HD?

I have a friend with a 500Gig external ATA drive. USB2

He says that when he plugs it into his machine he often has to try twice
before Windows recognizes it.

I had him copy all data off the drive, then I took it with me to
determine if the problem is with the electronics in the enclosure or the
drive itself.

I opened it up and removed the drive and it clunks!


To be clear...the drive is not energized or connected to the machine in
any way...simply by having it in my hand and moving it I hear it clunk.


I'm going to run the diagnostic on it...but I assume this is not normal
as I don't recall ever having a drive do that

philo wrote:
I have a friend with a 500Gig external ATA drive. USB2

He says that when he plugs it into his machine he often has to try twice
before Windows recognizes it.

I had him copy all data off the drive, then I took it with me to
determine if the problem is with the electronics in the enclosure or the
drive itself.

I opened it up and removed the drive and it clunks!


To be clear...the drive is not energized or connected to the machine in
any way...simply by having it in my hand and moving it I hear it clunk.


I'm going to run the diagnostic on it...but I assume this is not normal
as I don't recall ever having a drive do that

So the heads are not resting on the landing ramp ?

Some Seagate drives had a bit of free play in something,
such that if you inverted the drive, you would hear a
tiny "tick" sound. But not a clunk.

Check the SMART statistics on the drive, by slaving
to your technician computer directly (IDE or SATA
cable). See if there is a reason to trash the drive,
so "nobody gets hurt".

Paul

On 09/12/2015 05:21 PM, Paul wrote:

Check the SMART statistics on the drive, by slaving
to your technician computer directly (IDE or SATA
cable). See if there is a reason to trash the drive,
so "nobody gets hurt".

Paul



Thanks for the reply and indeed it is a Seagate. Listened again and it
is not quite as loud as a "clunk" more like a slight "click" I guess.


Since my last post a ran the Seagate full diagnostic and it passed...and
there were no SMART errors.

At any rate, I'll probably just use the drive as a spare.

The electronics portion of the controller seems to be OK as well...but
because it's ATA (and not SATA) I doubt that it's going to see any more use.