so you might be able to retrieve the data by simply installing it in your PC. Please check WD website for instructions, [based on model number on internal unit]!
Good luck!
Let us know
by tx1138 - 2/23/06 12:44 AM In reply to: Western Digital Drive by stephen7144Stephen,
Please let us know how you get on.
Drive sucks
by Metsesito - 4/19/06 11:00 AM In reply to: Three brand-new hard drives - Loud Clicking Noises by HarvBought a 250 GB Maxtor hard drive, within a year it started making loud clicking noises, does not allow me to connect or read data. Customer support can only replace the drive and cannot retreive the data. All my data is lost. You spend $70-100 only to loose data or to pay more for data retreival softwares. If you are lucky, you will get you data back.
Will not buy it again nor recommend to anyone.
| Forum legend: | |
 |
Locked thread |
 |
Moderator |
 |
CNET staff |
 |
Samsung staff |
 |
Norton Authorized Support team |
 |
AVG staff |
 |
Windows Outreach team |
 |
Dell staff |
 |
Intel staff |
