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

[Satummoo]

I bought the drive over a month ago from newegg and bought it thinking that the firmware was the only problem with the drive.  I recived a CC1G drive and flashed it to 1H right when I got the drive.  Now, a month and a half later, i'm starting to get strange freezes that's really making me worried about the life of the drive and my data.  Sometimes when i'm playing a game, it'll freeze for 10 seconds then snap out, or when i'm browing firefox, everything will freeze.  I feel like there is nothing to do except RMA my drive but I have no other drive as a backup to use as a boot drive (only an external backup drive).  Is there any fix or way to confirm that my drive is OK?

[hung]

Same here.  I bought it just a week, it came with the firmware CC1H and used it for a bout 10-15 min and then "The sounds of click....click....." it delayed for about 5-10 seconds then stop and then resumed play then 5-10 min later.....here we go again....HELP....HELP.....HELP

[Railee]

I have the same model, same firmware (CC1H out of the box). My drive started freezing as you describe, then one day windows could no longer find it. Never to be seen again. If anyone is getting freezing, back up NOW!

[fzabkar]

You may want to test your drive with a SMART diagnostic tool such as HD Sentinel:
 
http://www.hdsentinel.com/dl.php

This article describes the SMART attributes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.#Known_ATA_S.M.A.R.T._attributes

Look for reallocated and pending sectors. 

[seriousam]

I have a ST31000333AS 1T sata driver with firmware CC1H and I have some problems too...

First of all it sometimes starts clicking and them I have a blue screen and the pc shuts down.

Some particular times,for example when I run tools(SiSoftware Sandra) to see info of that driver It just freezes and then again I have the blue screen.

And finally I have  just tried the HD sentinel and I saw that this driver has 93%health with only 50days of use instead of my old 5 year old ST3200822AS,which has 99%health with 645days of use.

I'm really afraid of losing my data...and I'm generally too disapointed by that drive...

[fzabkar]

AIUI, clicking and freezing is often symptomatic of weak read heads or bad sectors.

I'm betting that HD Sentinel shows several reallocated and/or pending sectors.

Hopefully your bad sectors will eventually be replaced with spares.

[seriousam]

I hope that you are right.I'm planning to have a surface test tonight because it takes quite long.Until then I have a question...

In my HDD's description it says that the acoustic level can be adjusted but when I try to do it,I always get an error "error occurred while setting acoustic level.The hard disk controller or its driver do not support this function"

Is there any other way to do it?

[fzabkar]

Page 31 of the product manual (page 37 of PDF) states that "Advanced Power Management (APM) and Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) features are not supported".

Barracuda 7200.11 Serial ATA Product Manual, Rev. C:

http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/desktop/Barracuda%207200.11/100507013c.pdf

However, the product manual may not be accurate, especially if a firmware update has introduced or removed a particular feature.

To confirm whether certain features are supported, you need to capture the 512 bytes that are returned by the drive in response to an ATA Identify Drive command. SeaTools for Windows records these data in a *.ATA file, where * is the serial number of your drive.

http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/

Otherwise, use CrystalDiskMark:

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html

See pages 121 and 124 of the following document.

Working Draft AT Attachment 8 - ATA/ATAPI Command Set (ATA8-ACS):

http://www.t13.org/Documents/UploadedDocuments/docs2008/D1699r6a-ATA8-ACS.pdf

Words 83 and 86 indicate whether Automatic Acoustic Management is supported and enabled/disabled.

If you need help analysing your Identify Device data block, upload the *.ATA file, or your CrystalDiskMark report, to a file sharing service. One of us will be able to examine for you.

[seriousam]

I didn't really undertand how to analyse it.So here you are...

http://hotfile.com/dl/28568420/3930b94/renamed.ata.html

I have renamed it to protect my serial number.

Here is my log file(S.M.A.R.T test always fails)

--------------- SeaTools for Windows v1.1.1.0 ---------------
5/15/2009 1:45:55 AM
Model: ST31000333AS
Serial Number: *******
Firmware Revision: CC1H
SMART - FAIL 5/15/2009 1:45:55 AM
Short DST - Started 5/15/2009 1:46:10 AM
Short DST - FAIL 5/15/2009 1:46:12 AM
SMART - FAIL 11/21/2009 2:04:30 AM
Short DST - Started 11/21/2009 2:04:40 AM
Short DST - Pass 11/21/2009 2:05:56 AM
SMART - FAIL 11/21/2009 2:08:00 AM
Identify - Started 11/21/2009 2:08:05 AM
SMART - FAIL 11/21/2009 2:09:15 AM
SMART - FAIL 11/23/2009 2:32:42 PM
Short Generic - Started 11/23/2009 2:33:25 PM
Short Generic - Pass 11/23/2009 2:35:49 PM
SMART - FAIL 11/23/2009 2:52:12 PM
SMART - FAIL 2/14/2010 7:10:01 PM
SeaTools Test Code: 6EAC9640
SMART - FAIL 2/14/2010 7:13:29 PM
SeaTools Test Code: 6EAC9640
Short DST - Started 2/14/2010 7:14:39 PM
Short DST - Pass 2/14/2010 7:14:54 PM
SMART - FAIL 2/14/2010 7:34:10 PM
SeaTools Test Code: 6EAC9640
SMART - FAIL 2/14/2010 7:35:25 PM
SeaTools Test Code: 6EAC9640

Message Edited by seriousam on 02-14-2010 10:00 AM

[fzabkar]

SeaTools is a pass/fail test. It doesn't tell you why SMART failed. To see which attribute was responsible for the failure, you need a more comprehensive SMART diagnostic such as HD Sentinel or HDDScan.

Here is your Identify Drive data block in text format:

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/ST31500341AS.txt

Here are the relevant AAM words:

Word 83 = 0x7F01 (see page 121 of ATA8 standard)

Word 86 = 0xBE01 (page 124)

Word 94 = 0xFE00 (page 128)

The current values of the above words indicate that ...

The APM feature set is not supported
The AAM feature set is supported
The AAM feature set is enabled
Current Vendor’s recommended AAM value = 254 (0xFE)
Current AAM value = 0

See page 231 of the ATA8 spec for an explanation of the AAM levels. The "minimum acoustic emanation level" is 0x80 (= 128). The spec states that "the current AAM level setting shall be preserved by the device across all forms of reset (i.e., power-on, hardware, and software resets)". This means that, if your Windows driver is preventing you from changing the AAM level, then you should be able to do it in DOS mode. The change should then survive a power cycle. HDAT2 or Hitachi's Feature Tool should be able to set the AAM level. You may need to configure the BIOS for IDE compatibility mode or legacy mode in order for the utility to see the drive.

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2006.01.20-Hitachi-Drive-Feature-Tool/

http://www.hdat2.com/