Seagate 8TB Strange noise

[Andrei Apetre]

Hello community, 

 

I come here for an advice from the Linus comunity, please help.

I just purchased a 8TB Seagate drive, and it make weird sounds when is IDLE. 

 

I uploaded a short movie on youtube to show you guys exactly what the sound is, it can be heard at sec 4 and at the end of the movie.

 

Please help.

 

[paprikman]

It's one the road to hell.

Make sure u can copy all files to new hdd and don't buy seagate any more.

[Andrei Apetre]

Thank you

[Andrei Apetre]

Normally i just buy WD, but i wanted a 8TB drive, and the only one was from Seagate. I though it`s ok for storage, but i was wrong.

[ChineseChef]

Just RMA the drive, likely just a bad one.  Every manufacturer has DOA or drives that die within first month or two of use.  Just send it back and get a new one. 

[NumLock21]

Drive is either faulty or it could just be the drive head parking which makes a chirping noise. Contact Seagate and see if there is a firmware update or RMA your drive.

[Andrei Apetre]

Thank you guys for your responses. As the drive is very new, no firmware update exists. I contacted Seagate, their response was to put the drive into a desktop, as my ICYBox could be faulty. But, as i have a lot of other WD drives, that do not make weird sounds, i guess it`s the Seagate that is not such a good drive.

[wpirobotbuilder]

Thank you guys for your responses. As the drive is very new, no firmware update exists. I contacted Seagate, their response was to put the drive into a desktop, as my ICYBox could be faulty. But, as i have a lot of other WD drives, that do not make weird sounds, i guess it`s the Seagate that is not such a good drive.

It's not that it's a Seagate drive, it's that you got a bad drive, period.

[Andrei Apetre]

This is the response i got from Seagate:

 

Thank you for contacting Seagate.

I understand the drive is making a strange noise which concerns you. I am sorry for any inconvenience you have encountered.

To some degree, drive noise can be considered normal. This can be true when the heads of the drive are "parked" which is possible when entering power saving modes or the drive shuts off. With that said, one should be concerned if the drive is making a grinding, scratching, or clicking that which is similar to metal on metal. Typically that noise can indicate a physical fault, which I did not observe was occurring from the video.

[ChineseChef]

This is the response i got from Seagate:

 

Thank you for contacting Seagate.

I understand the drive is making a strange noise which concerns you. I am sorry for any inconvenience you have encountered.

To some degree, drive noise can be considered normal. This can be true when the heads of the drive are "parked" which is possible when entering power saving modes or the drive shuts off. With that said, one should be concerned if the drive is making a grinding, scratching, or clicking that which is similar to metal on metal. Typically that noise can indicate a physical fault, which I did not observe was occurring from the video.

 

Sounds like you may just have a noisy drive.  Some are like that.  I would say hold on to this communication with Seagate, and use the drive as normal.

[Andrei Apetre]

I will keep it, at first not use it as bakup drive, to see how it works. Until now, all HDD softwares show it as perfec.

Maybe it will be a firmware update, to fix this issue, like they did for previous drives.

[ChineseChef]

I will keep it, at first not use it as bakup drive, to see how it works. Until now, all HDD softwares show it as perfec.

Maybe it will be a firmware update, to fix this issue, like they did for previous drives.

 

On a side note, I was looking at getting some 8TB drives to replace my 3's.  How does it perform?  About the same as any other drive?  Does it seem faster/slower? 

[Andrei Apetre]

It seems faster then my normal WD drives, maybe because of the bigger cache.

 

Maybe this review helps, i don`t know if i`m allowed to put it here

 

http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_archive_hdd_review_8tb

[user000]

I have the same drive and I'm keeping it in a caddy similar with yours.

It makes the same noises when turned on, and after a while when parking heads (idle). Also, when exiting from idle state (when you access it after a long time).

It seemed a bit strange to me at first but I suppose it's normal behavior.

It has been tested in every way, and it's been in use for about three months now, never encountered any problems.

I'd say you're just fine.

 

 

How does it perform?  About the same as any other drive?  Does it seem faster/slower? 

 

It is a bit slower, remember it was designed for archiving purposes, not high speed. However it is not that slow to cause inconveniences.

In a normal day to day usage, as a backup drive, speed is not that important, so you will notice little to no difference compared to other backup drives, like WD greens. Basically you're supposed to just dump data onto it and forget about it untill needed.

Otherwise, it runs pretty cool and quiet, just like WD greens, definitely much cooler than a HGST 4Tb which is faster but runs both hotter and louder.

[NumLock21]

Their 1TB had that chirping noise too and they bother to fix it.

http://www.postcount.net/forum/showthread.php?8923-Seagate-issues-firmware-to-fix-chirping-issues-with-some-hard-drives

[user000]

Their 1TB had that chirping noise too and they bother to fix it.

http://www.postcount.net/forum/showthread.php?8923-Seagate-issues-firmware-to-fix-chirping-issues-with-some-hard-drives

 

I see. However user stated that his drive was chirping continuously. Obviously a problem.

 

Just for the record, mine is making that sound only on three occasions: power on, entering idle, exiting idle.

 

When operating is pretty silent too. Both reading and writing.

[Andrei Apetre]

Yes, it is making a lot. Even when idle, not just when entering or exiting idle.

I saw there was a firmware for some other Seagate drives, but not for this one.

When they replied to me, telling me that the noise is fine, i told them to please make a firmware, as this is an annoying sound. I hope they do.

[Andrei Apetre]

PS. I want to say, that this HDD is really really noisy. I`m starting to see why WD is more expensive.

This is my last Seagate purchase.

[Dabombinable]

PS. I want to say, that this HDD is really really noisy. I`m starting to see why WD is more expensive.

This is my last Seagate purchase.

I'll put it this way, their 3TB version has an astronomical failure rate reminiscent of the cheap HDD from the early 90's, and even the expensive ones at the time were loud and had high failure rates by todays standards.

[YF2]

I have the same problem with my Seagate 8TB Archive (st8000as0002) purchased about 2 weeks ago.

 

Obversations:

-Seems to happen more in idle. Sometimes 4 times within 10 seconds, sometimes maybe not once in an hour.

-The DOS or legacy Seatools running from a bootable drive, crashed during diagnostics, making it unable to perform a full scan with that software.

-The Windows Seatools diagnostic shows no problems in all tests. Although the "long" test doesn't seem to perform a full scan, because it finishes in 20 minutes, which is way too short.

-The Western Digital diagnostic tool (WinDlg) does work better: it performs a full scan taking about 8 to 14 hours without errors. Strangely enough, I did hear some ticking noises during the full sequantial scan.

 

I'm running WIndows 8.1.

@Andrei Apetre, wat OS are you running?

 

It's probably difficult to RMA a drive that shows no problems in diagnostics.

 

I think the drive is trying to park its head. Although its unclear why this happens that much.

But I don't trust it for my data ......

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

I'll put it this way, their 3TB version has an astronomical failure rate reminiscent of the cheap HDD from the early 90's, and even the expensive ones at the time were loud and had high failure rates by todays standards.

 

 

Yup, and it's not like it was a small batch either.  When 1300+ of your 4000+ drives fail, that's not an anomaly anymore.

 

[Dabombinable]

 

Yup, and it's not like it was a small batch either.  When 1300+ of your 4000+ drives fail, that's not an anomaly anymore.

 

And as I've said before, not taking into account Blaze's servers-too many people are reporting problems with Segate HDD. Seagate should have kept every single design and quality aspect of the Samsung spinpoints. They look good, are quality HDD and perform well with little noise over rather long periods of time (shame about the non existent powered on hour count)

[YF2]

[...]

Obversations:

-Seems to happen more in idle. Sometimes 4 times within 10 seconds, sometimes maybe not once in an hour.

-The DOS or legacy Seatools running from a bootable drive, crashed during diagnostics, making it unable to perform a full scan with that software.

-The Windows Seatools diagnostic shows no problems in all tests. Although the "long" test doesn't seem to perform a full scan, because it finishes in 20 minutes, which is way too short.

-The Western Digital diagnostic tool (WinDlg) does work better: it performs a full scan taking about 8 to 14 hours without errors. Strangely enough, I did hear some ticking noises during the full sequantial scan.

[...]

New obversation:

-When the drive is detached (drive enabled, but drive letter removed) in Windows, then it does go to full idle without the large amount of unwanted head parks.

[ChineseChef]

New obversation:

-When the drive is detached (drive enabled, but drive letter removed) in Windows, then it does go to full idle without the large amount of unwanted head parks.

 

This makes it seem like Windows is not sure how to manage the drive.  Like a driver issue, though not like HDDs need drivers anymore.

 

I will say, as much as I love my 20+ 3TB Seagates I've had for years, I am rather hesitant to get the 8TB ones with the amount of oddities they seem to have.  They seem to work just fine, but they seem like they need some long term testing. 

[wpirobotbuilder]

 

Yup, and it's not like it was a small batch either.  When 1300+ of your 4000+ drives fail, that's not an anomaly anymore.

 

That study is seriously flawed. There aren't nearly enough WD drives to get a good idea of what the true failure rate is. Also, you didn't read the original study where they describe the conditions the drives were in -- those drives are consumer grade drives, and they were in enterprise enclosures that they weren't designed to run in.