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

[apoklyps3]

there is no logic in what you say about the HDD software that charges you money . Seatools is free but "charges" you 10x more money by lying like a piece of crud that your HDD is ok when it isn't and Seagate only accepts Seatools tests. I'm preety sure that if i take this drive out of the computer, smash it with an axe. throw in the stove for 3 hours and then putting it back Seatools will say ...hey , everything is ok...no worries. [edit: keep it on topic and no political] so probably i'll have to wait untill the drive dies completly...hope i still have left any warranty when it happenes to get it replaced . i have 2 other Western Digital in my Computer, one is 3 years ol, the other 4...health 100%, never had a problem with them. the joke is on me.

[Cantbecanit]

There's no joke on anyone mate, a HDD can go bad, they aren't bulletproof and they are a degradeable media with moving parts, I've recently had to low level an 11 mth old Samsung Spinpoint, this drive had had hardly any use at all, all the rest I have are reported 100% still, and they are mostly of the same series, so do i take the attitude that all Samsung drives are bad, of course I don't, I've had a WD fail on me after 3 weeks before, does that stop me buying a WD drive, no it doesn't, I was just unlucky, there's also the fact that hotswapping doesn't always do the drives any favours either, especially if they are not swapped out properly, there are other variables that contribute to a drive failing as well, this can be the hardware it works with, or the sort of use it gets. Now, with Seatools it's not a tool to get Seagate off the hook, with Sentinal, HDDpro etc you pay for the use of those programs, who has more to gain reporting your drives bad?

Now right now these are your choices

1 - Bin it and forget it

2 - Low Level Format It

3 - RMA it

4 - Take it back where you bought it and ask for a refund

I can't say have your money back because it's not my call to do so, but I know what I would be doing with it right now, and in 5 hours time the problems would be gone.

[apoklyps3]

who has more to gain reporting malfunctioning drives as perfectly sane? Seagate does. They don't have to fix or replace partial defective drives, wich of course means loosing money. There should be a law agains this. A neutral 3rd party should handle the diagnostics not the seller. All of the above software can be used free of charge for a period of time, so they gain nothing from me diagnosing my drives at this momment.

1. probabily my only possible choice since Seatools says...hey your pc is freezing because of this piece of garbage , but don't worry everything is ok

2. low level fixes  bad sectors not drives with mechanical errors

3. can't...gotta wait for the drive to die completly to do that, otherways seatools will say all is 100%. hope it won't torture itself like 90 year old man untill my remaining 2 and a half years warranty goes away and after that die

4. can't refund it

[Cantbecanit]

Ok, I understand your frustration, but those HDD utilities work on averages, it reads the FW and decides from there, if you don't trust Seatools look for a utility from WD,IBM or Samsung that will test any drive and test it with one of those, Samsungs ESTools program is great, but you need to check if it will do other brands, regarding the drive speed, have you tried the latest drivers for your MB and GC, and bios update, your specs look ok but I don't know the real age of the MB, as it's a 1TB drive your board might pre date it, i.e board born before drive was conceived, it's possible you have a missing driver or simply an outdated one, check all this and update and report back.

I know it's easy to conclude Seagate would release a program to get them off the hook, but that simply isn't the case.