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

[milet]

First of all: I know this subject has been around this forum, but in the context of 1st gen Momentus.

I had a perfect system running Windows XP SP3 for almost 5 years. Then I decided to replaced my system drive with Momentus XT 2nd gen 750GB. Did a clone of an old drive using Seagate DiscWizard. Everything went fine and I enjoyed the speed of application loading. After one or two days the problems began. The system would freeze for two seconds (mouse in particular) then run ok again. After searching on the Internet I found out about problems with Intel chipsets, AHCI mode and SATA ports being connected bot not powered up. So I disconnected all unused SATA cables. The system run PERFECTLY for two weeks then freezes started again. I swicthed from AHCI to IDE mode and the system was running ok again. Then, after two days, freezes returned. And now it freezes again... Sometimes, I would suspend it for night and in the morning it returns to normal, working conditions, but as the day progresses, it gets worse. Well, maybe Seagate does like nights ;-)

So far my observations are:

1) this is definitely not a software problem - my system had been working for 5 years without any problems;

2) trust me: I definitely have no virus or malware

3) I'm pretyy sure this is not a SATA cable problem

4) the situations gets much worse after heavy I/O. I use an application which creates a 500MB Access database and after using it the freezes are more frequent

5) the freezes are less frequent if mouse is USB connected (with PS/2 they are more frequent)

6) SMART status is ok (critical RAW values are 0)

7) the system parition is not 4K-aligned (DiscWizard was supposed to correct this automatically, but apparently did not)

8) turning off AAM and APM does not help

9) based on behaviour I've described here, I suspect that there is something wrong with the SATA side of the drive. I think it starts reporting errors or timeouts, which in turn affect USB bus and other hardware controller. Because it happens after heavy I/O, I think this is the time when the drive's firmware does something with the internal cache (and when it does its job, the situations gets back to normal). I also have a strong suspition, that the SmartAlign technology has something to do with that.

10) clean install & formatting are not an option (too many applications to set up).

Now, I would be glad if Seagate took some steps to resolve the situations. At the moment the drive is unusable. And looking at this forum these are exactly the same symptoms, that had plagued many other befeore. I don't think it is impossible to reproduce them in lab! So, Seagate: please come up with a solution!

[Cantbecanit]

3 things come to mind

1 - Cloned O/S

2 - Driver issue

3 - Failing psu

Unless you do a clean install you are asking for problems, cloning a HDD O/S to a part SSD is never a good idea, different protocol's, same as trying to boot an Nvidia driven system with an ATi card installed.

[milet]

> 3 things come to mind

> 1 - Cloned O/S

Done that many times before. Besides, the system was working perfectly for two weeks after cloning.

> 2 - Driver issue

As above. Not to mention the fact, that only standard Microsoft IDE driver is in use.

> 3 - Failing psu

Definitely not. The symptoms would be different (freezes, BSODs etc).

> Unless you do a clean install you are asking for problems, cloning a HDD O/S to a part SSD is never a good idea,

Why? It's just disk sectors copied one after another and small change in partition table to acoomodate for different disk size.

>same as trying to boot an Nvidia driven system with an ATi card installed.

Done that too, many times.

Well, maybe I should mention, that I have 24 years of professional experience handling different computer systems and I can easily recognize obvious things. It's not one of them.

[Cantbecanit]

So it's the HDD then? has to be doesn't it?

Couldn't be your mouse is on it's way out

You may have a sw interupt

Still the psu could be going bad

MS update?

MB dying

Why is always blame the HDD, I have one of these and it's the best HDD I've ever come across, I rate it higher than my Agility which is a full SSD, how sure are you you don't have a virus, are your system temps within reasonable levels.

Easy way to resolve this, install HD Sentinal and post the report, if everything in it says ok it's not your HDD.

[milet]

> So it's the HDD then? has to be doesn't it?

If we exclude all other possibilities...

> Couldn't be your mouse is on it's way out

It wass the first thing to do: try other mouse. And there was no change

> You may have a sw interupt

Look: my system has been running for 5 years. The only thing I changed was system HD. Now it doesn't work well. So it's not a software problem.

> Still the psu could be going bad

Could be, theoretically. But I can run GPU-intensive (it's about 100W at full load) task for many days without problems. HDD uses just a few Watts. Go figure...

> MS update?

I don't use autopdates, I update manually.

> MB dying

I has few MB dying and symptoms were different. Would certainly get some BSOD

> Why is always blame the HDD, I have one of these and it's the best HDD I've ever come across, I rate it higher than my Agility which is a full SSD,

> how sure are you you don't have a virus, are your system temps within reasonable levels.

For 24 years I had never had a virus in my system.

Temperatures:

CPU: 36C

MP: 38C

HDD: 37C

Why is the HDD to blame? Because it's the only thing I changed in my system. So it's logical thing to blame it.

> Easy way to resolve this, install HD Sentinal and post the report, if everything in it says ok it's not your HDD.

Prefere not to use commercial software, but of course I can provide SMART stats (which, BTW, are ok):

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   109   099   006    Pre-fail  Always       -       21403072
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   098   098   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always       -       43
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   036    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   072   060   030    Pre-fail  Always       -       19133542
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       234
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   097    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always       -       43
184 End-to-End_Error        0x0032   100   100   099    Old_age   Always       -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
188 Command_Timeout         0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
189 High_Fly_Writes         0x003a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022   063   056   045    Old_age   Always       -       37 (Min/Max 36/38)
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       2
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       3901
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   037   044   000    Old_age   Always       -       37 (0 22 0 0 0)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x001a   025   025   000    Old_age   Always       -       21403072
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
254 Free_Fall_Sensor        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

[Cantbecanit]

Ok, try this then, I assume you still have the original drive with O/S intact?

Wipe the 003 clean and fresh install a new O/S, if it doesn't do it then we know it was a conflict somewhere.

I can't believe someone who is used to tech has an O/S that is 5 years old, the junk you must have on it must be simply incredible, the cleaner progs no matter how good still don't get everything, anyway I still think the cloning has done it in the end because it's the same thing when cloning an IDE to SATA drive, they are different techs and the O/S expects the set up to remain the same and when it isn't it plays up,

Anyway it's up to you, take my advice or don't, but I'm not wasting anymore time on this because I'm 99% certain I've already nailed what it is, where's Wisey when I need him.

[WiseDrive]

Simple answer: Driver incompatibility. Solution: Clean install with latest drivers. Nothing wrong with the HDD as far as I can see.

[milet]

> Simple answer: Driver incompatibility.

WHICH driver??? The disk is in IDE mode, there is NO special driver!

> Clean install with latest drivers.

Yes, and then spend two weeks installing, configuring and tweaking software while the work to be done waits and waits forever.

[milet]

> Wipe the 003 clean and fresh install a new O/S, if it doesn't do it then we know it was a conflict somewhere.

Sadly, during two weeks in which the drive was working fine I created lots of docs and the new drive and original drive are now out of sync.

>can't believe someone who is used to tech has an O/S that is 5 years old, the junk you must have on it must be simply\ incredible,

Obviously, you don't know how to kep your system clean. I keep mine clean - and it was working perfectly for 5 years,

>the cleaner progs no matter how good still don't get everything, anyway I still think the cloning has done it in the end

>because it's the same thing when cloning an IDE to SATA drive,

Well, the cloning was done with Seagate DiscWizard, they advertise it as a perfect solution...

[Cantbecanit]

Sorry I can no longer assist you, you don't listen to anything you are told.