Seagate 7200.11 turds

[willawake]

Zandrax cleverly drew my attention to the following issue

hey why my burst sucks?

Early Seagate 7200.11 drives with 32 MB of cache had a lot of trouble with cache: first firmwares seemed to disable it or, at least, motherboards were unable to detect it and reported 0 MB, decimating transfert rate. Updating the firmware should solve the issue.

Zandrax

1. Below are the Barracuda 7200.11 model numbers. If the bold digit is any number other than those shown, Seagate recommends that you update the firmware on your drive:
   
   
   
   Model numbers
   
   
   
   1000 GB
   
   ST31000340AS
   
   
   
   750 GB
   
   ST3750330AS
   
   
   
   500 GB
   
   ST3500320AS
2. If the drive bears one of the model numbers above then no action is required. If you do have an incorrect model number, please download SeaTools to determine your serial number.
3. Once you have your serial number contact Seagate Technical Support to receive the AD14 firmware update.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/other_downloads/cuda-fw

but i have ST31000340AS with SD15 firmware not SD14

as per this thread HDtune still identifies cache n/a after update. i have cache n/a but i also have less burst than i would expect. for the previous firmware drives update of firmware corrects cache issue

BUT i find this thread which shows that SD15 drives get issue early that make them in permenantly busy state with 0gb detected or not detected by bios. new thread after old one closed by seagate

which is VERY dissappointing...........

[willawake]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

seems from the small data collected that the majority of fails are from thailand factory.

[stevo1210]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

Phew. I'm lucky. I just bought a Seagate 7200.11 SATA II 500GB HDD a few days ago for my brother and it caries the model number ST3500320AS so I guess I'm safe for now.

[willawake]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

no i am talking about two different issues. your drive is ok supposedly for 1st issue not second.

[zandrax]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

Sorry for allarming you, Willa: I heard of Barracuda 7200.11 trouble with the 32 MB cache being recognized as 8 or 0 MB in early 2008 and at the time everyone thought a new firmware could have solved this early flaw. It's the first time I know of the 0 GB issue and drive's rattle (this remembers me a lot of Maxtors failing while rattling ...) so I'm as disappointed (and worried) as you Seagate hasn't fixed them yet.
Backup every unreplaceable file and consider the Barracuda as untrusty and prone to fail.

Zandrax

[stevo1210]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

It's the first time I know of the 0 GB issue and drive's rattle (this remembers me a lot of Maxtors failing while rattling ...) so I'm as disappointed (and worried) as you Seagate hasn't fixed them yet.
Backup every unreplaceable file and consider the Barracuda as untrusty and prone to fail.

I actually bought Seagate drives because I felt they were of good quality and very reliable. Western digital drives are turds in my view as every one of them that I have owned have either died or have bad sectors. Maxtor was a good favourite of mine but I see a few of them failed as well. Samsung I have issues with in terms of noise production.... they seem noisy when seeking.... I have a couple here which I feel are too noisy.
Seagate I've always been good with, not a single dead drive or even one with bad sectors, but after reading this thread I have to rethink my decisions.... only problem is that Seagate is the last HDD company I have on my list as I've crossed all the others off.

Thanks.

[zandrax]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

I actually bought Seagate drives because I felt they were of good quality and very reliable. [...] only problem is that Seagate is the last HDD company I have on my list as I've crossed all the others off.

No company manifactured the perfect hard disk and noone will do this in future: you'll always facing defective designs, bad batches, annoying aspects (e.g. noise) or worse the inertia of the manifacturer to patch or replace the bad drives.
Maxtor and WD used to be the most reliable brands in early '90, then they got worse: after a black period in late '90s - early 2000s WD drives are now decent while Maxtor bough Quantum, brought Quantum defects over the DiamondMax 8-10 series and was bought by Seagate in 2006.
Fujitsu retired from the desktop market after the MPG/MPF failure and now wants to sell the 2.5" division to Toshiba; IBM sold their division to Hitachi a year after the 75GXP "Deathstar" failure; Samsung wasn't much reliable during '90s, bettered in mid 2000s, manifactured some low noise drives and now has a lot of troubles with the F1 (data corruption).

Large database such as StorageReview's one show if a series is reliable or not, but an useful analisys requires at least a year of sampling: you can get info only on old drives and heuristic isn't good enough (e.g. nobody expected the Samsung F1 failures since Samsung has been a reliable brand for some years; the same for Seagate 7200.11).

Apparently the winning horse in 2008 was Western Digital: which one will be the "good brand" for 2009?

Zandrax

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

You can NEVER know in advance if there is going to be a model related problem with new models of anything.

Always wait until a new HDD model is at least a year old and then web search for problems before you buy any.

Same-same with CPU's and other kinds of drives.

Same-same with motherboards but it's better to wait 2+ years on those.

The cutting edge is called that because it makes you bleed.

.

[KeriJane]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

Hi Stevo!

What about Hitachi? They've come a long way since the "Deathstar" drives...
Nice and quiet too with their AAM enabled. The quietest drives out there that I know of.

Don't write off WD... they're back in a big way with two series:

1-The Green Power drives which turn slower, run cooler, use less power but yet don't lose much performance. I got 2 in my RAID enclosure, and I love them. So much cooler and quieter than the Seagate 7200.10s that it came with.

2- the Caviar Black drives. I have one in my Mac Pro. It's incredibly fast, cool-running and reasonably quiet (AAM ON). It borrows from the Green series by parking the heads when not in use, and it stores them OFF THE PLATTERS on a ramp when the drive powers down.


If you're experiencing drive failures, especially multiple failures, it might be a good idea to check your PSU for bad caps or for excessive ripple if you have access to a scope.

Have Fun!
Keri

PS. And here I thought this thread was about Hard Drive Droppings!

[i4004]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

>The cutting edge is called that because it makes you bleed.

++

[willawake]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

there is some new firmware
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/cr...207951&Hilite=

[bgavin]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

The WD Green drives spin down. This is great when used as a backup/archive drive, not so great if it spins up and down during working.

[gdement]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

The WD Green drives spin down. This is great when used as a backup/archive drive, not so great if it spins up and down during working.

Odd. I thought that was the drive controller's job. Putting that in the drive firmware means no user control.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

epic fail x2!

http://www.techspot.com/news/33286-s...arracudas.html

[willawake]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

yeah they pulled the firmware. i didnt use it cos some people were reporting the update utility didnt even work

this is not so much an issue with a bad series, it stinks of incompetence in the firmware programming dept. i wonder if they outsourced that.

funny how the INQ run the story then its all over the net and then seagate come out immediately with a fix. we dont want an immediate half assed fix. we want a fix that works

[zandrax]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

Seagate is disappointing me: since the firmware is the main issue, why did they release a broken one?

Zandrax

[willawake]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

they released another firmware now

i bought a wd blue today for my old pc which i am moving to work. but it make a wierd motor sound. dunno if thats normal

[zandrax]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

What kind of noise? A continuous clicking like these ones? Or grinding like a fan with worn bearings?

Zandrax

[willawake]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

no this is no seek noise
its like a vibration but there is not
its pretty obvious
i remember this from one wd in the past which started doing it

jeez just give me a doa not this half assed stuff
even my new altec lansing vs4121 speakers were obviously designed by a retard (no offence to retards that do not design speakers). i have never heard anything so bad. what is up with the market these days

[Gianni]

Re: Seagate 7200.11 turds

what is up with the market these days

The problem is that everybody today wants everything for few cents... and the market gives you shit!!
There are nothing today built to last long time, every company has quality system, certification, etc... so why their products have problems?
Everything is design just to last few days after the warranty expires.

Last year I bought a new washing machine, the first one I bought when I married (14y ago) was repaired several time and the technician said there was nothing more to do.
I bought a Candy , at 430€ IIRC; the price starting from low end machine were 230€ up to 1200€.
Well after 1 and half month the washing machine stopped to work; I called the customer service and the day after they repaired it.
I had to paid 45€ not for the replaced parts but for the technician. WTF???? The washing machine is under warranty so if it breaks I think you have nothing to pay for it.
I contacted Candy because I thought the technician was not honest... and surprise.... it was more than honest (from Candy point of view).
Candy said, that due to an overvoltage, the control board was damaged and I was lucky the technician didn't charged me for it because this kind of failure is not covered by warranty.
Once again WTF????
If there was an overvoltage in my flat probably also my TV Set, answering machine, cordless, DVBT decoder, PC... ecc have been damaged.
I would like to have here the control board and have a look to see what was the real problem...

Well I think today you can only cross your finger when you buy something and hope you are lucky with your purchase.

Ciao
Gianni