Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[baio]

My new Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s (ST2000DL003) gives 11 click beep sounds at start up which you can listen to here: http://soundcloud.com/baiodias/system-boot-seagate-barracuda and remains undetected.

My system configuration: Windows XP SP2, Asus P7P55D-E, Intel Core i5 760, 4GB DDR3, Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5770.

It's not detected in both BIOS and Windows, but when I connect it to onboard Marvell SATA 6Gb/s port, it displays a separate boot screen at start up:
Marvell 88SE91xx Adapter - BIOS Version 1.0.0.1025.
PCIe x1 2.5Gbps
Mode: PassThru IDE
Disks Information:
Port: S0
Disk Name: SATAT_M13FQBL
Size: 4.1GB
Speed: 6Gb/s

I tried connecting it to both SATA 6Gb/s and 3Gb/s ports and used both 6Gb/s and 3Gb/s cables but no change there. What's wrong?

[mnatter]

I have just encountered this problem also with the exact same drive.

We exist in a (VERY current) Mac environment and we thought at first that it was just something inside of the iMac we were installing it to. All machines are the absolute latest releases as of 02-05-2011.

So I have now placed it inside of THREE different external SATA enclosures with the same quiet "beep" result. I had hoped the issue was just a formatting one that could be corrected by NOT using the drive inside the machine.

We have also placed the jumper setting to limit data to 1.5 with the same result.

This drive is about to get returned.

Any help is appreciated.

[Cantbecanit]

First format of a new sata drive requires a sata driver to be installed, you do this as if you were putting Windows on it, sata driver needs loading when Windows asks for 3rd party driver, set your bios to ide as well for now.

The sound sounds like the PC post trying to complete, however it seems to do it still after the post bleep as well, I can't help on that, but I would do the format and driver thing and see if that stops the noise.

[baio]

I'm not sure if I understand. How do I install sata driver on a disk that's not detected?

It seems to me that the disk is just faulty and I should return it. However I don't want to return it if I'm not 100% sure it is because it may not be the disk's fault.

[AlanM]

Did you try our SATA troubleshooter yet?

Troubleshooting

[Cantbecanit]

The Serial ATA motherboard drivers are not properly loaded (especially in Windows XP/2000)

When you install Windows XP/2000 on a drive that will be the boot drive (ie, the C: drive), when it comes time to install Windows, the drive may not be detected.  Here is the proper procedure:

1. Insert the Windows XP/2000 CD/DVD into the CD/DVD drive.

2. Power down the computer.

3. Mount and connect the Serial ATA hard drive.

4. See here for an interactive flash tutorial illustrating this.

5. Power up the computer.

6. For some add-in SATA controller cards, you will need to press the F6 key to install drivers as the Windows setup screen launches.
   
   -You may never have noticed the "F6" option before, since it happens at the bottom of the screen and is visible for only a few seconds during a standard install. What you most likely encountered during the setup process was a screen that came up, informing you Setup could not find any drives installed on your computer and that it could not continue, much like the screen sample below:
   
   (Click to expand)
   

7. To be able to hit the F6 button, you must restart the Setup process, and watch the bottom of the screen after pressing Enter on the "Welcome to Setup" screen. There will be some moments of files being loaded, and then you should see a message appear that says "Press F6 if you need to install a 3rd party SCSI or RAID driver". This message will only stay on the screen for a couple of seconds, so press F6 as soon as you see it appear.

Here's the link if you want to see the tute

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=168595&Hilite=#2

[baio]

Yes, I've done all of that but the installation still doesn't want to detect the disk.

Of course I didn't have the floppy drive, so I had to integrate those SATA drivers from my mainboard manufacturer (ASUS) with the Windows XP installation that I have and then burn another bootable installation disk. I did it all with nLite - http://www.nliteos.com/. Before, just to be sure, I also installed all the necessary drivers for my ASUS mainboard (including the Marvell SATA 6Gb/s controller driver) from Windows XP level installed on my other disk.

Today I tested this disk on an iMac (Mac OS X Snow Leopard). I've put it into a USB 2.0 docking station and again (the same as on PC boot screen described in my first post) it was detected as a 4.14GB Generic External Media hard drive in Disk Utility. Disk Utility also refused to format it. The reason it gave me - Disk Erase failed with the error: POSIX reports: The operation couldn’t be completed. Cannot allocate memory.

What's also funny, at power-up the disk makes exactly the same click beep sounds in the docking station as on my PC.

Then I've put another old SATA disk in the docking station - Western Digital Caviar SE 80GB (WD800JD) and Mac OS X had completely no problems recognising it. I will test this old disk today with my PC and if it works I will return the Barracuda as faulty.

To be completely clear I have two other 320GB Seagate Barracuda IDE disks connected to my new motherdoard via SATA adapters and the system had no problems with detecting them. But I can't compare anything here because of course those are not regular SATA disks, but IDE disks with SATA adapters.

[fzabkar]

When a drive powers up, it needs to load its firmware, logical-to-physical LBA-CHS translator, defect lists, etc from a reserved System Area on the platters. If it is unable to do so, then it sometimes reports a bogus capacity and generic model number, in your case 4.1 GB and ST_M13FQBL. These data are obtained from the flash memory chip on the PCB. I suspect that you will see the same information if your remove the board from the drive and power it up on its own.

[baio]

Thanks for the help. The drive was faulty and I replaced it with new one which is working fine now. I think you were right fzabkar. When I compared the circuit boards on both drives, I noticed that the paths that are all perfectly silver on the new drive, were corroded (or burnt?) on the faulty one. So advice for all: check your drive's circuit boards

[JRBDULPINA]

nice information..though i am not involve with the conversation, i learned a lot..i almost buy 2tb caviar green...but after resolving your problems, i will stick to barracuda green..more power to seagate..

[Cantbecanit]

If you want to run an O/S and game etc avoid green drives altogether regardless who makes them, buy 7200 rpm drives for this.

[VeganFanatic]

I have been reading lots of threads here an on the other vendors site to learn as much as I can about the various issues.

For some reason I see a lot of green series disks seem to not last long.

I hope its not as bad as the threads here would have you beleieve. I was considering the series for bulk backups and archival storage.

My current system disk is 7200.12 and its OK for performance. I was looking to use the LP disks on my server for backups.

[Cantbecanit]

You are correct VF, the ECO DRIVE from all manufacturers seems problematic and prone to fail early, I only have one and it is used as swappable storage, one noticeable thing about it compared with a normal 7200 rpm drive is it only weighs about half what the 7200 does, mines a WD 500, it's not played up yet, but I suspect the larger the drive gets the more likely it will.

[VeganFanatic]

Are there any particular failure modes that stick out more than others?

Mine is the 7200.12 750GB, so far it seems to be working as expected.

I have several disks on my web server, and Live Mesh automatically backups up.

Saved my data several times now. No more fear of faulures.

Most of my disks are Seagate