My Seagate portable hard drive was making some clicking and beeping sounds today; it only lasted a few minutes, and it's never done this before. The drive was mounted at the time when it was making those noises, and I couldn't unmount it until the noises stopped. It could have been damaged because I was carrying it around on a trip; I just got back home on Sunday. However I haven't treated it harshly: it wasn't dropped, I was only walking with it (not running), and whenever I was carrying it around it's been powered off. After the noises stopped, I mounted it again and tested it with Seagate's own software and it passed the test. The drive is still under warranty so I could try to have it swapped for a new one, but Seagate says that they'll return the drive at my expense if I send them a fully functional drive.
This page says that the sounds mean that the drive has bad heads, but the clicking and beeping weren't quite exactly like the recording on that page. I should've recorded the sounds when my drive was making them, but I didn't think of that until later. Almost all of the data on the drive was backed up before it started making the noises. Since the drive now seems to be functioning normally, should I keep using it like nothing's wrong with it? Or should I go to the store tomorrow and buy a new one and start using that instead?
