Seagate Multiple Hard Disk Failures

[muhammad]

Guys,

i am runing in to some serious problems with my hdd , It all started when my old 120gb seagate sata hdd went dead , There used to be this noise which used to come from the hdd when loading windows or sometimes when starting a game etc.

as it had no warranty left i discarded the drive , it worked fine for about 10 months or so.

then i went and got a new seagate 120gb sata hdd , i came back installed the drive , loaded up windows and installed some games , Well after some time i noticed that the same type of sound which used to come from my old hdd was comeing from this new hdd.

i was confused , i just got this new hdd whats the problem , well so i returned it and got another 200gb sata seagate hdd and a 80gb sata hdd.

i have installed windows with sp2 on the 80gb sata and install games on the bigger drive.

well all went well for about 2 days , last night again i heard that same sound from the 80gb hdd .

what the hellllllllllll is happening here ..............

all these hdd cant be bad or can they ......either seagate is making ****y drives or there is something else wrong.

well i disconnected all the power cables to the drives , i dont know i could be wrong but i think that my psu is not giving enough power to the drives hence they make that noise.

i need help guys , should i give back both the drives and get a hdd from another company.

I was thinking of Samsung or Western Digital , samsung is offering 2 years warranty.

whats happening here , need help ,,

thanks

[Luciel]

u sure its the hdd thats making the noise?

[Neipas02]

Seagate does make crap drives.. I won't buy a seagate again.. all oem drives tend to be seagates because they're cheap.. and they're cheap for a reason.. I don't care about the 1 or 2 guys that have had good luck with seagates.. I know they're crap seeing as how i've gone through about 4 or 5 of em.

Your PSU may be underpowering them.. Is it like a clicking or a grinding?.. 3 drives in a row is a little extreme for them being factory rejects.. I'd actually thought about the PSU before you mentioned it.. Try and return them now since you've stressed em and then get yourself a new bigger PSU.. how big is the one you have now btw?.. Then spring for a new Smaller cheaper hard drive by someone other than seagate.. Westerd digital and maxtor are decent. But these are just suggestions.

[muhammad]

Well the sound is like the hard disk is trying to read something or write but it cant , Like the platters are trying to move but they dont.

it happens like a little grinding sound and windows freezes and after some times a blue screen shows up something like kernel-data error or something.

strange all the drives i changed could not have the same problem , i dont know but somehow i think it could be psu.

i am geting a little sick of this now its been 2 weeks and frustration is seting in.

i was thinking of geting a Samsung 200 or 250gb hdd sata what do u think.

lets suppose if it is a psu issue how wouldi be sure of it , should i dissconnect all the other drives and only power the sata hdd to check them.

i am sure my 400w psu can handle 2 sata hdd.

My system specs are as follows.

Intel P-4 3.0e H.T 800fsb
Intel 875pbzlk
2gb DDR-400 Kingston
80gb Eide
80gb Sata
200gb Sata
Sony Dvd Writer
Sony Dvd Rom
Sony Cd-Writer
Msi- 6800u 256mb
Audigy 2 Zs
Asus Tv Tuner
Creative 7.1 thx speakers


Well for some reason or the other i think all these items put a load on the psu , well if it does then the system should reboot all the time but it does not.

PLEASE HELP

[DABhand]

Use another SATA driver when installing windows, perhaps the one your using is actually too quick. Get an updated one from your motherboard's website or sata controller's manufacturer.

[DABhand]

Yeah 400W may not be enough for your System, with 4 IDE and 2 Sata, CPU, Sound Card, GFX card, TV card,etc

I would say 600W to be on the safe side, no use going for 500W just incase you get something else and you need more from your PSU.

[muhammad]

well guys here in Pakistan you dont get the luxury of geting a good psu specially the branded ones , mostly they all come from china or singapore etc.

well i was able to find this one .

CODEGEN 450W

+33v +5v +12v -5v -12v +5vsb
20a 22a 16a 0.5a 0.8a 2a

why do i get this feeling that this psu is not that powerfull for my rig mentioned above ....

i need help please dont know whats happening here , i have an intel 875pbzlk board , i never installed any sata drivers before windows picks it up itself , if there are any drivers for these harddisks then where do u find them.

also if there is a psu problem then why does not the problem happen all the time why just out of the blue suddenly.

Please help

[kosmiq]

Your PSU might be a problem if it is of bad quality, but HDD's dying sounds a little strange to me.
Any good PSU on 400w would easily be able to handle your system without any problems. 400w can take you very far and minding the fact that very few, even very new PC's with very new hardware, won't use all of the 400w avaible. What can be a problem is the maximum combined wattage on the +5v, +3.3v, -5v, -3.3v part of the PSU. But generally that won't be a problem either. Any 500w PSU of a good brand can handle 2x6800GT (SLI), 2gb RAM, AMD 64 X2 4000+, several HDD's and a few optical drives without problems.

About seagate I have only good experiences with them and I personally have 5 Seagate drives right now. 1 of them I have had for 5 years now (30gb IDE), 2 of them for 2 years (160gb SATA) and 1 for about a year (200gb IDE).
I also have 1 maxtor drive 200gb IDE. None of the HDD's has ever failed me or given me any problems whatsoever. Many of my friends also uses seagate drives in their PC's and have no problems.
Cheap Seagates? Seagate are more expensive than Maxtor or WD whenever you purchase a seagate 7200.7 or 7200.8 Barracuda drives and a lot more reliable. Lets not forget the fact that they are also making less noise than most WD drives.

If you want to try things out try another brand of HDD and see if the problem still comes. If it does I say something else is wrong and would recommend you to change PSU.

[Sidney]

Hmm, I remember that not that long ago Western Digital poached one of Seagate's top engineers for the express purpose of making their own drives more reliable.
That doesn't indicate to me that Western Digital drives are a very good proposition.

[Grumpy]

@Sidney
hmmm, funny you should say that! I have used Western Digital hardrives for many years and have never had one fail on me! But I have also had only 3 Seagate hardrives, they all died!!

[Luciel]

Same as grumps, every single HDD ive had was and is a western digital, never had any issues, except for one which was seagate and it started running slower and slower and slower until my machine acted like it was a 486 dx running win xp lol, you get the picture...