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

[jbock]

I have a K8N MB (SATA-I, 1.5Mb/s) and installed a ST3640 (also from Newegg - common theme?) - thankfully I have not moved my system over to it yet.  Same problems as I see in this thread - worked flawlessly for a week or two (without 1.5Gb jumper), then started getting flakey (BIOS does not see).

When BIOS sees the drive right away, system will boot. If not, XP will hang (booting off old ST3120 drive) unless I boot Safe mode.

When XP boots, drive works fine - Seatools finds no problems, nor does XP disk check.

I have installed the 1.5Mb jumper, no difference.   And bad news -- according to Seatools, my drive has SD35 firmware...

I have been impressed with my old ST3120 drive (flawless for 3-4 years now) - just need something bigger!   I can RMA to Newegg, but replace with what?

[dSTeVek]

jbock - I noticed last week, Newegg stopped offering this drive.  Maybe they will trade up for you.

I RMA'd mine back to Seagate and am waiting on the replacement.  I was hoping to get one with the updated firmware (SD35), as I thought this may have solved the problem. 

[cpasmafaute1]

Hello,

I'm French, sorry for my English.

I have same problem with  St3640323AS 640gb sata (bluescreen, and HDD not detected on reboot).

My motherboard is a gigabyte P35 DS3R with the last bios.

The firmware of the HDD is SD13...

[markk82]

did anyone try to replace the logic board of a harddrive which is not recognized by the bios anymore? does it help?

[Zenbird]

I have the Seagate ST31000340AS  1TB Harddrive since August 2008. The drive was running fine perfectly until yesterday. And it disappeared. I have tried the following:

1. Different computers with different operating system, Vista, Windows XP and Linux. No operating system can find the drive.
2. Even the BIOS can't find the drive.
3. The harddrive sounds normal, doesn't sound like anything is broken so I suspect it's not a platter/head issue but a circuit board/firmware issue.
4. I have tried external enclosure, no luck.
5. I have no RAID.
6. I set the jumper to 1.5GB, even tried different combination, still not working.

Based on what I read on this thread. The 640GB version seems to disappear randomly but you can still backup the data. For the 1TB version, when it dies, it dies completely, there's no way to backup your data.

And this is not a random quality issue. It seems that any of these drives, if used for some period of time, will die eventually. I guess not many people has the knowledge to detect the harddrive problem. Even if they can, still not many people stumble upon this forum. I'm pretty sure it's a widspread issue.

I lost about one month of works. This is my last Seagate product. From today on, I will actively persuade people not to buy any Seagate product again.

[salfreds]

I learn that a newer firmware SD15 has been released in later batch.

Anyone received the firmware from support?

Message Edited by salfreds on 12-06-2008 09:30 PM

[idejsecr]

RMA'ed my 2 drives and received 2 more with the same issue. They're replacing with a different model drive this time. Hopefully they'll work better.

[dSTeVek]

I RMA'd mine back and received a replacement drive with the same firmware version (SD13). 

It has been installed for 5 days without the issue.  However, I beleive my orignal drive ran for a week or two without issue before it started disappearing.  I have very little trust in this drive.

Message Edited by dSTeVek on 12-09-2008 09:35 AM

[idejsecr]

My first set of drives lasted about 3 or 4 weeks before the problem first arose. I thought it was a fluke, but it happened again a few days later, then within a few hours of booting every time thereafter.

The replacements I got worked the first day. When I was restoring a backup on the second day, one of the drives went out. I shutdown and restarted and the other drive went out before it could even reboot.

I woner if it's a compatibility issue between the hard drive controller and these drives.

My motherboard is an ASUS P5Q with:

Intel® Southbridge (ICH10R)
- 6x SATA 3Gb/s
- Intel® Matrix Storage Technology with RAID 0, 1, 5 10 support

Marvell® 88SE6111
- 1 x UltraDMA 133/100/66 for up to 2 PATA devices

Silicon Image® Sil5723 (Drive Xpert technology)
- 2 x SATA 3Gb/s

Problem happens on the southbridge controlled ports and on the Silicon Image controller with AHCI on or off.

Message Edited by idejsecr on 12-09-2008 06:56 AM

[salfreds]

I am sure it is the Seagate problem as I clone the whole system to another manufacturer HD and no problem at all.

Weird enough that the Seagate only has problem as a system disk and can be detected normally as a slave disk.

Also, I am now using an ATI 790G with SB 750.

So it should not be an Intel or ATI problem.

And now it is more than 3 days that I haven't received a respond from Seagate tech support for a solution which was promised as within 24 hours.

I am going to spend half day time to send in the HD back to the agent and hope that I can get an exchange for a newer version.

Update: I sent it to my agent today and my disk was certified defective. I was told that Seagate had stopped shipment of all the 640G HD so that no new replacement was possible. The option offered was either upgrade or pending repair for 6 weeks.

Message Edited by salfreds on 12-10-2008 05:07 PM

Message Edited by salfreds on 12-10-2008 05:11 PM

Message Edited by salfreds on 12-11-2008 01:25 AM

Message Edited by salfreds on 12-11-2008 01:27 AM