Seagate ST3750630AS 750gb making 'clunck' sound every 20 or so mins.

[renzokuken]

Hey,

As the title says, I recently bought this hard drive and noticed it makes a 'thud'-type sound every 20-30 mins. It is my storage drive and my computer will be unresponsive (for about 1 second but mouse still moves) when it happens. The unresponsiveness occurs about 1-2 seconds after I hear the 'thud' sound. I thought it may be the drive powering down to save power, but I have the power options set to "never" for the "turn off hard disks" option in XP x64.

Any ideas?

[Anarki]

Yeh its probably the head parking. My WD 120GB 2.5" did this, but luckily there was firmware available that stopped this.

I would google your drive model and see if any results come up for stopping it.

[3Z3VH]

The sound is normal, unless it is a more constant grinding noise. As Anarki said, it is just the head parking.

The freezing is not normal, and it is actually a problem with the firmware in the 7200.11 Seagate drives. You can download the new firmware from here: http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207951

The firmware is an ISO image that you burn to CD. This ISO makes a bootable CD that allows you to detect, and upgrade the firmware of your Seagate 7200.11 drive.

[StickyRICE]

Wonder if the power management spinning the disks down. I had my disks on power down and when it needs to be accessed again the os freezes for a second or two before its back up.

[renzokuken]

I'll try updating the firmware and see what happens. Thanks for the help guys.