Hey i built my pc just over a year now and laltly my hdd has been making strange clicking noise and the pc will freeze up for about 5 secs and sometimes you are forced to reset and after reset it has corrupt files, luckerly i am able to replace these files pretty easyerly.

the hdd hasent made these noises for the last 2 weeks or so and hasent clicked for a while, what do you think was rong with it or is it damadged?

Is this common in seagate harddrives?

p.s is there any freeware hard drive moniter tools that could help me.

and i saw this on a tv show, it's where theres a picture of the hdd and it shows where the reading arm is, is there any such thing and if there is where can i get it from?

There's no way to repair the HDD yourself. From the sounds of it, it seems like your HDD is about to kick the bucket. Better backup all your docs and look for a new HDD.

OK thanks for your help, is there any such software that shows where you had drive arm is reading from the hard drive?

thanks for your help but it isent all that easy to backup 100gigs of files lol anyway.

hdd is about to retire ... if your BIOS supports it, enable SMART detection ...

Buy another hard drive pronto and Ghost it before it's too late.

Hey thanks for all your help.

What brand of hard drive do you recomend that is fairly cheap and at least 100 gig.

thx again.

Western Digital 250GB are at a very good price right now.

Ok thanks you alot for your time i will try to buy one asap.

MHDD is a good diagnostic program. Supposedly can repair bad sectors too...

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

Your HD isn't under warranty? Both of my Seagate's have a 5 year one.
I'd get another Seagate. But that's just me.

Same here. The 320GB'ers (7200.10 series SATAII) are very well priced (~100 USD), are fast, nice 16MB buffer, pretty quiet, 5 year warranty and all.

No the warranty peried was very stupid they only gave me a 1 year warranty and it has run out just a few months ago quit stupid i think.

thanks for the prog i hope it helps.

For future reference, don't get a HDD unless it has more than 1 year warranty. Just get a Seagate for an easy 5 year one.
If your drive is still clicking, then I wish you luck running anything from it for much longer.

Indeed. Besides, I wouldn't waste any time with drive "repair" apps (some might be able to remap a couple bad sectors, but nothing will fix the clicking). This drive's about to die completely.

And IMO, data on just about any drive is worth a lot more than the drive itself. From family photos that can't be replaced, to trip photos, documents of all types that took countless hours to write/make, etc. That's surely worth more than whatever a new HD costs. At the very first sign of failure, I unplug a drive, get a replacement, copy stuff over, and dispose of the old one. Chances are the old drive could have been used a little bit longer, but I see no point in risking data loss, especially given today's cheap storage prices (like 30 cents/GB).

Yes i have backed all my photos and music and anything eles inportent.

I have also found a nice 200 gig hdd for cheap from a friend (it's new of cores) umm so yeah i'll let every one know how things go with it.

The hdd hasent clicked or crashed for a good month now but i know it's on the way out, it has readings like a 56 raw error rate, it gets very hot on simple processing, and well that just says something!

One other little trick that I've heard a couple times is, put the HDD in an airtight bag and place it in the freezer for a while. An hour or so. This will actually give you time to salvage some, if not all, the documents on the HDD when you plug it back into your system.

SilentPCReview - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 series

Sadly, they're not the quietest in the bunch. Sure - for consumers it's the best warranty, but in my experience, if a drive outlasts a 3 year warranty, it'll probably outlast a 5 year as well.

Oh - and another word of warning - never buy Maxtor. I can post a picture if anyone wants of 3 Maxtor hard drives that I have on my shelf that are all dead. All of these are not terribly old, but of the 4 maxtors that I've seen lately (in the past year or so), three have died. Not to mention - the one that's still running is a pretty old 10GB 5400RPM drive. It passes all diagnostics I've run on it, and SMART is reporting excellent results.

Yeah. They're about average. Not noisy, not whisper quiet either. That's kind of what I meant (noise isn't a problem)


I'd say the same, but about Western Digital drives. I've seen countless dozens of bad ones (however we destroy them). Yet, i've had very good luck with maxtors (mind you I mainly buy seagate these fays). Don't want to sound rude, but that's anecdotal evidence... I'll buy any maxtor over a WD anyday.

Well, I may be in trouble then. I have a Maxtor and a WD.

But I'm saving up some money to build a new system so when I have enough, I may either get a seagate, or maybe the WD with the window.

No offence intended, but I actually choked on what I had in my mouth when I read that.

It's ironic how different people's experiences can be. I figured we could have some debate about hard drives, so I created a poll here so that we could discuss it some more.


If you're going to get a 150GB raptor, get the one WITHOUT the window. The one with a window is a consumer level drive while the one without a window is an enterprise level drive. They both cost the same price (or very close to each other) but the enterprise level drive will last you much longer.

I choked too. I'm trying to dislodge the chip from my throat as I type this.
But seriously, Maxtors do suck. I used to have a Maxtor External HDD that hooked up via FireWire. After months of fighting with the **** thing to stop vanishing, I took it out of its casement and hooked it up via IDE. A few months later it died. I got all the data off of it. I took some screws out of it, opened it up a bit, filled it up with water and let it rest overnight. The next morning I wrapped it in a plastic bag and beat it around the apartment for 5 minutes or so. My fiancee wouldn't let me put it in the microwave (likely wouldn't have been a good idea anyway), but I had fun annihilating my old Maxtor drive.

Yes i have had bad luck with maxtor and wd i have at least 10 wd's sitting in my cubbord ( all arround 40 gig) and there all screwed!

so i just stay right a way from them i have on ever had one maxtor hd and it crashed in the first month so i backed up and replaced imeaditly!