I have problem with my WD 250GB SATA. Once a while during the bios post hdd starts clicking (1-2 per sec), Bios is frozen. I turn of computer with the power button. And next time i turn it on works fine but not always. Sometimes I have to wait a while and try few more times to turn it on and off.

When this happens I have some files corrupted on my system partiton so I have to repair the system or even reinstall it.

Last time I checked the hdd with WD Diagnostic Tool -- No Errors.

I changed Power Supply

And I have another hdd 120 GB IDE which was my first hard drive with this computer and never had problem with it. After upgrade with SATA and changing it as system drive problems started.

Anybody have an idea what can cause this problem ??

Thanks

Mario

Could possibly be a bad cable or a loose connection.

The source of clicks can be deceptive - are you sure the're from the hard drive- absolutely sure?

Could possibly be a bad cable or a loose connection.

The source of clicks can be deceptive - are you sure the're from the hard drive- absolutely sure?

Yes I'm sure...

I'm going to change the SATA cable,

Hopefully that will be it

Clicking hard-drives are a cause for concern, in my opinion.
A drive which clicks, is generally having problems reading data from the disc.
The disc itself could be damaged, or the read/write heads could be faulty.

The click sound is made by the read/write heads actuator parking the heads, then re-positioning them again, to have another go at reading the data.(this makes one click sound)

The occasional click is nothing to fear, but if this is happening on a semi-regular basis, I would seriously be thinking about backing up any important data on that drive.

Unfortunately, WD have a reputation for making drives which die prematurely.
They certainly did with their(now very old) Cavier series of 2-6GB drives.

I would have hoped that things have improved in their latest series of drives, but frankly, I don't trust WD, and use only Seagate.

Manufacturer's warranties are nice, but a free blank replacement drive, is nothing to the stress of losing important data when the 1st one dies.

I think this drive is one of the ones that is dieing.

I agree that any unusual noise from something with moving parts is ominous or at the least undesirable. It could be a sign of early or imminent failure and if not cured by the methods tried-out it might be worth trying the drive in another PC or in a USB enclosure (different host controller and power supply) to confirm that the drive is noisy because of what is going on inside it alone.

Personally I have had more failures with Seagates than WDs but that doesn't stop me from trusting or buying Seagate drives. There have been occasional notable failures of specific batches (there was a class action for some batches of Fujitsu-Siemens drives for example) but the fact is that any hard drive can fail and can fail early in its life.

The hard lesson to learn is to always backup at all times on a schedule and in a manner that suits one's circumstances.

Would add that I have had a "clicking drive" which I removed and it still continued to click inside the PC, which is why I stressed the need to be absolutely sure of the origin of the noise.

Personally I have had more failures with Seagates than WDs but that doesn't stop me from trusting or buying Seagate drives. There have been occasional notable failures of specific batches (there was a class action for some batches of Fujitsu-Siemens drives for example) but the fact is that any hard drive can fail and can fail early in its life.

Really.
:eek:

I've never had ONE SINGLE FAILURE of ANY Seagate drive, and I have used hundreds by now in my carrer.
I'm even including all their old 2GB-10GB series - I still have some of those, and although MUCH more noisy then a modern drive, still work, and still format without any bad sectors.

I guess it just comes down to personal choice.
:)

Out of curiosity, which series of Seagate did you have problems with?
I just want to compare notes.

You are right though, in that any drive can fail and can fail early in it's life.

...if I may paraphrase you for just a moment.
:p

I guess I have just been lucky.
No Seagate has ever died for me inside it's warranty, yet a brand new 120GB WD I bought(back when 120GB was the average capacity), clicked like mad on it's very first power up, and would not even spin-up.
All jumpers set correctly as per the label on the drive.

That incident did not help my respect for WD.
It was a kind of "Go figure" moment.

I cant lay my hands on a copy of the RMA certs so cant be specific but the first Seagate failure was a 300MB from an AST laptop about 10years ago and the last was a new 80GB IDE drive about 3 years ago. I too have, like you, had an ExcelStor drive fail at first use - with clicks and clunks. I suspected there must have been some trauma to it, possibly dropped, between factory and delivery. In a way that is more understandable than a drive that starts to wine and become slow to access after a month or so whilst sitting statically inside a case. I cant say that I have ever been beleaguered with loads of failures - they do occur - and I'm sure that one will have more failures the more that one physically handles and moves drives around from box to box.

P.S. PCs coming in for replacement of failed drives seem to come from all walks of life. An audit of any big repair firm might give a more meaningful indication of the good, the bad and the ugly! ;) Anecdotal reports of one or two failures cannot possibly be meaningful statistically, even if it understandably colours ones own opinion - but that is probably superstition rather than logic. Which make would Mr Spock suggest one uses I wonder?

Comparison of AFRs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk) would be nice to know and of more realistic use than MTBF lab results.

The mean time between failures (MTBF) of SATA drives is usually about 600,000 hours (some drives such as Western Digital Raptor have rated 1.2 million hours MTBF), while SCSI drives are rated for upwards of 1.5 million hours.[citation needed] However, independent research indicates that MTBF is not a reliable estimate of a drive's longevity.[24] MTBF is conducted in laboratory environments in test chambers and is an important metric to determine the quality of a disk drive before it enters high volume production. Once the drive product is in production, the more valid[citation needed] metric is annualized failure rate (AFR). AFR is the percentage of real-world drive failures after shipping.