I wish I knew a little more about Windows and Drives and such, but I don't. I posted in this thread, and a couple of others, a while back. I've been delaying RMAing my two bad drives (one for the second time) hoping Seagate fixes the problem. I'm somewhat relieved to see that we are no closer now than we were a few weeks ago. I was beginning to think it was just me. Sticking with the same "20-30 posters" and"millions of drives" line. You could shut us up pretty quickly with real statistics, but those haven't come, so I'm betting they do know they have a problem.
In any event, I want to try to be productive, as compared to the Seagate staff, so I have an idea for anybody that knows anything abot these drives or the various operating systems (btw, I currently rate EasyEEE's power problem as a 3:2 favorite as to what's killing these drives, but my experience has led to to another idea too).
Any chance we're seeing prolific failure due, basically, to the size of these drives?
Here's why I say that. As I mentioned, I have 3tb on the bench, waiting for Seagate to figure this out. Storage needs aren't going away, though, so I bought a 1 tb Hammer Morespace drive at MicroCenter two weeks ago. I very quickly started seeing similar, but not exactly the same problems with the drive. One of the first signs that these Seagate drives were going to crud out, for me, was weird directory nonsense. I would open the drive, and see the top level folders, but they would all appear empty. Unplug and replug, and maybe it would work for another day, but then the same problem recurred. Eventually though, the delayed write failure with the $mft reference kicked the drive and it would croak. When I started to see some directory wierdness on my Hammer, I immediately started looking at brand-independant possible reasons for this problem. Any of you who have done this have probably found websites like http://www.gibni.com/windows-delayed-write-failed-solved and http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330174. I implemented the workaround found in the microsoft article "Workaround: Increase the number of page table entries". The Hammer hasn't died yet - but if my theory is correct, the damage could already have been done.
If you read that Microsoft article it sounds to me, in layman's terms, like these drives (and maybe particularly large transfer (in my case 100's of GBs at a time)) to these drives could tax and ultimately overflow the essential directory functions of windows and, therefore, corrupt that portion of the harddrive that tells the drive where everything is located (essentially what I understand the $mft file to at least partially be). Now, I don't know if or how this kind of problem could manifest itself on Macs, or how this eventually leads to the clicking which I've seen in two of my three dead drives (it's possible the third just isn't "dead enough" yet). But, it's a potential theory that could explain why Seagate thinks their drives are fine, but those of us in the real world are pretty sure they aren't. I don't know, maybe it's the kind of thing you'd expect Seagate to look into and see if it could be at the heart of the problem (or at least causing some of the failures they are seeing) - but let's stop kidding around, we all know that's not going to happen. But to all you intrepid drive owners, who some day want to use these things for something other than a coaster (the water rings will do more damage to my faux wood finished desk than to these POSs), perhaps this notion sparks some ideas. Did you, for example, really tax it on load in a way that probably is more than you've ever moved before (theoretically tripping a page table limit)? Or, in contrast, do any of you with a dead Seagate 1.5tb, have othe 1tb+ drives that you filled in a similar manner but are working without any of the issues that led to the demise of your Seagate POS? Anyway, something to chew on. Best of luck to all of you who aren't (yet) in our boat.
[Edited in compliance of the community rules and regulations.]
Message Edited by BradC on 02-16-2009 09:16 AM
