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

[DJ Mike]

I'm certainly willing to believe it's the APM feature that's behind the chirping noise. Silent PC Review conducted power measurement tests in their review of this drive and in the moments where the drive's power output dropped, they observed the chirping sound. It seems logical to conclude that the drive parks its heads as part of APM to save power, and that parking the heads causes the noise. Of course, whether parking the heads is even worth the power saving is another matter - pre-parking, the power usage sat at 6.4W, and after 50 seconds it dropped to 3.9W. Not the least bit significant in a desktop environment.

In any case, it's fair enough if Seagate want to look into the matter carefully. After all, the chirping noise could be an unexpected side effect that wasn't supposed to be there. In the meantime, it sounds like manually disabling APM is the way to go - just a shame that if you want to RAID these drives in H/W you're a bit stuck...

[Mortenhoe]

I'm from Denmark.

I have a brand new 3TB harddrive as the first mentioned in this thread. It's connected to my Zotec 880G mobo (AMD system) as secondary harddrive SATA 6Gb/s. I get the same "chirping" sound.

I don't give a **** about warrenty, and I don't wan't a replacement, if I just get another one with the same problem, I just wan't my  current cheap harddrive to survive as long as possible.

So can anyone tell me how to disable the APM permanently? I don't care how it's done. I just know it must be possible. Even if i have to rewrite the firmware myself. I just need a pointer how to do it. Or where to find out.

Edit. I really like this hard drive, don't get me wrong. GREAT transfer speed, and AWESOME price. I would even buy several more if I could only disable APM.

[Mortenhoe]

I fear that a firmware update, with APM disable is out of the question. This would be the same as to admitting to a systemic problem with this hard drive series, which most big corporate company's would never do, because it could affect sales in a bigger perspective.

Just my cent. No trolling or flaming, please. I don't feel like discussing it. I'm only on this forum for a solution.

[XenonKilla]

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Ryle wrote:

What else should it be ?

You clearly hear the chirping when the head goes parking after 10-20seconds HDD idle. Now click on a file and the head chirps again when you access the file. Sometimes idling you hear the head randomly go parking, access, parking and so on. You also see the load/unload cycle count rise pretty fast with APM enabled.

You clearly hear clicking on other drives with APM enabled too. But in these cases its a silent click not this pretty loud metall scratching noise. Drives like the Samsung F3 don´t eben have a APM feature and doesn´t click at all.

And then there is my question again. Why is APM enabled in the first place on a 3,5" HDD ? I think I know why seagate is so "bitchy" about it. Disabling APM would increase the lifespan of the drive (considerably less load unload cycles), good for us but less profit for seagate...

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haha no kidding that's what I been saying. I honestly think that hard drive manufacturers have run outa ideas so they are just board and trying out new things such as this ridiculious power management! I mean it's been known for YEARS that leaving a hard drive on is much better than turning it off. I mean how much power is this parking of the head crud really saving? Most people (myself included) have their computer set to sleep after an hour of inactivity. So who the heck gives a crud about putting their hard drive to sleep any sooner than that? If you wanna save power then go get a darn SSD drive! Too expensive? Then go get a darn hard drive that is labeled as GREEN or ECO FRIENDLY! I don't see ANYWHERE on the box to my drive where it says anything about being eco friendly or anything else that would lead me to believe that this drive is geared more towards power management and NOT performance! I mean seriously, even Western Digital labels their power saving drives as GREEN and their performance drives are BLACK! It's up to the end user on what they wanna buy!

As soon as WD drops a BLACK 3TB drive I'm going right back to where I came from. Never used anything other than WD for years but just recently ran outa room on my 1TB drive and needed to upgrade. This Seagate was the only drive I could find locally that had a high capacity and good performace specs. I didn't even think it was gonna be this much drama owning a Seagate drive but after having this issue and then seeing all the other issues with Seagate drives around the internet, No Thanks! Seagate needs to get their $hit together! They been in the hard drive business for wayyyy tooo long now to be having these kinda stupid issues!

[Cantbecanit]

Right, from what I can see the STBD3000100 is the same drive as the ST3000DM001 but the DM is OEM so carries a 1 yr warranty and the STBD is the Retail version of it with a 5 year warranty, so if that is true we are talking about the same drives but serial'd to show which warraty is applicable (if anyone knows different please do say)

My ST750LX003 has this APM function but doesn't make any noise which is why I can't say it's the APM causing it, it certainly looks like it is from the evidence here, but as it seems to be on all DM series drives it can't be related to disk size, so could you tell me of any Motherboard utilities you are running (the ones that install from the MB set up disk)

@ Xen, you're doing it again, typing nazzzzzzzty, I know you've paid a lot of money for the drive and you are entitled to want solutions, but they aren't going to arrive any quicker by keeping on dissing the drive, as for going back to WD, I suggest you check their forum out as well before you do, they have problems as well, and their drive that matches this one is 35% more expensive to purchase, now be patient and just turn it off each time, I know it's a pain but if it's a temp fix for now it's worth it, and fwiw I agree with you about the APM, a drive like any electrical component is better off not being switched in and out like a light bulb, personally the only power management I like is the Windows one, the minute I see eco written on anything I think, oh my gosh another save the iceberg effort inspired by tree hugging political suits.

[Kalroth]

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Cantbecanit wrote:

My ST750LX003 has this APM function but doesn't make any noise which is why I can't say it's the APM causing it, it certainly looks like it is from the evidence here, but as it seems to be on all DM series drives it can't be related to disk size, so could you tell me of any Motherboard utilities you are running (the ones that install from the MB set up disk)

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I highly doubt that it is related to disk size or motherboard manufacturers or anything outside the Seagate drive. It is most likely a bug in the bios version used for these drives -- we'll likely see a bios update once the Seagate guys has confirmed this.

This isn't the first time it has happened either; in fact quietHDD was made because of Seagate's Momentus 5400 drives having the exact same problem 4 years ago, and it has happened with a lot of other drives in the meanwhile -- just google for "seagate chirp" and you'll find posts that goes 5-6 years back.

So can we please stop beating around the bush and acknowledge (or at least strongly assume) that the error is on Seagates side. Again.

[Cantbecanit]

I can't acknowledge anything Kal, I don't have one myself and I'm like an ocean away from the lab and not an employee anyway, what I will add though is I have an ST33000651AS drive that doesn't have APM and it has deffo made this noise before and I remember because it was a donated drive to me and I thought oh ***t that didn't last long and I can hardly RMA it can I, it doesn't do it now but it's not in the config nor linked to the same O/S as it was back then,

Thats why I'm trying to get as much user info for the lab guys, APM being switched off may well sort it but it doesn't mean it's the Seagate FW causing it, it could be a conflict caused by a MB program or a program that goes to go live and then doesn't, like a false start at the races, we haven't considered viruses yet (highly unlikely) but it still needs consideration, then there is also the possibility the drives aren't installed correctly, I know that comment will cause shrieks of horror but it does happen, even to me, first time I cleaned mine I ended up with a 3TB that was 750GB, I had to go read my own thread to remember what I'd messed up on, lol.

Do you think the APM on my XT is different to the APM on the DM's or would it seem logical that Seagate use the same method for all drive APM? (btw I don't know the answer to that but I can't imagine there being different versions of this function)

In the end I think one of these drives is going to have to come back in for testing, the best one would be a storage used one that chirps then that way the lab can rule out O/S's and can also format it clean and see if it still does it afterwards, but that's down to agreement between a willing user and the company, I can't call that one myself,

Infact time may show all it was was a bad sata lead, my ST33000651as managed to get a sata lead pull away from the drive slightly and now I get a Sentinal report that com error happened 16500 times, it's not increased since so I can only assume it was the sata lead, and thats the downside of a case that has no cable management, rectified now with one that does, so without wanting to get shot down again, I would make sure you have a secure connection at both ends, because broken transmission mean broken signals, and one best way to do that is a twisted up or sharp bend sata cable, so keep em as straight as possible and use latching ones.

[XenonKilla]

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Cantbecanit wrote:

@ Xen, you're doing it again, typing nazzzzzzzty, I know you've paid a lot of money for the drive and you are entitled to want solutions, but they aren't going to arrive any quicker by keeping on dissing the drive, as for going back to WD, I suggest you check their forum out as well before you do, they have problems as well, and their drive that matches this one is 35% more expensive to purchase, now be patient and just turn it off each time, I know it's a pain but if it's a temp fix for now it's worth it, and fwiw I agree with you about the APM, a drive like any electrical component is better off not being switched in and out like a light bulb, personally the only power management I like is the Windows one, the minute I see eco written on anything I think, oh my gosh another save the iceberg effort inspired by tree hugging political suits.

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See that's just it, I don't need to check out WD's forum, you know why? Because NONE of my WD drives have any issues!! I don't base my opinions off of what others say or think, I go by MY OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCES! Me personally have NEVER EVER EVER had an issue wtih ANY of my WD drives and I been using them for the last 14 years!!! Now after all those years I finally decide to pick up a Seagate drive and BAM ISSUES! I don't need a blog or a website to tell me what they think or what issues they have had. I can clearly make decisions based on my own personal experiences!

I know darn well there isn't gonna be any super quick fix to this issue. heck I been saying that from the very start page on the very first couple of pages when people were asking if they should return their drives or wait around. Only a fool would think that Seagate is gonna take action on this matter ASAP! We all know how these big corporate companies are. heck look at Crapple when the iPhone 4 came out and there was and still is clearly an issue with signal loss when holding the phone. They tried to play it off like there wasn't an issue yet it's funny how the 4S doesn't do that! Unfortunately for them though that issue couldn't be resolved with a simple firmware fix. This stupid APM issue on the other hand CAN be resolved with a simple firmware fix which makes it even more pathetic to think how long it's gonna take Seagate to get it handled.

Like I said before it is what it is. I'm merely keeping an eye on this as purely entertainment at this point. As soon as WD drops a 3TB Caviar Black drive then it's a wrap for me. Backups or not, my data is much to valuable to be risking with these funky seagate drives. There is absolutely NO EXCUSE for a company this big who has been making hard drives for this long to be putting out hard drives that have these kinda stupid issues. PERIOD!


(Edited: Do not evade the profanity filter.) 

[Cantbecanit]

btw, I used to say the same thing of Samsung when they made their HDD's, I was a right Spinpoint fanatic, and none of them have let me down, but they've had plenty of issues themselves with FW troubles, and normally on a 1TB+ drive, I've only ever had 2 WD's, one lasted 2 weeks and the other I use to store on, but that doesn't make me want to go over there and start demanding answers, heaven help you if you ever buy a new car, they aren't always perfect out of the box either, anyway if this comes back that there is nothing wrong with the drives you'll just say that Seagate is covering up so what's the point, all I can say is with the exception of a Samsung equiped Free Agent all my Maxtor and Seagate drives have been good, ok one did have a FW problem but it took me 15 minutes to sort that out and the drive is still in perfect condition now, as I'm not able to see into ppl's rooms I can't really say if it's the drive or the user, I would imagine Seagate has shifted in excess of a million of these worldwide and so far there are 20 ppl with a problem, what sort of % is that in the larger picture, nobody has considered their MB might have a problem, nobody has thought perhaps I have a dying rail in my psu, I've helped 4 users elsewhere not return a new MB, all of them had no patience with the boards setting themselves up, and one has even had the front to try and blame me and his bual bios was dead apparently, what actually happened was he got impatient, hard reset and then failed to see the back up bios was then having to kick in, had he just cleared his cmos it would've been problem solved, anyway he dropped back in on his dead MB to let me know my advise wasn't any help to him, so I'll let him sort it himself next time as he's now an expert judge and jury freak.

Oh well, I guess I'm done in this thread now, I'll leave you to com with customer services in future

Have a nice day

[DJ Mike]

I must confess, I'm not ultra fussed at the timescale for fixing this, I'd just be curious to know the outcome.

I essentially have a permanent fix in place as far as I'm concerned. I don't have to do anything manual every time I reboot or sleep my machine - I simply installed CrystalDiskInfo, disabled the APM on both my 3TB drives, then set "Resident" and "Startup" in the options to keep CDI alive all the time, as well as the option "Auto AAM/APM Adaption" to ensure that APM gets turned off if it is switched back on.

Now, my drives are completely silent, all the time. And that's been across numerous reboots and sleeps - I haven't touched a thing since setting CrystalDiskInfo and its related options in place.

Obviously my solution is Windows based, and doesn't work if you're using these drives behind a RAID, but I figure there's still a lot of people who could fix it this way - so I suggest that this is where you could start if it's bothering you.