is my seagate barracuda abnormal?
 

i just got my 80 gig seagate barracuda IV today!
its great except for a weird noise i have never heard from a hard drive.
i havent put anything on it yet... just made sure i could post, but while it did post, it was making these quiet buzzing noizes... much like a small piezio was inside it, it wasnt a grinding noise... it really sounded like a speaker or something being that it was a moderately higher pitched noise.

for all of you that have the same hard drive... does yours do that to? and if so is it just durring boot?


btw its an oem that i got from unityelectronics here: http://store.yahoo.com/unityelectron...2seagbara.html

after listening to it for a while its almos the sound of a pin scratchin some plexy glass, or maybe a mosquito... and it is NOT constant.. just goes in little burst... almost like when the arms are unseated or something... cause it happens every few seconds durring boot.

dammit.. i just noticed that teh seagate barracuda IV's are supposed to have a metal plate of the circuitry TOO!!! mine doesn't have that
i DID buy it as an OEM but did seagate really leave off a protective metal plate just cause its OEM?

there are 3 wires that stick up a little higher than the rest of the drive that go into the spindle... if i were to set it on metal im sure the drive would short out!!!

someone please let me know if you can confirm or deconfirm any of this!@@#@

I'd just rma it, and let them know of your problem, the store should be more than happy to help you out

the seagates have a piece of foam(like what comes w/ a mobo) covered by an aluminum plate. Good for protection, bad because of extra heat.

Normally a Barra iV should make ZERO noise. That's what they're famous for. (Oh, and they're pretty fast, too :) ). Just forget about using one of those babies in a RAID config, 'cause you'll have a hard time getting it to work! My advice is: rma it rapidos and get yourself a new one.

heh, I raided two of them today in raid 1, on an adaptec controller, in winxp. I think all of those are completely incompatible with each other, but after 2 hours of stuffing around it worked

Nice job! You're only the second person I've ever heard of getting such a config to work... What exactly was it you did? (Just curious, might be interested in setting up 2 Barra's in RAID-0.)

wow... i was gonna throw 2 of em on my kta7-raid, in raid-0.
good thing i didnt buy 2 yet!

Yeah, well I'd read this (scroll all the way down) before deciding anything....


http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kg7kr....htm#barracuda

It might work for you, but then again it might not. The question is if you're ready to take that kind of risk with your dearly-earned dough. As for me, until I know better, I'll stick with IBM.

I would never use a harddrive from another manufacturer than IBM.

IBM is the DEVIL

I just put a Barra in on the normal channel, installed xp on it, then put the drives onto the controller and told it to copy the contents of the first drive. rebooted, set the bios to use scsi boot device, and it worked (there was anothe scsi card in it as well)

Yeah, but the main problem is not getting it to run, it's getting it to run FAST. It seems that Barra's on RAId just run terribly slowly. If you'd do some tests, we would know if that's all a pile of BS...

It's already been shipped out to the customer...

Ouch... Well, let us know if the cutomer complains about anything then.. ;)

the customer has ordered systems in the past with a P4 2.2ghz, 512mb pc133 ram, 40gb 5400rpm hdd, gf2 mx200

I'm guessing there won't be any complaints

well seagate send me a program to disable the head scans "because this may reduce the noise"
wtf?!? you dont hide the problem you FIX it... but oh well atleast i got something hey?

anyway i returned it to the supplier and am awaiting a replacement. the supplier AND seagate said that some of the drives ship with and some without the "seashield" on the back side.

unityelectronics said that they will request that a drive WITH the seashield be sent out in replacement.

While my Barracuda IV is VERY quiet, I've heard that some do make some weird noises and that's just how it is. RMA that POS...
-Kev

that program reduces noise, lowers performance