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

[WW_Dagger]

Hi, I will spare you the several weeks long worth of details and troubleshooting that led me to finding this problem and get right down to the issue.  

I have 2 Seagate Momentus XT 500Gb hard drives, a Corsair C300 256Gb SSD drive, an Asus Rampage III extreme mother board with an Intel i7-930 CPU, 6GB Mushkin DDR 1600 RAM, an Nvidia Zotac GeForce 480 AMP edition graphics card, a noctua CPU cooler, Corsair 1000HX modular power supply, and 20 years of PC troubleshooting background.

The C300 is my C: drive with Windows 7 64-bit on it.  The 2 Momentus XT drives are my D: drive in a RAID 0 configuration.  

I have a problem when running programs (applications show it, but games make the problem shine) where the PC will frequently and suddenly freeze up for 3-4 seconds at a time on a seemingly random time frame.  The hard drive light turns solid (on) during this freeze up and then every thing will return to normal after the few second "pause".  I read in a support forum of people with this same problem and one of them mentioned it could be that the drives are spinning down and the pause is caused when the PC access them to get data and has to wait for them to spin up.  

I have verified that this might be the case.  

Using Crystal Disk Info (http://crystalmark.info/?lang=en) I un-raid my drives, reboot, and turn off "AAM/APM" on each drive using the disable button in the program, reboot my PC with my drives re-raided in RAID 0, and the pausing problem is GONE.  Crystal Disk Info shows you the HEX setting the drives are set to as default and the new setting after you disable the Advanced Power Management and Automatic Acoustic Management features. (off=01h)  I have to un-raid my drives to do this because Crystal Disk Info will not recognize raided drives.

Now... My PC is good and happy until I power it off and back on.  After it comes on the pausing problem is BACK!  Using Crystal Disk Info with the above method I see that the original settings are back and APM is turned on.  I thus have to repeat the above procedure to fix this issue... every time I hard reboot or power off and back on.  

The problem also manifests itself in other normal activities, like when I click an internet link to download a file to my D: drive... wait.... wait... wait... wait... OK it finally decided to download!  (because the drives had to wake up)

I am certain you can replicate these results. There are many people in various PC forums that have complained about this issue and I would like to know what Seagate is going to do to fix it.  The problem makes using my computer unbearable.  

Please reply concerning this.  

-Thank you, Mike Carlson

[everrest]

suggestions: Check to see if there is a bios setting for amp/aam Try http://hddscan.com/ ( suppose to work with raid) You might be able to find a drive manual that details how to change the functions. Post back if you don't find a solution. Several of the guys know these things way more than I.

[WW_Dagger]

Ya,,, I tried hdscan per your suggestion and though it can scan the surface of raided drives, that's all it can do... I have to un raid them to turn off APM through hdscan then raid them together again...

My bios has no APM options for the hard drives so I'm out of luck there (Asus Rampage III extreme). 

It would be so easy for Seagate to fix this problem it seems.

[SteveInWA]

I opened a support ticket on another problem (BSOD, parity errors, etc), and was told today that Seagate believes that the unusually long start-up time of the drive is causing this, and they will be releasing a firmware update "soon" to fix it.  So, I'd suggest just waiting for that.

[WW_Dagger]

Well, after lots of troubleshooting with Seagate Support, this is their answer: 

Mr. Carlson,

Thank you for choosing Seagate. These drives are not designed or intended to be used in a RAID configuration, and the drives are working as designed. I would recommend using an ES or Enterprise drive, as the firmware in those drives are designed and better suited for RAID use. Basically, you are attempting to use the drives in a manner that was not intended, nor can be supported. If the drives pass Seatools and this issue only occurs in your RAID configuration, then the drives are fine.

Please let us know if you have any other questions. Thank you again for choosing Seagate and have a great day!

Bryan
Seagate Technical Support

So if you plan on Raiding these, be prepared to encounter problems.

[AlanM]

Here's the firmware update mentioned.

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-and/Firmware-update-Momentus-XT/td-p/56023

Important note - This update is only accessible for non-OEM drives.  Unless you bought your Momentus XT drive retail, the update will most probably not work.  Contact your OEM for more information on any firmware updates. 

[Samplex]

AlanM

I got the same problem only with i have no RAID. I put this drive into my Macbook Pro mid 2010 and experience the same problems! Delays! Delays! = beachballs

When the disk is spinning all the time no problems but when that APM/Spin down is kicked in and to do something on my Macbook i have to wait every time when the disk spins up.

The firmware update can't be installed using the Seagate bootable CD on my Macbook or via my Windows Laptop on AHCI or IDE mode under windows!

[WW_Dagger]

I tried that firmware upgrade, but it only results in a "Model Matched, No Firmware Matched!  Will not download firmware." message.  My drives are not OEM.  Serials are 5YX00BV9 and 5YX00EQH.  Current firmware version is SD22.  Hopefully the firmware is updated yet again to address this.

[WW_Dagger]

Manually forced a firmware update to SD23.  No luck. Frequent pausing and freeze ups still occuring when APM is enabled.  PC runs PERFECTLY SMOOTH with the drive's APM disabled.  Been going through a lengthly troubleshooting process with Seagate support, though it's about come to the point that I just don't want to deal with this any more. 

[kcstuff]

For OS X users this might help:

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-and/Firmware-update-Momentus-XT/m-p/60820#M716