Should I replace my harddisk?

Grife · 10-26-2006, 11:09 AM

This harddisk I put into my newly built PC is very noisy when doing just about anything that requires access to harddrive and keeps a weird but audible clicking noise when doing so. It's also very slow when doing so, even though my other hardware doesn't have bottlenecks to hinder usual action.
It's a new Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 250gb SATA2 with 8m cache. I ran HD Tune in Windows side to get benchmarks and health report, and the numbers for Seek Error Rate are distrubing if I understood correctly:

Code:

HD Tune: ST3250824NS Health

ID                              Current  Worst    ThresholdData       Status   
(01) Raw Read Error Rate        114      81       6        75497917   Ok       
(03) Spin Up Time               90       90       0        0          Ok       
(04) Start/Stop Count           100      100      20       16         Ok       
(05) Reallocated Sector Count   100      100      36       0          Ok       
(07) Seek Error Rate            37       35       30       3761529    Ok       
(09) Power On Hours Count       100      100      0        60         Ok       
(0A) Spin Retry Count           100      100      97       0          Ok       
(0C) Power Cycle Count          100      100      20       21         Ok       
(BB) (unknown attribute)        100      100      0        0          Ok       
(BD) (unknown attribute)        100      100      0        0          Ok       
(BE) (unknown attribute)        61       55       45       656474151  Ok       
(C2) Temperature                39       45       0        39         Ok       
(C3) Hardware ECC Recovered     60       53       0        116328597  Ok       
(C5) Current Pending Sector     100      100      0        0          Ok       
(C6) Offline Uncorrectable      100      100      0        0          Ok       
(C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count  200      200      0        0          Ok       
(C8) Write Error Rate           100      253      0        0          Ok       
(CA) (unknown attribute)        100      253      0        0          Ok       

Power On Time         : 60
Health Status         : Ok

That's the current status. What does "hardware ECC recovered mean"? It has a lot of data in it at least, and slow numbaers. Benchmark gave results for transfer rate of average 56mbit/s which is ok, but featured two sharp drops.

Replace?

Wells · 10-26-2006, 11:17 AM

Yeah... that doesn't look good at all. The two sharp drops leads me to believe that there is damage somewhere on the drive that it was trying to access, failed a bunch of times, but did eventually get it. The clicking is also a tell-tale sign of a bad drive.

You state that the drive was put into a newly built machine.... is the drive itself brand new as well? If not, I would say that this drive's days are numbered, and it is time to look for a new one.

Grife · 10-26-2006, 11:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wells

Yeah... that doesn't look good at all. The two sharp drops leads me to believe that there is damage somewhere on the drive that it was trying to access, failed a bunch of times, but did eventually get it. The clicking is also a tell-tale sign of a bad drive.

You state that the drive was put into a newly built machine.... is the drive itself brand new as well? If not, I would say that this drive's days are numbered, and it is time to look for a new one.

Whole machine is newly home brewed , I just hate OEM support policies.

But thanks for advice, luckily I hadn't time to move any important data there or make terrific optimizations to system. Well, with current skills those "terrific optimizations" would have been minor tweaks anyway.

apolinsky · 10-26-2006, 12:36 PM

Clicking from a hard drive is an indication of imminent failure. Try a different one.

wabbalee · 10-26-2006, 09:59 PM

to me too it sounds like a harddrive on its way out, you said you bought it new, then it should still be under warranty. i would not do anything to this machine until you have a new drive installed.

hansalfredche · 10-27-2006, 02:57 AM

Clicking noise typically indicate failing drive. Try to enable SMART in BIOS if your mainboard supports it. If drive is broken, it should give a message at boot time.

hansalfredche · 10-27-2006, 02:59 AM

BTW: I had a brand new drive failing on me after about 45 minutes of use. It failed just after I finished installing Mandriva and rebooted. Clicking noise, but it wasn't loud.

Wells · 10-27-2006, 01:38 PM

That's nothing. I am working on the RMA for a drive (320gb SATA) for the second time now because the replacement one I got was DoA... and that replacement drive was to replace another drive that I ordered that was, you guessed it... DoA.