I've a problem with Seagate ST3500320AS 7200.11 HD: it clicks at cold boot or wakeup up-to 20 times before start spinning and be ID'd by BIOS. Here is SMART stats of my problematic drive. In my view, the only thing it shows is that Seagate firmware performed SMART routing is designed to conceal the drive failures until warranty expires, provided it spins at all. Despite the drive now attempts up to 20 spin up retries at each boot or wakeup from standby, spin-up times always = 0. It appears impossible to read the drive until it actually starts spinning, so SMART is useless for diagnostics of cold boot non-spinning drive, especially if the drive eventually starts spinning before SeaTools or another tool is ready to record its performance.

It appears, the only way for SeaTools to register cold clicking drive is to hook it to power rail after PC is operational and SeaTool is ready to record. Is it safe to connect power and SATA cables to a drive after the PC is powered up? Would it allow to register described drive startup stalling with SeaTools or other tools?

With 750W PSU with 4 19A rails nothing points to PSU deficiency. What can be the cause of such clicking noise at startup only, and can a user fix it?

Another interesting issues would be, why problems in Service area occur in the first place? And why firmware can't ID bad service marks, and next boot start straight from the record it started on previous boot, thus properly registering and subsequently preventing cold boot clicks? And if firmware can't register cold boot clicks until the drive actually spins, why Seagate demands from customers to demonstrate SMART error in such cases to receive warranty service? Is that reasonable?