Seagate drive buzzing

[Tom]

Do Seagate Barracuda drives have fans in them?

After prolonged use, mine starts buzzing. It sounds exactly like a fan on the way out. When you power the computer off, the buzz drops in pitch as though something is spinning down, until it stops. Turn the computer back on and its instantly ok - if it was a worn bearing you'd expect it to immediately start buzzing again unless you allowed it to cool down.

Its not very loud although audible from 10 feet away - the computer and all the fans inside it are quiet fans, quiet PSU etc.

Its a st3250620as and probably not even a year old.

The drive still appears to be working fine. Could it be the bearing in the motor? I have a spare drive of smaller capacity, but I should be able to get all my crap onto it. How do I seamlessly copy everything from one to the other so that I can plug the other one in, and boot up from that (with the computer none the wiser)?

 

[inactionman]

You don't tend to get fans in drives, although the motor and platters can act like one. It may be the drive is failing, go to the Seagate website, download and run the diagnostic tools.

You want software like Acronis TrueImage to duplicate the disks, however it's very drive intensive, and may cause your seagate to fail earlier if it's on the way out. I'd suggest copying any crucial files to a flash drive before imaging the disks.

 

[Mabs]

backup everything u want on the drive NOW !
may not be anything wrong with it, but if it does suddenly die, you dont want to lose anything

 

[TdC]

it's failing, get rid of asap. aditionally download and run Seagate's disk checker tool or any SMART reader and look at it.

 

[Kryten]

Acronis is easily the best imaging software as has already been suggested.
Only after you've completed a succesful backup, run SeaTools diagnostics over it and see what it shows up.
It's very likely it's absolutely fine. Barracuda's are *not* the quietest of drives although yours has been fine before, so it could be a matter of age or overuse (even if used 24/7 though it shouldn't be classified overused)
If thats the case and its fine, carry on using it using the same diligence with a half recent backup handy at al times.

 

[Tom]

No errors or anything - and its been on for about 10 hours today and no buzzing at all.

Weird. I'll get that Acronis on though and back everything up just in case.

I've never had a drive fail before now, and I've had a PC since 1990 (85mb drive ftw!!!)

 

[Cromcruaich]

No errors or anything - and its been on for about 10 hours today and no buzzing at all.

Weird. I'll get that Acronis on though and back everything up just in case.

I've never had a drive fail before now, and I've had a PC since 1990 (85mb drive ftw!!!)

You've been very lucky. As one of the few mechanical components left in a PC its generally second only to power suppliers to give up the ghost (presuming no floppy).

My order would probably be:

floppy disk drives
power supplies
HDD
CDRom drives

Ive also had disks on their way out pass the smart tests. But, when they go, they go.

 

[inactionman]

Sounds like it's going to be a physical failure, which the diagnostics doesn't always catch. Have you contacted seagate for support?

 

[Embattle]

SMART doesn't quite live up to what it was suppose to do, the thing is that from birth a HD should make the same sounds so when a new one appears after some time it generally means it's on the way to the HD graveyard.

 

[Tom]

Oddly, it hasn't done it since I posted.