FreeAgent Products

[freedoom]

I just purchased a freeagent xtreme 1.5tb and have it hooked up thourgh esata.  After a few hours of inactivity the drive is no longer visible in my computer or under disk management in computer manager.  i have to unplug the power from the drive to get the computer to recognize it again.  it seems to be fine on USB and firewire.  I would like to be able to use it with esata, has anyone had this issue before?

[fzabkar]

Here are a few SMART diagnostic and benchmarking tools.

HD Sentinel (DOS / Windows/Linux):

http://www.hdsentinel.com/

HD Tune:

http://www.hdtune.com/download.html

CrystalDiskMark:

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

smartmontools (Linux/Windows):

http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools/files/

http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki/Download

See this article for SMART info:

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

Comparison of S.M.A.R.T. tools:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_S.M.A.R.T._tools

List of SMART tools:

http://smartlinux.sourceforge.net/smart/dload.php

[freedoom]

What good will checking the SMART do when i can't see the drive?

[fzabkar]

You wrote that your drive is visible until after a few hours of inactivity. Maybe it is performing off-line SMART testing during these periods. If it has trouble reading a particular sector, sometimes this causes the drive to freeze and hang up. A SMART report that has a lot of reallocated or uncorrectable sectors may be indicative of such problems. Of course you will need to retrieve these data when the drive is visible.

[freedoom]

Ok so none of the SMART tools recognize the drive on USB or Firewire.  It is recognized in eSATA but will not pull up any smart data.

The drive does go to sleep when plugged in on firewire and USB but it stays recognized by the computer and wakes up when i try to access it.  

I found a review of the drive that says "eSATA connection needs reset after idling" http://reviews.cnet.com/external-hard-drives/seagate-freeagent-xtreme-1/4505-3190_7-33300464.html

so is this an issue with this model?

[fzabkar]

Your findings are interesting.

I don't have any answers, but it does seem strange that an eSATA connection doesn't return any SMART data. I would have thought that eSATA was essentially a "pass-through" connection, whereas USB and firewire would need to go through a USB/Firewire-to-SATA bridge chip. Certain bridge chips are known to be unable to pass SMART commands.

If you connect via USB, then the following Microsoft utility may help you identify the bridge chip:

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/USB_IDs/UVCView.x86.exe

The following program may detect your enclosure:

HDDScan for Windows Ver. 3.2:

http://hddscan.com/

[freedoom]

OK, HDDScan was able to check the SMART via USB but says "SMART error" when trying it through eSATA.  everything came back green. 

UVCView did identify the drive as a freeagent extreme when plugged in through USB.

I did also find a setting in the seagate manager for an idle time out, this setting is also only visible when connected via firewire or USB and not eSATA. I think the problem may be the drive not being able to wake up from sleep while connected to eSATA. I turned off the idle shut down and i will see what happens.  

[freedoom]

ok, it looks like it was the idle time out and the drive not being able to wake up on eSATA.  is there a firmware update for this drive that might fix this?

[fzabkar]

Is it possible that the USB/firewire-SATA bridge chip inside the enclosure knows how to wake up the drive, but that the motherboard SATA controller and/or OS does not?

My reading of the ATA-8 command spec suggests that a drive can be woken from standby in either of two ways. It can be woken by any command that requires it to read or write, or it can wait for a specific Set Features subcommand.

You can retrieve the drive's feature set and current configuration by means of an ATA Identify Device command. This returns a 512-byte block of data. SeaTools for Windows automatically captures this information in a file with a name of the form "your_drive's_serial_number.ATA". If you can upload this file to a file hosting service, perhaps one of us could decipher it for you.

It would be nice to know exactly which bridge chip is in your enclosure. An Internet search may then reveal known issues. Of course opening the box would void your warranty ...

[Bamba]

Guys,

I have almost the same problem except that my FAExtreme 1.5 wont even start when starting the computer with the esata/esata cable...

Can this be happening because of my BIOS setup ?  

The secondary SATA control setting is set up to IDE ... and I have the option of using RAID ... 

Motherboard: Intel DX48BT2

Tkx !