Curse

Elder III · Oct 13, 2009, 04:05 PM // 16:05

Seagate has had some bad batches and subsequently bad reviews in the last yr or two. I personally don't buy them if I have a choice.... too many horror stories. I would get WD or Hitachi first. I have read good things about Samsung's new SpinPoint series, but haven't tried them yet. Fujitsu and Toshiba are ok based on personal experience, but I look for WD first every time, then Hitachi if the deals are better at the time.

Like Quaker said though, try to borrow a different brand HDD and verify that your mobo isn't borked....

malevolence · Oct 14, 2009, 11:09 AM // 11:09

hehe flubber , no worries , I just needed that lol

And yes , I will change the drive , right now is working , but is does a terrible noise , anyway I opened the RMA ticket already , so getting me money back , and I will buy the WD Caviar Black 1 TB, 7200 Rpm, 32 MB, S-ATA II/300.

now the motherboard is not in warranty anymore, but it seems that its working , for some reason it was giving me an error (c1 error on the display, it suppose to be memory related) , so I downloaded memtest86 and running the test with my memory to check if there are errors.

Thank you all for your support

, and finally i will get the WD and put an end to the seagate nightmare hehehe

Kador · Oct 14, 2009, 11:28 AM // 11:28

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board?board.id=ata_drives

Check various threads on that forum. Practically every single thread in the SATA forum is about bricked and freezing 7200.11 Barracuda drives. Hundreds of pages of it. Looks like your drive is the same series as mine and also has tons of firmware problems.

The entire 7200.11 Barracuda line is plagued by faulty firmware and Seagate is even offering free data recovery for customer with those drives that are affected by what they call the "BSY Firmware bug". Apparently there is another set of firmware issues with these drives as well. I don't understand how this series of drives can still be sold in stores. Looks like it's their biggest selling line.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&r...e+1.5TB+freeze

The Google search above is very enlightening also.

If it's working then you should get the firmware update check utility from the Seagate site and update the firmware if you plan on keeping it. That MIGHT completely fix the problem. No idea about your other drive though.

I will NEVER buy Seagate again, no matter how good the reviews or attractive the price. They knew of these problems for MONTHS before I bought my drive (almost a year ago) and they STILL have them in the retail pipeline screwing over customers.

And yes, you pretty much have to research any hard drive model number before purchasing it these days if these kinds of defects are allowed.

Kador · Oct 14, 2009, 12:11 PM // 12:11

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/...200-11-failing

Quote:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives failing
Left, right and centre
By Paul Taylor
Tuesday, 13 January 2009, 15:20

SEAGATE'S FLAGSHIP desktop Barracuda 7200.11 drives, in particular the 1TB (ST31000340AS) units, are failing at an alarming rate and prompting outrage from their faithful customers.

A new self-bricking feature apparently resides in faulty firmware microcode which will rear its ugly head sometime at boot detection. Essentially the drive will be working as normal for a while, then - out of the blue - it'll brick itself to death. The next time you reboot your computer the drive will simply lock itself up as a failsafe and won't be detected by the BIOS. In other words, there's power, spin-up, but no detection to enable booting.

Click the link above for the full article. That's from January, and your store just sold you this drive recently?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01...ailure_plague/

More coverage of the falt from back in January.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...myName=storage

Quote:

Update: Seagate offers free data recovery for faulty drives, new firmware
Data recovery firms believe 30% of Barracuda drives are failing
By Lucas Mearian
January 20, 2009 12:00 PM ET

malevolence · Oct 14, 2009, 12:18 PM // 12:18

Yes , they are still selling it , Seagate really made a bad move, if they continue like this they
will lose their market.

Kador · Oct 14, 2009, 12:26 PM // 12:26

They seem to have survived it. No big public recall like there should have been and media limited to only minor IT specific outlets.

You never heard of this problem, most on this thread don't appear to have heard of it, and the only reason I did was because I was affected as well and it took me months to diagnose the problem with my computer. My failure mimicked cpu or motherboard problems so I never suspected the hard drive until it completely failed. My new system operated like crap for months and I was considering replacing every component in it until I could figure out where the fault was. If I had thought to google my drive model I could have saved months of frustration.

Oh and I think that 30% figure mentioned is VERY optimistic. I'd bet over time its turned out to be closer to 100% failure.

FWIW there is definitely a firmware upgrade for your drive, though I wonder if it already has it installed. Depends on how long its been on the store shelf I guess. Latest firmware for that model is SD1B

gone · Oct 14, 2009, 03:54 PM // 15:54

I wouldn't even bother with the firmware for it. rma/return it, and don't look back. it was a learning experience for me, I can tell you that. I hope that once you get a replacement drive everything is gravy for you.

as far as the mem error..damn if it isn't one thing, it's another. ;-D

Ec]-[oMaN · Oct 14, 2009, 08:12 PM // 20:12

This is why Seagate is on their 12th generation HD's

7200.12's....

They should have recalled the .11 series ages ago.

Believe it or not last I checked in some stores and online the 7200.11's were more expensive than the .12's since I doubt the .11's are being made anymore, there's just tons of left over stock.

malevolence · Oct 15, 2009, 09:40 AM // 09:40

Alright, so , the 1.5tb is working , fine I think... I went to seagate.com and downloaded the program to install the firmware , but after the reboot and the firmware installer program boot , it tells me that the hard disk match but there is no firmware available ...

ANyway, I will give this hard drive back this weekend, and get a WD instead. And teh 350gb that is broken will be RMA too.

So far , I guess we can close this topic , the only problem I am having now is with the motherboard, and I will open a different topic for it.

I am happy and satisfy with all the answer and the good people we have in this gw community ^^

Cheers.