"Differential Diagnosis"

Even after all the troubleshooting, diagnosis, and tests run on the drive that came back stating the drive was perfectly healthy, it looks as if my initial suspicions were correct in regards to my new hard drive mentioned in my previous post.

*Click**Click**Click* is not suppose to be a “normal noise” on any hard drive that I’ve ever encountered, despite what I’ve read about this particular model of Seagate Drives.

SMART Detection Errors began popping up, and even Windows Vista detected the errors. I rechecked the status of my drive using Seasoft’s Sandra Lite that was mentioned in my previous post. The software concurred with Vista’s findings, displaying an enormous amount of Read/Write Errors, Seek Errors, and all kinds of issues which pointed to imminent failure.

It seems as if the Read/Write heads on the drive are failing, and they are gradually decreasing in performance, bringing about significant slow downs and hiccups during normal operation…

I’ve initiated a return to Seagate after verifying my drive’s warranty status here ; I should be receiving a replacement in the next few days.