HDD Clicking Sound - is tis normal or the click of death?

[Xarkanadushak]

Hi guys, i bought this new seagate barracuda 2TB drive. It was thrown over a fence during delivery (about 180cm tall fence landing onto concrete ground), in a box with inflatable bubble wraps, no foam~ 

I am starting to get clicking sound like in the video and it is a constant click with occasional more clicks (like in the start of the video) when i launch an application in the case of the sample video - Adobe After Effects.

I have looked up a lot online and there's the click of death that i am very worried about. i still can access my files and hard disk sentinel shows no health degradation but its like having a ticking time bomb. ALSO it may just be a placebo effect on myself knowing it have been thrown on the ground sustaining impact and would fail anytime....

Anyone with the same hdd with similar sounds ? Is tis the click of death?

Thanks in advance for any advice...


 

 

[Kilrah]

Check status with crystaldiskinfo or such, but yeah it sounds bad and you'll likely want to return it.

[MedicTim78]

immediately back up the drive and then replace it, RMA it.

[Beerzerker]

2 hours ago, Kilrah said:

Check status with crystaldiskinfo or such, but yeah it sounds bad and you'll likely want to return it.

Agreed - Although it's normal to occasionally hear a bit of clicking with an older style HDD, it's when it's doing it constantly you'll want to be concerned.

Typically if it's the drive going bad you'll also notice the clicking you hear has a pattern that repeats over and over again, then it stops - Then starts up again in the same pattern.
These drives do not take well to getting banged around, if it's truly bad I'd have to say the arm got bent from the shock of it landing when it got tossed over the fence just enough it can't "Find" what it's looking for on the internal discs.

In that case it's doing what some call "Hunting" and not finding anything, so it just repeats the search pattern until you shut the machine off.

If the disc is working a check with crystal disk will tell you what you need to know.

If you decide to return it, make sure you mention what the delivery guy did to deliver it and see if you can use a different shipper, the same guy will probrably do the same thing all over again since your residence is probrably within their area to work.

[Xarkanadushak]

Thnks for the prompt reply guys. I tried checking status with crystaldiskinfo not sure what I am looking for here, it seems fine to me. I have attached the sc shot on the result. 

Also I have removed the drive from the pc I was tryin to build, now I am mounting it vertically on a hdd docking station the clicking sound went away....I no longer hear any clicking sound other than when I am trying to access files from the drive which I assume is normal. Does mounting it vertically or horizontally have any effect on this? But judging on my other seagate barracuda drives this seems to be the odd one out (the rest were all horizontally mounted with no clicking sound). This is also why in the first place I thought the drive survived the drop, I tested it immediately on the hdd dock and it seems/sounded fine at the time. 

Any input is appreciated thanks~ 

[da na]

That's not a traditional click of death sound. But it's not normal either - I'd return it, were I you. 

[Xarkanadushak]

Following up on the situation. I came across a couple more links and videos online suggesting that this is not the traditional click of death and instead it is wat seagate's barracuda (especially the 2TB model ST2000DM008) and some other drives from seagate inherently does .  Over the pass week, i have gotten my hands on 2 other seagate barracuda drive (that have been operating for more than 2 years), a 1TB model and another 2TB model and guess what both of them were making the same clicks and the behaviour whenever i launch adobe After effects were identical, ~repeated clicks. 

Many have observed similar noise even with their new RMA drives. All coming back to the same exact noise (links to various threads and forums and youtube video below). As for my initial video recording where the drive clicks repeatedly upon launching Adobe After Effects, I actually went to Adobe forum and found ppl with similar problems (using the same drive~) unfortunately those threads date back to 2017 and replies from over 2 years back i tried replying to the thread a few days before but did not get any response as to whether their drives failed eventually.

Similar problem posted on LTT forum in 2020
Other people on tomshardware regarding RMA and finding the same noise all over again. 
thread on reddit similar situation after RMA still the same noise
Regarding AE on adobe forum

youtube videos and links on the same noise

This however doesnt change the fact that my drive has been thrown over a fence hitting concrete ground and would likely fail in the future. 

But for others finding this thread in the future, it would appear that by default Seagate Barracuda 2TB (ST2000DM008) tends to make such a clicking noise and apparently it is not the first time this have incite fear on its user. Like many others upon looking up hard disk drive clicks or noise i get bombarded with a bunch of HDD failing click of death threads and vids. And on all the threads where this topic has been brought up, many have been suggested and therefor resorted to RMA the drive. 

So far i havent seen any threads or discussion directly attributing the specific clicks to an eventual failure, though this is not to say "its safe to assume tht clicks are normal on a Seagate Barracuda" as i do have quite a few terrible experience with Seagate storage devices not internal drives specifically but external hdd where i have to return the same Seagate Expansion Portable drive TWICE (over the course of 2 years) in a row where its partition just failed out of no where after a year of being used (no drops or heavy impact). A friend who bought the same model of expansion drive also met the same end, so if 1 is an exception 2 is coincidence then I would say 3 suggest a pattern. And just for the sake of ranting, the customer service over seagate (Asia region) was not of any help, both times RMA of the same external drive promises a data recovery service on the website but requiring you to contact / call their customer service line. Which i did, but the customer service operator obviously have no clue about their "data recovery" plans at all (end up losing all data).

Most recently trying to use SeaTools to diagnose my new drive was not a great experience as well the official site features outdated documentation on their old version of SeaTools which allows user to "ABORT" long test without harming the drive, BUT the downloaded version of SeaTools (latest version as of writing) doesnt allow user to abort the test. So upon launching a long test and realizing the operation takes forever I wasnt able to abort the test, trying to close the application just gives you a prompt "Operation(s) In Progress. Closing will leave drive in Intermittent State. Still want to continue?" And personally as a normal consumer i have no idea what "intermittent state" means. Does it damaged my drive? Will i lose my data? wat should i do if the test freeze up for a day or 2? Luckily the test started showing some progress after 30 mins or so and finishing in about 4 hours. 

I have seen Louis Rossmann talking about seagate old Rosewood drives being terrible, but i always assume that it is an old drive model and there's nothing to worry about these day. Then these few recent encounters with Seagate drives and services really did not help with the case. 

Sorry for the rant but to conclude, just avoid Seagate Barracuda on the whole if you cant stand the occasional clicks on the drive apparently its due to excessive parking during rest states (from what i have googled). As to why it does that specifically when After Effects is launched i have no idea.  

** i am probably just a normal consumer who gets really unlucky with seagate products doesnt mean it would happen to you~ bye and thanks to all the above replies