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

[mencius]

So I bought one of these drives on April 5, 2011. Have been hearing these clicking sounds from the drive since. ( forum link )

Then I saw this thread. My drive has the CC32 firmware. I could not stand the clicking sounds and the thought of it suddenly not working, so I bought a Hitachi drive.

I have now disconnected the drive from my computer. Now what should I do with the Seagate drive? Wait and hope a fix comes out before the warranty runs out or use it for non-important files and hope it dies so

I can RMA?

I'm still using a Barracuda 7200.10 PATA 320GB which is working fine. I really hope this situation gets resolved soon, else I will not buy another Seagate drive again.

[Cantbecanit]

I'd like you all to read this http://smb.media.seagate.com/2011/04/storage-means-business/need-a-3-0tb-ready-motherboard/ I'm pretty sure this is why some of you are having problems right now, get ya glasses on and have a nosey, hope it sort's out for at least some of you.

p.s, I know this is for 3TB support, but the same principle may apply if you have a 1.5 or 2.0 drive riding on a 4 year old board, always check for a new bios when the tech leaps forwards.

[reptyle]

What puzzles me is why the problem seems to emerge after 1-2 months. I don't know much about drive electronics but a failure that occurs after 1-2 months seems to me it could be hardware related.

If it was a firmware issue, wouldn't it tend to not work right from the start or fail intermittently under certain conditions?

I suppose it's possible that a repeated firmware incompatibility/failure of some kind, could trip a threshold trigger which shuts down access to the drive altogether - perhaps to prevent damage.

[Cantbecanit]

@ reptyle, very valid point you make, there is also a possibility of degredation due to incompatiblities and people trying to squeeze the PSU to the max, I'm very wary that a 6GBTs drive is really going to work properly on an old board myself, it would be interesting to know if those who switch brand and get the same capacity drive are or aren't having any issues a few months down the line, it's very easy to come in all guns blazing (sometimes rightly after all these things cost hard earned coin) without having any comparison's to draw from, one of the biggest problems I see is ppl running $900 PC's in a $10 case with no real cooling.

[reptyle]

What would also be interesting to know is, what's happened with the replacement drives people have received back from Seagate?

This thread has been running for three months now and I imagine people have been sending drives back to Seagate, receiving replacements and running them on the same hardware?

Or perhaps they have replaced the Seagate drive with another brand on the same hardware?

[Michael1958]

I know I was angry at the start but new hardware failing will do that to you, so I thought I would be a little more constructive and describe the issues and possinble solutions I have used.

I built my computer from scratch 2 months ago all new parts and well overspec'd for what I built to plan for the future.I placed the Seagate st2000dl003 in the computer with 2 other drives both Samsung. The computer operated flawlessly for approximately 7 weeks, I shutdown the computer one night woke up the next morning and these are the symptoms I received.

1.Computer booted through Bios and then reached Loading Windows screen but would not proceed any further multiple boots would not resolve issue.

2. Checked Bios and computer was recognising both Samsung drives but not the Seagate.

3. Disconnected Seagate drive and the computer booted flawlessly.

4. Reconnected Seagate drive and returned to not booting.

5. Disconnected one Samsung drive and connected the Seagate the computer booted flawlessly but on checking the Seagate drive was not recognised at all.

6. Connected the Seagate into my other older PC and exactly the same issues as above.

7. Connected the Seagate into a USB controller the controller was recognised but not the Seagate drive.

Replaced all power cables and SATA cables.

All components are less than 6 moths old, all drivers are up to date running Windows 7 64 and 32 bit.

Hope this helps someone!

[gkchamp]

I have just received a replacement for the first drive I RMA'd. To recap:

Bought 4 2TB for my Qnap NAS.

1 drive DOA. I think the heads were locked as it wouldn't spin up, just screech.

1 drive working flawlessly.

2 drives individually intermitently failing. The NAS reports them as "Drive plugged out" and they don't appear on the system. To get them going again I have to pull them out and plug them back in, then run a diagnostic test. After that they work ok until the next failure. Note they don't fail together, only ever 1 at a time.

I received the RMA drive (brand new replacement) back a couple of days ago. I have the 3 drives in my NAS. 2 & 3 are the faulty ones so I replaced 3 with the brand new replacement from Seagate. I rebuilt the RAID (28 hours!!) and all was good again. Then you guessed it, drive 3 failed. This time it was a bit different because the drive was still recognised it just had an error. I ran a diagnostic test and it came back online.

[Cantbecanit]

Hi Michael and thx for the reply, this gives me a good chance to examine the thing I think may be causing it, this is the Seagate drive you have  http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prods/components/harddrives-internal/sataover1tb/seagate/st2000dl... ? and this is the Samsung one http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prods/components/harddrives-internal/sataover1tb/samsung/hd204ui.... ?

What I really need from you now is your Motherboard number.

@ gk, could you also list your MB and exact Seagate drive number's, doa one was probably dropped somewhere along the line before you got it tbh.

Thx Cantbe.

[Michael1958]

Hi Cantbecanit,

Correct on the Seagate drive, the Samsung drive is HD103SJ 1TB Spinpoint.

The motherboard is Gigabyte P55A-UD3R Award BIOS F9 05/03/2010

Processor is i5-760

Michael

[Cantbecanit]

Thank Michael, I've had a snoot and found this http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3438#bios bios is up to 14 now and USB3 issue's are being addressed in 3 updates, while USB is USB and a Sata port is a Sata port the 6 gbts factor and the USB3 not being fully bombproof yet would lead me to suspect that the MB is the real problem, I run one myself in a 775 variation with USB3, it's my second Gig board and although they are great boards and are reliable they do seem to have problems with AHCi and Raid ime, the Samsung drive is a normal Sata 2 drive which is probably why it doesn't play up at all, I also use these myself as well and know they are good drives.

I would now go for the bios update, use the live function if you want, but I find the best way is to download the file and execute it through the desktop program, check if any of your chipset drivers are outdated as well, Gig seem to update these quite a lot as well, looks like a nice rig you have there btw.

Not sure if you know about this  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/31/intel_coougar_point_chipset_flaw/

Spoof up here... 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yEQSX4biR4&feature=player_embedded#at=41 scoot to 30 seconds to see the comment on the sata ports.

Lemme know how it goes.