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I have a 1 GB STM3250310AS. It makes a sort of "kerchunk" sound every now and then as if it's just been started up or is losing power. Is this normal for this type of drive?

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All drives can make some noise,starting/stopping but unless you have your ear to it, it shouldn't make a loud noise that you can hear on a regular basis.
You can run a free disk test to see the state of the drive.-download the iso and read instructions from this Seagate site.
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=seatooldreg&vgnextoid=480bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD
It could just be a little loud, you have very good hearing or you have a problem.If you have a problem naturally backup everything 1st. Then you can start looking a new drive.

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Thank you. The sound is noticeable because every now and then because a louder "kerchunk" and an apparent slowdown in speed interrupts the regular chatter. In passing, the dos version of SeaTools on the link provides more consistant results when a drive is failing. I'd recommend it to anyone that is having similar doubts. – James Poulson Dec 27 '10 at 16:30
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If its a small "kerchunk" it may just be a regular "tickle" by the OS that gets it off doing something. How often this happens depends on the OS. I have a couple of drives in my NAS that do this, there is nothing sinister about it (on mine).

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If the drive makes "kerchunk" or "clack" sounds in fairly rapid succession, however, I would recommend backing up your data, and running a drive check utility on it–preferably one from the manufacturer themselves. – oKtosiTe Dec 27 '10 at 12:51
Thanks for the advice. The sound only happens once and may just be happening because the drive is switching between distinct locations on the platters. I've run SeaTools and the drive flags as ok on SMART and on the short tests. – James Poulson Dec 27 '10 at 16:22
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Sometimes the drives SMART functions will cause it to tickle itself (and store information in reserved areas of the media). – quickly_now Dec 28 '10 at 5:53
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