My streak of bad luck when it comes to computer parts seems to continue... My new 500 GB Seagate SATA HDD (two months old) has recently started to make a loud scratching noise when powering on the PC and most of the time, the BIOS won't recognize the drive until I reset the computer a couple of times. I ran chkdsk, but it found no errors. Also, the SMART status of the drive says that everything is in order - not that I rely on it, but anyways, it's what Seagate recommends to do in case you have problems.

Did anyone else experience something like this? Could it be a head crash issue? The problem occurs only when booting; once the drive is running for a few minutes, the noise is gone and everything seems to be OK.

Use Seagate's diagnostic utility (available on their site for free) to check drive's condition. Also make sure the power supply unit is ok and provides enough power to the hdd at start up (measure voltage during start up or temporarily replace the psu with a known-good one).

I have two 500GB Seagate drives. One to back up the other. The online drive started to make a sound like two pieces of metal spinning against each other yet was still OK for a number of months. I had boot problems too that sound just like yours. CHKDSK found no errors, ever. The drive just suddenly died a couple of months ago.