I recently bought a brand-new Maxtor 500gB SATA HDD (model no:7H500F0) as I was running out of space on my old Maxtor 250 gB PATA HDD. The 250 gB drive is almost 2 years old and works just fine and wasn't particularly noisy in spite of being in daily use for an average of 12 hours per day every day for its' entire life. However I was running out of space on it so it was time to get a larger HDD.
So I went and bought a larger HD. The first I tried was a Seagate 500gB that was horribly noisy. Although sold as 'brand new' it turned out to be a factory refurb with only 6 months warranty left. The vendor replaced it with a brand-new OEM Maxtor 500 gB drive and this isn't much better. It is definitely alot noiser than my 2-year old 250gB drive or the 4-year old 160gB drive in my server.
It goes crunch-crunch-crunch all the time and sounds as if there's an imp inside the HDD forever chiselling away at it.. I've defragged it like crazy using both Speed Disk and Diskeeper to no avail. Even opening something as simple as notepad sounds as if it's being scratched to death. Never mind when I do actual work recording music with Cubase or running Second Life (a real computer punisher if ever there was one!).
Is this amount of continuous crunching noise normal for SATA drives? Should I take this disk back to the vendor? If so it will be the second drive I've returned and I'm getting fed up with continuously having to ghost and restore my system and work. For all I know the vendor might be scamming me and stealing my work. I looked at the Maxtor (ok, Seagate) website to check the warranty status and it seems to be unsupported.
I feel as if something's not quite right about this HDD even though it passes all the diagnostic tests I've thrown at it. Any suggestions?
So I went and bought a larger HD. The first I tried was a Seagate 500gB that was horribly noisy. Although sold as 'brand new' it turned out to be a factory refurb with only 6 months warranty left. The vendor replaced it with a brand-new OEM Maxtor 500 gB drive and this isn't much better. It is definitely alot noiser than my 2-year old 250gB drive or the 4-year old 160gB drive in my server.
It goes crunch-crunch-crunch all the time and sounds as if there's an imp inside the HDD forever chiselling away at it.. I've defragged it like crazy using both Speed Disk and Diskeeper to no avail. Even opening something as simple as notepad sounds as if it's being scratched to death. Never mind when I do actual work recording music with Cubase or running Second Life (a real computer punisher if ever there was one!).
Is this amount of continuous crunching noise normal for SATA drives? Should I take this disk back to the vendor? If so it will be the second drive I've returned and I'm getting fed up with continuously having to ghost and restore my system and work. For all I know the vendor might be scamming me and stealing my work. I looked at the Maxtor (ok, Seagate) website to check the warranty status and it seems to be unsupported.
I feel as if something's not quite right about this HDD even though it passes all the diagnostic tests I've thrown at it. Any suggestions?