Seagate 500gb ES series drive pending failure?

[dick]

This ST3500630NS was making some very strange noises. I can only describe it as a chirping sound just like a bird song. So I suspected imminent failure and was able to do a by sector clone to another drive. Also no bad sectors reported during the cloning process.
So the data was safe!

I was wondering what was really going wrong with the drive.
The chirping or squeeling noise seemed to show the spindle bearing was about to fail.
I ran the drive up in Victoria for windows and the drive still showed good in the smart table.
For fun I decided to use the test function and scan the drive with remap enabled. As soon as I started a horrible noise came out the drive and the system froze.
After a hard reset I went back into Victoria and checked the smart table which then showed 'smart information unavailable'.

Drive is now on its way back to Holland for a swap out.

Anybody got any ideas about what happeded to this drive?

[scratchy]

Sounds like the motor has seized and you were 'lucky' enough to witness it and sensibly, make a backup. The majorty of users would either have been blissfully unaware of any problem and/or not made a backup.

<itch>

[dick]

Hmmmmmmm
The replacement arrived from Seagate today.
I'm not very happy as it's one of their repaired drives.

On the label it states 'Certified repaired drive'
Then further down it states 'This drive is manufactured for Seagate for OEM distribution. For product information or technical support please contat your system OEM'

WTF....OEM....it was a retail drive I sent in and an 'OEM repaired' drive I get back.

Is that fair?

[BlackST]

Repaired drive doesn't mean crap drive. A refurbished drive usually has been inspected, eventually firmware repaired and re-scanned, so don't worry. Many drives are reworked at factory level before they go out and nothing is clearly written on it.
They give you warranty on the new - repaired drive, don't they ? So, I think it's not a problem.
Just a note and an advice : I bought a 7200.10 320G drive , off-the-shelf, it made the same noise right from the start plus hisses , but was not recognised by the bios, and it was replaced with another one, new. I think it has passed the QA initially, who knows ?
The advice : these drives have several platters and have to be treated like EGGS, especially when on : the mass of platters, spacers and axis , with a small hit from outside, can easily bend the axis and/or completely seize (grip) the motor, with possible subsequent head crash/stiction. Enough said. It's not Seagate's problem.

[harddrivespecialist]

You should put this drive through hard tests and see if its will make it. If not, send it back for a replacement

[harddrivespecialist]

In a lot of cases, refurbished drives work better then a brand new drives.