Quietest mechanical HDD

[orangpelupa]

buy the HDD that can be forced to turn on the "quiete mode"
the only experience i have is on hitachi HDD. It have free tool that you can download on their website.

the tool allow the hdd to run slow but quiete.
Before turning quiete mode, the hdd make crackling noises and vibration when doing heavy read or write. With quiete mode, the sound only audible when i put my ears near it.

 

[UniversalTruth]

No bad sectors

but

.

I am still in the 5-year warranty. Should I try to replace it for a better one?

 

[Blazkowicz]

No idea if it's a problem but I can see two options, plus the one of doing nothing :

- try to kill it by making it spin up and down every 5 seconds (on linux that'd be while true; do spin the disk down with hdparm; sleep 5; spin it up again ; done)
- find out about power managament, having it spin constantly makes it more durable perhaps.

Or does a warranty cover any "warning" status on SMART, I don't know.

 

[Grall]

Spin retry errors come from the motor not being able to spin up the platters within specified time (to full speed, or at all). This could possibly indicate bearing problems, and could potentially mean the drive won't spin up at all eventually - meaning a dead drive and all data on it would be lost. Have you noticed anything when powering on your computer, any unexplained slowness during boot, unfamiliar drive noises etc - perhaps only occasionally?

Tapping, bumping or rotating the drive could possibly make it spin up again in this case, but that's of course no genuine solution. As bearings are non-replacable there really isn't one, other than making sure you're not storing any critical, non-replacable information on that drive and then using it until it wonks out permanently and/or you replace it.

 

[UniversalTruth]

Have you noticed anything when powering on your computer, any unexplained slowness during boot, unfamiliar drive noises etc - perhaps only occasionally?

No, during boot nothing unusual.
The HDD feels to me slow but perhaps it is just how it works.

Actually, this warranty has already been used when my original drive died and this one is its replacement. Because the warranty will expire this year and because of this annoying slowness of operation, I want to change it for something better.

Do you see how the transfer speed varies compared to the image in my previous post?

Is it normal, every time it shows different values

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Spin retry can be cause by a failing drive motor, or a weak power supply (for instance too many drives trying to spin up at boot time). However, it can also be caused by simple timeouts.

For instance I can guarantee to cause a spin retry failure by trying to put my PC into S3 sleep, but keep hitting the keyboard to wake it up as it's trying to spin down the drives - pops up a SMART error every time. Spin retries that happen occasionally are usually spurious and nothing to worry about.

If you think there are issues, HD Sentinel has some very good surface and SMART testing tools, or download Seagate's own Seatools to run diagnostics (which you should do before a RMA anyway) and run the long tests to see if there are any failures.

 

[Grall]

Is it normal, every time it shows different values

That looks rather abnormal, I would say... Some squigglyness is normal (and it should be rather accurately repeatable across consecutive runs), but those huge squigglies you get and different each time then it looks unhealthy to my eyes at least. Now, I don't know what software that is you're testing with - maybe it is bugged or otherwise flawed which causes this random pattern to appear. Try HDTach or some other well-known tool, Sandra perhaps? I don't know if Sandra makes a graph across the entire drive though.

 

[UniversalTruth]

I will try to return it using the warranty and take for example the ST1000DM003 which actually shows quite good speed characteristics and costs only 60 €...

It is very annoying because now my laptop 2.5" ST9750420AS is a faster HDD than the 3.5" ST3500320AS...

 

[UniversalTruth]

May you imagine- the aforementioned 3.5" ST3500320AS died. I am so happy now Hip hip hoorey

On Monday I am going to use the warranty and take a much faster one

 

[UniversalTruth]

The situation is dramatically improved. The sales representative told me that, unfortunately, the old series 3.5" ST3500320AS was full of defects.

So, I took:

.

And now it is faster and more quiet.

The only inconvenience is that I have to install everything from the zero...

 

[Grall]

Best of luck with the new drive.