Momentus XT, Momentus, Momentus Thin, MobileMax, and other notebook drives

[juhanuus]

Hello,
 

I bought a retail 320GB Momentus XT for my laptop in april this year and in that time it had problems twice!
First sign of trouble was just a few months after install. The drive started to "chirp" and "freeze". It had firmware SD23 so flashed to SD25 and the problems were gone. Good!
Another couple of months pass without incident until last week when I started to experience very strange "lag" in applications and normal Windows operation (typing, opening folders/dialogs etc). Windows or app would freeze intermittently for 1-2 seconds - no chirping sound this time though.
 

Flashed the drive to SD28 but this time it didn't help. Bad! In an effort to fix the issue I also updated BIOS, reinstalled Windows using latest drivers, overnight memtest86, SeaTools tests.
Nothing helped. Except I noticed that when the SeaTools Long Generic test was running there was no "lag"! Now im constantly running the test so I can get some work done - already lost 2 days to this thing!
 

Seagate, care to comment why the drive works when the SeaTools test is running?
 

Systems specs: Acer 5750G, Core i5 2410, Intel HM65, 4Gb DDR3 1333, Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit SP1, Intel Rapid Storage Tech installed.

Although I was happy with the product before this last issue I really can't afford to waste time being Seagates beta tester. As soon as I find a suitable replacement drive the MomentusXT goes to the dealer RMA.

Unless there's a working firmware release in the coming week or so.

Thank you for your attention

[KrypteX]

Hi,

You should try a full scan in HDTune, to check if there are no reallocated sectors or being reallocated.

Check in SMART if you already have reallocations.

See here another user, having similar experiences as you, in post 46:

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-Momentus/SD28-Available/m-p/129094#M3931

He won't try going back to SD26...

Please keep in mind that SD25 and prior firmwares DO HAVE file corruption issues, see this thread, posts 37-40:

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-Momentus/Momentus-XT-corrupting-large-files-Linux/...

It may be possible that you have a corrupted SSD region on your drive.

Possible solutions for you:

1. Disable AAM and set APM=128

2. On a SD26 or SD28 drive, perform a full format, reinstall (or restore from image) windows. Then, if this won't help:

3. Force Flash back to SD26 or force-reflash to SD28 (and NOT to any pre-SD26 firmware). Then perform a full format (write zeros with a DOS-based tool, like DBAN). Only then reinstall Windows.

It may be that SD25 corrupted some of your windows files... in this case, you might consider a full reinstallation of Windows after a full format (write zeros in the Erase tab of HDTune... or DBAN).

It may be a good ideea to read this thread too:

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-Momentus/Momentus-XT-NCQ-disabled-by-default-on-To...

Hope you'll find the fix... please keep us informed.

[Panzer]

funny, i have exactly the same problem has you !!! And exactly the same experience : when performing a full scan of the disk, everything is fine !!!! Like if the disk work perfectly only when he's at full spin speed or semthing like that....

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-Momentus/Never-EVER-defrag-a-Momentus-XT/td-p/1283...

And for now, no solution..... reformat the drive or force firmare SD26 are the last solutions i didn't try

[KrypteX]

Zero-fill the drive (leave it on SD28 for now). Let's see what happens. Also make sure that AAM=Disabled and APM=128.

[juhanuus]

KrypteX, thanks for the input but heres the thing. I already did a clean install for Windows (thats what i always do just to be safe).
As suggested in other threads before I tried the AAM/APM settings aswell.
 

Only thing I had'nt used was HDTune and heres (picture in attachements) the first thing I saw (actually the End to end error value is also visible in CrystalDiskInfo but that does'nt highlight errors so I missed it).
 

Not going to force flash to SD26 since I'm not willing to risk anymore damage to the drive if I screw it up.
Further more consumers should not be expected to undertake such procedures. In my opinion the drive is broken - as such its going back to the retailer (going for Western Digital VelociRaptor as a replacement).

Sad really since the drives performance has been excellent - untill now that is.

[KrypteX]

juhanuus, you are running into exactly the same problems as Panzer did, check posts starting from 108 in this thread:

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-Momentus/UNIFIED-THREAD-Momentus-XT-spreadsheet/m-...

and mikele, in post 40 in this thread:

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-Momentus/SD28-Available/m-p/128840#M3908

Please see a possible solution in post 118 here:

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-Momentus/UNIFIED-THREAD-Momentus-XT-spreadsheet/m-...

Regarding The End-to-End errors (parameter B8 in SMART), wikipedia says:

"part of other vendors' IO Error Detection and Correction schemas, and it contains a count of parity errors which occur in the data path to the media via the drive's cache RAM"

If there were data corruptions with pre-SD26 firmwares on your drive, I'm sure that the parity errors would at one point appear... These End-to-End SMART errors are probably a good sign for file corruption (hence damaged parity checks) in firmwares SD24 and SD25.

It is thus of primary importance to perform a full zero-fill of the drive (with SD26 or SD28 already in place) and then again a force-flash to SD26 or SD28.

You should also read my 2nd post in this present thread.

Keep us informed, we really hope to find a solution...

[juhanuus]

I'm sorry KrypteX but are you actually reading my posts? I've already tried the suggestions except force flashing to an older firmware since I'm unwilling to risk further damaging the drive by my ineptitude. Also if you scroll up and read my first post you would realize that the problems began before I flashed the drive to SD28 so why would an older firmware help me?

[KrypteX]

Of course I've read your posts, but I think I edited some of my message AFTER you replied... (and haven't seen it, sorry).

Reading your first post, I'm sure that your problems appeared when flashing to SD25. After a while you got file corruptions and End-to-End errors in SMART (you probably didn't realize).

Could you please tell us if you did all the steps I propose in this thread ? :

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-Momentus/UNIFIED-THREAD-Momentus-XT-spreadsheet/m-...

[juhanuus]

Everything except force flash. If somebody can explain in detail what benefits force flashing would give me (since I already flashed it to SD28) I might consider wasting another day of my life to this fiasco. I would prefer a technical description and not a generic layman's "its just better" explanation.

[KrypteX]

OK... imagine what happened when you flashed SD28 on a corrupted SD25 drive... Are you perfectly sure that the SD28 firmware you flashed (forcibly or not) turned out well ?

Isn't it obvious that zero-filling the drive and re-flashing to SD28 would at least clear up some doubts ?

You can't reflash SD28 to SD28 without doing a forced-flash, since the updater will tell you that "firmware already installed".

I'm not saying that you should go back to SD26, not at all (I have SD28 myself). I'm just saying that SD26 or SD28 are good choices, since data corruption issues ARE solved. pre-SD26 will give you only headaches.

I believe most of the problems with Momentus XT appeared when people had at one point SD24 or SD25 firmwares, which corrupted their drives (but only after a few months of usage, since the corruption is a relatively rare NCQ-related issue).... then, even after an update to SD26/SD28 the data on the drives REMAINED corrupted !... hence the ongoing troubles...

So... if people don't want to flash to SD26/SD28 + wipe(zero-fill) the drive + force-reflash to SD26/SD28 + do a clean reinstall.... the problems will stay. And I won't beg them...