flightsimmer

RESIDENT EXPERT NEEDED!!!!

The reason I start a new thread for this topic, which may have already been discussed, is because most people have an old used hard drive, and age and use may contribute to their problems whereas my problem is with a never used OEM.

So my old 320 GB SATA HDD starting clicking, windows XP SP2 was slow to load (if it did at all - often got an NTLOADER missing error at boot.) and was very unstable. Time for a new HDD. So I dropped $89 on a Seagate Barracuda 500GB SATA HDD OEM and got it today in the mail. I plugged it in with a hard drive cooler mounted under it, and it was making the same clicking noises my old one was. I have two other HDD's on a RAID with the new one; I unplugged them both to make sure that it was infact the new one that was making unnerving noises, and in fact it was. I waited for the the error message to appear that no operating system was found, inserted the win XP OEM intallation CD and rebooted. The windows installer was very difficult to start, it required several reboots before it finally popped up. It at first would just say "setup is examining your hardware configuration" and then went to a black screen. It actually popped up between the time i gave up and the time tech support answered the phone. Embarassing I had to call, since I've intalled windows on my own about 7 times before, once on a mac and once downgrading from Vista Home Premium and never needed a lick of help. Anyways, it finally started, took 2 hrs to format the 500GB HDD and proceded to install windows. It automatically rebooted and I neglected to boot from the CD when prompted. It went straight to WIN XP and the desktop as usual, ready for 3rd party driver installation, but quickly froze after about 30 seconds of uptime. Just long enough to create desktop shortcuts to my computer and my documents. A bluescreen of death appeared, saying something about a thread necessary to run windows but it automatically shut down and I have been unable to get it to load windows again. It just says "Error loading operating system" at boot. I tried to reinstall windows from the CD disk. The setup launches, loads the minimum files and says "setup is loading windows" and progresses no further. Fine and dandy, I have a will and way. I put an old scrap 80GB HDD in, unplug the 500GB (to keep it unrecognized by the partitioner and prevent confusion) and install windows on it, later setting the new 500GB as a slave drive to it so I can reformat it. The 500GB appears in windows as Local Disk (D:). Perfect. I right click it, click format, and begin formatting, but now get an error that says "windows could not complete the format" at 0% progress. Exploring the contents of the drive, there are folders called Windows, [user's] documents, and Program Files, so the original windows install evidentally worked.

Let me hit on this "cooing" noise it makes. Its like a dove or a pigeon. A soft, but high pitched "cooo!". Nothing like I've ever heard a drive do. It is then followed by a pair of "shick" noisies. It just goes "coooo! shick shick......coooo! shick shick" in regular intervals. This is a brand new straight out of the box OEM HDD we are talking about here!

DID I GET A LEMON? I wasnt paying attention the first time I tried to get a replacement drive and ordered an EIDE and not a SATA, which was a very costly mistake, as returns are not accpted by tigerdirect on hard drives. So thats 180 bucks down the crapper on useless OEM hard drives, and I'd REALLY like not to buy a third, but at the same time i REALLY need to. I am a budding web designer and have a final web site design project due in 8 weeks. I need very badly to have my system running good right now.

My question is did I get a lemon or did I do something wrong? Either way, my vendor does not take returns so I'm screwed. I'll have to go straight to segate to get a return. What fun that will be... What are the odds of 2 seperate drives of 2 seperate brands doing basically the same thing plugged into the same sata port? (The other one didnt "coo" though.) Can a mobo fry a HDD like that? My scrap 80GB SATA hard drive has had no issues since I put the temporary copy of windows on it, so that would seem to rule out the motherboard. The hard drive is Serial ATA with the new SATA PSU style power source (not the old white 4-pin).

One thing is for sure, I've ordered two seagate barracuda drives in 7 days, lost 180 bucks to them and neither did me a dang lick of good. Thats the last seagate product I'll ever buy.

My relevant system specs are:

600W PSU
2.13 Ghz core2duo CPU intell socket 775
4GB DDR2 RAM
2x 512MB Nvidia GeForce 8600GT GPU SLI'd
ASUS P5N SLI MOBO

It's pretty embarssing that I can't make a simple hard drive work...

BCCOMP

Sounds defective to me.

Did you run the seagate Seatool diagnostics on this drive?
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/sup...oads/seatools/

Bill

dm01

Let me guess, this hard drive cooler has a fan inside. Try re-mounting without the cooling unit and see if the hard drive makes the same noises. Sometimes an obstructed or dying fan can cause the aforementioned sounds.

As for your Windows install, you will have to do a clean format somehow.

Set up a master-slave relationship, with an old HDD with a Windows install as master — check.

Open command prompt (Start-Run type cmd).
Type in:
format d:

Command.com doesn't have all of the Windows nonsense, but if you can't format this way, I would say either a Knoppix Live CD or the magnet method is required.

flightsimmer

Thanks for your help and timely responses.

I think the drive is most certainly defective. I just can't belive it would be the motherboard, another drive..make that two drives i have on the same RAID work just fine and have for years. One holds now the temporary copy of windows and one holds all my backed up data from the original giong-bad hard drive that started this ruccus.

After typing this original post, I went to go tinker with it somemore, and it worked fine. No cooing, no clicking, no shicking, just worked. I reformatted it (quick method; NTFS) with the windows installer/partitioner, then installed windows, mobo drivers, nvidia drivers, cloneCD, cloneDVD, AnyDVD, Game Jackal, monitor drivers, monitor utilities, partition magic, Dreamweaver CS3/related programs, Photoshop CS2/related programs, Magic ISO, WinRAR, and HOST of other programs I am forgetting and it all went just fine. Multiple reboots required and all went well. I hooked the all in one card reader up to the motherboard, and reintroduced my backed up data on another hard drive into the RAID, and all showed up and installed just swell. Then I went to put the third and final hard drive back online and we're right back to clicking shicking and coo-ing. Windows goes CONSISTENTLY from splash screen to black screen. GET THIS - Windows loads and operates JUST FINE in safe mode. Any ideas here? That almost makes me think that its not the drive or the motherboard, but some retarted controler that I don't know how to access, identify, or modify. Bottom line, I'm fast approaching 240 dollars in scrap metal "OEM" hard drives, and I'm absolutely irate at this whole situation. Seagate Barracuda is fixing to get a piece of my mind, and I will never ever for so long as I shall live buy another seagate product of any sort, nor will I knowingly allow anyone else around me to do so either. I'm going western digital on this next one.

I wonder if they would accept my return having formatted and intalled stuff on it? They do advertise a 5 year warranty, but with quality of craftsmanship like this, I call bull snot.

flightsimmer

Apparently, I can't edit posts so I'll have to repost to answer some Q's I forgot to answer.

The hard drive cooler is a metal plate, to whcih two (I'm guessing) 30mm fans are attached. There is a power Y on the end. The male end goes into the hard drive, the female end goes to the PSU plug, so the fans and the drive both get power from one 4-pin outlet. The hard drive cooler is also brand spanking new, and it runs quite smooth. It has an advertised lifespan of 30,000 hours.

dm01

Sounds like it's never going to work right. The drive may be defective or may have been damaged in shipping. Installing things and formatting are normal user tasks and should have no bearing on prospective, active, or completed RMAs.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/sup...ns_assistance/

flightsimmer

Thank you for the URL.

It was a faulty SATA cable. NO WAY my western digital was a dud. something else was messed up. I went and got a spare cable and it worked fine. I bought like 240 dollars worth of hard drives when all that needed fixing was one 5 dollar SATA cable. Im embarrased beyond words. (not to mention broke as f***! )

BCCOMP

HI Flightsimmer,
I am glad it was just a faulty Sata cable.
Sometime the obvious is over looked.
Thanks for posting what you found. It may help others.
Bill