HELP on what to do re. hard drive tapping sound.

[butski]

I recently purchased a Seagate 200 GB Barracuda ATA Hard Drive.

I put it into a Mad Dog external enclosure...combo usb 2.0 and firewire.

The hard drive works perfectly using either usb or firewire. I chose to use firewire.

I have one partition NTFS and the 200 gb is recognized as a 186.31 gb drive. Running windows xp2

Here is my dilema. From the first time i started up the hard drive i hear a faint clicking or tapping noise[like the sound of a train going over train tracks]. it lasts for 60 seconds, stops for 6 minutes and comes on again. always 60 seconds on and 6 minutes off. This happens when the external HD is basically idle.

I called seagate tech support, and one guy said this is seagates "smart technology" doing an off line scan. He said this was normal and the external aluminum enclosure actually magnifies the sound. Basically he said everything is o. k.

One day latter, I called again, spoke with another tech person described the same condition, and he said, " doesn't sound good, do you want to exchange it?"

I am not one to send back things for no real reason. As I said, the Drive works fine except for the on and off tapping noise.

Any suggestions on what to do? BTW: the seagate drive comes with a 5 year warranty.

I did find it humerous that the same question got two entirely different answers.

thanks for your help,

burt

 

[sailer]

If you have the name of the second guy, who told you that you can return it, call back and get RMA instructions. Sure, maybe the first guy is right, but maybe the drive is bad. Why take a chance? Be sure to back up anything you might have on the drive, of course, then RMA the thing.

I once had a drive that was doing the clicking thing and I ignored it, thinking it was just doing line scans or something. It later quit, just after the one year warrenty ended. I then learned the hard way about why backups should be done. Good luck.