7200.7 Martians?

[davidedney123 0]

Hi

I've just bought a new 200GB SATA 7200.7. WHen the drive has been idle for maybe 1 minute, it starts making quite quiet, but constant seeks. Not thrashing seeks, just click-click-click.

If I then access the drive so it seeks normally, it shuts up for a minute and then starts again.

I have a pair of X15-36LPs that have the normal martian ticking, but this is far more annoying as it is almost constant when the drive is not being accessed, even if it is rather quiet. Has anyone else seen this behaviour?

Cheers,

Dave

[Occupant 2 0]

I would download the seatools program and test the drive. also back up your data as quickly as you can.

To me, this doesnt sound like normal behavour...

[tracker 0]

I have the 160GB and 200GB PATA versions of 7200.7s on a server and my personal system, and these don't exhibit that constant clicking pattern when idle, (although I haven't tried to scope them) that's mighty suspicious. In addition to the recommended seatools, keep checking with a SMART-aware diagnostic like AIDA32

[davidedney123 0]

Getting the SeaTools now. Will let you know how it goes. Cheers,

Dave

[jpanning 0]

I just purchased two of the 200GB 7200.7 models within the last month and am experiencing the exact same problem with both drives. One of them does it louder than the other one, but they both do it CONSTANTLY when they're not being accessed. Mine start after about 10-15 seconds of inactivity. It drives me up the wall because though it's relatively quiet, is distinctly audible over my computer's fans. Considering the entire reason I purchased these drives is because they're supposed to be quiet, I'm a bit peeved.

I emailed Seagate tech support about the problem this evening, and am waiting to hear back from them to see what they say. Every drive diagnostic utility I can throw at these drives (somewhat limited, because I'm running MacOS X) seems to think there's nothing wrong with them.

I'd appreciate any information that any of you may have on this issue, and will post the reply I get from Seagate Tech Support as well.

Jason

[davidedney123 0]

Hi

I'll be very interested to see what Seagate say to you. I also bought the 7200.7 for it's quiet operation, so am a bit disappointed. A SeaTools check of my drive reveals no problems, and performance is right where it should be.

Cheers,

Dave

[davidedney123 0]

btw - that sounds identical to the behaviour my drives are exhibiting. It's not that loud at all, but it still manages to be more annoying that the noise a drive makes when it is thrashing it's guts out in a Compaq machine with 128MB RAM and WinXP :-D

Dave

[LED ZEPPELIN 0]

I have a 160GB 7200.7, no weird sounds. I have another 80GB Maxtor in there that is silent as well. I have 8 fans so I may just not hear it

[jpanning 0]

Here's the reply I got from Seagate this morning:

Hello:

Thank you for your inquiry.

The latest generation of our high-capacity drives have been programmed to perform regular OFF-LINE SCANS to test the drive’s reliability and detect any possible malfunctions. The OFF-LINE Scanning takes place when the drive is idle. This feature cannot be disabled, but does not affect the performance of the disc drive.

This feature helps to maintain the reliability of the drive by moving the heads within the "high-flight zone" in a pre-programmed pattern. The "high flight zone" is toward the outside of the platters where the most air flows under the heads during times of inactivity.

If you feel that there is a problem with the drive, you can run our SeaTools Desktop Edition http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/ to check the physical integrity of the drive.  Remember that Seatools Desktop will not function in a Mac environment.  You can also use Disk First Aid to check the drive in Mac.

If you are disturbed by the amount of noise produced, you can return the drive for an exchange, by contacting either your original place of purchase or our warranty department  http://www.seagate.com/contact/warranty/ for further assistance.

Regards,

Seagate Technical Support

I can't say I'm exactly pleased with this... though I guess if it's "normal" it means I don't have faulty drives. Sounds to me like it'd cause a lot more wear and tear on the drive, though... so I'm not really sure how that improves the reliability.

Does anyone know of any high-capacity quiet drives that don't exhibit this annoying behavior? I may end up dumping these for something else before they drive me insane.

[rugger 0]

I can't say I'm exactly pleased with this... though I guess if it's "normal" it means I don't have faulty drives. Sounds to me like it'd cause a lot more wear and tear on the drive, though... so I'm not really sure how that improves the reliability.

Does anyone know of any high-capacity quiet drives that don't exhibit this annoying behavior? I may end up dumping these for something else before they drive me insane.

There is virtually no wear associated with off-line scanning. The voice coil motor that moves the heads simply doesn't wear out because none of the moving parts touch each other. The media won't wear out with a normal read scan, only repeated writing to already weak sectors is likely to grow defects.

As for other drives that don't exibhit this behaviour, you can try the samsung drives, the western digital (fluid bearing versions) or the IBM drives, all of which are pretty quiet and don't exhibit the same level of idle activity.

[aagouti 0]

hi guys,

what about their eide drives?

do they have the same noise during idle?

Barracuda 7200.7 Plus

Model Number:ST3200822A

Capacity:200 GB

looking to replace drive in my replaytv.

thanks in advance!

[aagouti 0]

...continued from post above

more info about seagate eide drive.

http://seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/...081,597,00.html

Barracuda 7200.7 Plus

Model Number:ST3200822A

Capacity:200 GB

Speed:7200 rpm

Seek time:8.5 ms avg

Interface:Ultra ATA/100

Distinctions

Best combination of performance, acoustics and robustness

Best-in-class non-operating shock for excellent reliability

Idle acoustics of 2.5 bels- the industry's best

[Q.E.D. 0]

I havent noticed any noise during idle of my 200gb seagate drives. I have 5 of them in a hot swap bay, and with 5 if they were "thrashing" at idle i am sure I would notice. But even when putting my ear to them, I hear nothing, cept if I were to access the drive, some minor clicking of the drive accessing. No different from any other drive that I have.

[Ultra Nexus 0]

I also have a 200Gb Ide 7200.7 drive and it also makes that noise.... I was worried from the beginning but I figured was some kind of fail detect mecanism so I just live with it... not a big issue anyway as long as its a normal behaviour.

[Maxtor storage 0]

lol. You guys worrie way too much... It's a hard drive, when it's about to fail it makes very loud clicks. Not silent ones. Well at least I know what level of noises are correct.

[DragonFire 0]

lol. You guys worrie way too much... It's a hard drive, when it's about to fail it makes very loud clicks. Not silent ones. Well at least I know what level of noises are correct.

That is so wrong. I just had a 80GB ATA IV drive die while it was running idle. There was a write error to the drive and after a reboot the drive was dead...

About the noise. I got a Seagate 120gb external 3-4 months ago and noticed that same sound. At first it drove me nuts cause I couldnt figure out where it was coming from, once I did tho.....I ended up taking the drive out of thinking it was going bad but once I had it hooked up as a normal drive in my computer it stopped....

I thought it was some kind of selftest that only external drives did.......but I cant figure out why it stopped after installing it as a norma internal HD.

[Doug Harrison 0]

Here's the reply I got from Seagate this morning:

Hello:

Thank you for your inquiry.

The latest generation of our high-capacity drives have been programmed to perform regular OFF-LINE SCANS to test the drive’s reliability and detect any possible malfunctions. The OFF-LINE Scanning takes place when the drive is idle. This feature cannot be disabled, but does not affect the performance of the disc drive.

This feature helps to maintain the reliability of the drive by moving the heads within the "high-flight zone" in a pre-programmed pattern. The "high flight zone" is toward the outside of the platters where the most air flows under the heads during times of inactivity.

If you feel that there is a problem with the drive, you can run our SeaTools Desktop Edition http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/ to check the physical integrity of the drive.  Remember that Seatools Desktop will not function in a Mac environment.  You can also use Disk First Aid to check the drive in Mac.

If you are disturbed by the amount of noise produced, you can return the drive for an exchange, by contacting either your original place of purchase or our warranty department  http://www.seagate.com/contact/warranty/ for further assistance.

Regards,

Seagate Technical Support

My new drive seems to be doing this. At least, there are periods of activity during idle time that don't show up on Sysinternals File Monitor, that have caused me to wonder, "What's making that sound?" It was in fact the hard drive. I haven't yet determined how often this occurs; it doesn't seem terribly often, but I'm going to start paying more attention to it.

My new drive came from CompUSA. It's the ST3160023A, 160 GB 7200.7 PATA, firmware 3.01. Seagate says the drive was manufactured in Apr-04, but as I wrote in the thread "Seagate SMART values", I'm curious about the seemingly low firmware revision number. So I'd be interested to hear about the model and firmware of 7200.7 drives which do and don't seem to perform this off-line scan. While it isn't easy to tell when a Seagate drive was manufactured, it might also be interesting to hear when it was purchased. Note that it isn't a very loud noise. If you've never heard your drive seek when it's actually working, it probably won't be useful to learn you've never heard it make the off-line scan noise.

[qasdfdsaq 2]

As far as I'm aware, Hitachi drives exhibit similar behaviour, although people have described it as more of a "meow" sound. It is a quite whine that occurs every once in a while when idle, but quieter than the Seagate.

Also, IIRC, ONLY Hitachi and Seagate drive do this, Western Digital, Maxtor, Samsung, etc. don't have any reliability enhancing features of this type, but in general, I find their drives to be louder.

[sidewinder 0]

Darn it I just ordered a 200GB Seagate SATA drive for its suppossed quietness. It seems this idle noise defeats the purpose of the drive's quietness. I would like to hear from more people on this noise.

[davidedney123 0]

It's not "thrashing" or meowing, it's just a gentle click-click-click-click-click-click-click.....

The click is quieter than the normal seek noise, I believe.

Dave

[sidewinder 0]

It's not "thrashing" or meowing, it's just a gentle click-click-click-click-click-click-click.....

The click is quieter than the normal seek noise, I believe.

Dave

How far is the drive from you. Is this noise audible when the drive is inside the case?

[Doug Harrison 0]

It's not "thrashing" or meowing, it's just a gentle click-click-click-click-click-click-click.....

The click is quieter than the normal seek noise, I believe.

Dave

How far is the drive from you. Is this noise audible when the drive is inside the case?

I agree with what the first guy said. To answer your questions, 3-4 feet, and yes.

[davidedney123 0]

The machine is current about 4 feet, but will soon be moving onto the floor. It's audible when inside the case, and this is not a whisper silent PC.

It doesn't seem to be doing it so much now. Probably trying to make me think I imagined it.

Cheers,

Dave

[arga 0]

I am amazed that this subject is still a mistery for many of you guys.

This subject has been dealt with many times before in this forum.

Seagate drives make "Recallibration Noises" when they bacome idle.

It is a gentle grinding noise. When the drive is accessed, the noise stops.

If you have the OS installed in the drive, then you will never hear the noise,

because the disk is being accessed constantly by the operating system.

I have to say that Seagate e-mail reply was very good, explaining all the details about the high-flight zone. I didn't know about this. But it makes sense: when the head is positioned on the edge of the disk, air flows at greater speed, and the head flies higher, and thus, the possibility of a crash is lower.

If the noise is disturbing for you, return the drive, and buy a Samsung.

Absolutely silent when idle.

Samsung gives you 3 possibilities:

-V80 series, 5400 rpm, low dissipation, low noise

-P80 series, 7200 rpm, standard dissipation, low noise

-P80 , 8MB cache, 7200 rpm, standard dissipation, low noise.

The V80 is my favourite. I have 4 of them (160GB). They are quite fast. The rotation speed is 5400 rpm, but the access time is 8,9ms, just like the faster models.

[sidewinder 0]

Just wanted to let everyone know that I just installed my 7200.7 200gb sata drive and when i put my ear next to the drive(with case opened) I can hear the idle activity. With the case closed(antec sonata) and the box on the floor I don't hear a thing when the drive is idle. I do notice the seek noise but no idle noise(at least i don't hear it).