Is my 2.5" Seagate 5400.6 hard drive suppose to sound like it's scraping?

I just picked up a 2.5" 500GB Seagate Momentus 5400.6 SATA hard drive from Memory Express:

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX22971(ME).aspx

I am just wondering if anyone has this drive, or similar Seagate drives and could confirm whether the seek noises should sound like tiny metal-on-metal scrapes? It's very faint, but louder than my old Western Digital and somewhat noticeable when the room is quiet.

Otherwise, it seems to work just fine, Ive ran a disk scan with no errors, and here is the SMART data (funky looking results):

http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/4097/18461113.th.jpg

Never owned a Seagate before (other than an EE25 extreme environment...but that's a different class), but I have never heard any hard drive with seeking sounds as strange as this...

I've had several Seagates, and never had an issue with them making scraping noises. I don't think I'd be able to trust it, myself.

PS - all my Seagates are 7200, but I doubt that's relevant for this.

(from Mem ex page)

"QuietStep™ technology enables ultra-quiet load/unload acoustics"

O RLY?



Seems like Seagates have been sucking ass lately....

There was a known problem with the SATA 2.5 5400 Seagate hard drive at one point. The issue was first bought up in Macbooks. My hard drive in my macbook recently crashed too and I ended up getting a Seagate 320gig 7200 to replace.

I covered it with that 12 dollar warranty by Memory Express and backup my stuff regulary so mmeehh

If it's sounded bad ... take it back and get it replaced.

A bad bearing can make this noise. If you can upload an audio clip I can tell you whether it's normal or not.

if its still underwarranty what's the harm of getting it replaced? it should hurt you at all...you never know

Yea youre right, I dont want to take chances with my data, so Ill probably pay more and trade it up for a Western Digital. Initially I bought it because of the 5 year warranty. Its definately not the bearings though, since it only makes the noise when seeking. I was just confused since this does not sound like a typical failing drive, yet Im not sure if its a normal sound either.:dunno:

Quote:

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Originally posted by nobb
Yea youre right, I dont want to take chances with my data, so Ill probably pay more and trade it up for a Western Digital. Initially I bought it because of the 5 year warranty. Its definately not the bearings though, since it only makes the noise when seeking. I was just confused since this does not sound like a typical failing drive, yet Im not sure if its a normal sound either.:dunno:

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When the computer is under heavy load, usually the hard drives are constantly seeking. So you would hear constant scraping, if it was in fact the seeking that caused the noise.

I highly doubt anything is actually scraping on the platters, because that would make the drive almost instantly unusable. What's more likely is that you have an intermittent bearing issue, or the sound is actually normal.

When it comes to hard drives it really isn't worth wondering if the hard drive is faulty or not... just replace it or only put unimportant files on it.

Like someone has mentioned if it is under warranty, just get it replaced...