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

[Cantbecanit]

@ Spcxx

Here are the facts:

-some users experience these sounds even with drive just powered on (without attachment to ANY COMPUTER)

-users experience these sounds under various OS, even under pure DOS without any drivers (me personaly)

-there are sound records available where all users recognizes `their familiar and hated sounds`

-disabling APM miracleous cures this

Now that is the sort of thing that is helpful and welcomed in a reply, so keep up that sort of thing, it also looks like you are a re-seller of sorts so your customer feedback will be of use, and I'm not an employee, I just help out here and do some product testing.

@ cmerc

I'm not saying you aren't genuine, I'm saying it's possible someone saw this and thought I'll play a bit here, plus your username can be read as SMIRK which is another thing the net players use to get off on, so please don't take it personally, like I said I don't and can't know either way.

@ Everyone else whose since posted, the last reply wasn't for you anyway, but if it was as simple as a FW mod to disable APM it would be issued by now, I'm thinking that disabling it has maybe thrown up other issues and rather than have another thread in a few weeks times with my drives dead as the title they are looking right into it to get right first time,

For anyone worried about long term effect I would suggest you don't use the drives until a fix is issued, that is what I would be doing now if I had one, on the up I have another latest gen Seagate drive and that features APM but no chirping, and that's why it has to be established whether it's the drive or the conditions it's being used under, you have to remember there are about 20 of you having issues right now, by rights if they are bad the rma process should be mega busy right now with the amount of units sold so far, but to my knowledge it isn't, anyway if an issue is found it will be fixed for you but that doesn't happen overnight and so far iirc this problem seems to be 5 working days old from when I put it infront of the right eyes.

[cmerc]

@ Cantbecanit:

Oh I wasn't taking anything personally, just wanted to represent AMD users here. I know it's impossible to verify for sure the specs each consumer is using but it would seem kinda pointless to me to lie about this. I mean, I really like this hard drive so far, it is fast like everyone says and the last thing I want to do is replace it if this is a non-issue. The only reason for my last post was to give more information, that being that not only Intel users experience the noise, and if that helps Seagate solve this problem then that's great. I also PMed AlanM my serial number.

Also my username is based off my real name. I'm too old to get into this internet trolling business.

[AlanM]

Thanks to everyone who has PM'd their serial number(s) to me so far.

Everyone else may feel free to send theirs in as well. 

[XenonKilla]

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AlanM wrote:

Thanks to everyone who has PM'd their serial number(s) to me so far.

Everyone else may feel free to send theirs in as well. 

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Any ETA on when there will be a solution released? A Week, a month, a year???

[AlanM]

Well, with respect, asking for "a solution" presupposes that there is some sort of systemic problem. The evidence for that is far from conclusive at this point, but that's the whole purpose of collecting these serial numbers - to research and find out whether it is indeed something that is coming from our end. 

[XenonKilla]

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AlanM wrote:

Well, with respect, asking for "a solution" presupposes that there is some sort of systemic problem. The evidence for that is far from conclusive at this point, but that's the whole purpose of collecting these serial numbers - to research and find out whether it is indeed something that is coming from our end. 

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Gotta love that "corporate talk" lol.

Alright so any timeframe on if we can just get some kinda firmware update that disables APM? I don't see what the big deal, I mean if people wanna permanently disable their APM the why does that matter? Last I checked Seagate didn't send us these hard drives for FREE so seeing as how we paid for them it only makes sense that we can do whatever we want to them. Why not just release something that is USE AT YOUR OWN RISK kinda thing? heck you already got my serial numbers, just send me a firmware update that disables APM and then you can go ahead and add my serial numbers to your WARRANTY VOID LIST somewhere. I could care less about a warranty. If these drives break I'd much rather toss them in the garbage and go buy something better than to waste my time sending them in for repair and dealing with a buncha corporate bullcrap!

[DJ Mike]

A couple of questions spring to mind:

- Can we get a confirmation on whether or not disabling APM is likely to be harmful to these drives in the long term? From what I've read about it, it seems this is mostly a power-saving measure designed to make HDDs more eco-friendly, but it would be good to get an affirmative that it isn't likely to have other adverse effects.

- Is the 'chirp' noise likely to be anything to do with Seagate being forced to remove Automatic Acoustic Management from its drives owing to the patent suit against them a while back?

[Cantbecanit]

I can't say for sure but I can't think of any reason why disabling it would damage it, I'd be more concerned with the physical noise damaging it myself.

AAM shouldn't be the cause, but I'm glad you highlighted the law suit, and as you'll know the company has to obey that ruling.

[Glottiz]

I read that disabling various power management features is actually better for hard drives. This is by no means a confirmation, but I had APM disabled via HDDScan for a month now on my ST3000DM001, chirping is gone and nothing bad happened.

[Ryle]

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Cantbecanit wrote:

@ Ryle

We don't know for sure it's the APM causing it, just because turning it off stops it doesn't mean it's actually that doing it

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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...