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

[Ironclaw]

---

AskTheLeaf wrote:

To make sure that the firmware update is appropriate for your drive and won't brick it, I'd recommend contacting Seagate's technical support.

It's free of charge and easy process:

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/about/contact_us/

---

Agreed. Only download SD26 from other sources as a last resort. Get it from Seagate if you can.

I have received two replies from Seagate Global Customer Support on August 23 in response to my email to Seagate Technical Support on August 20. I stated in my email that "I intend on publishing sections of any reply to this [email] on the Seagate Community Forums and other websites", so here are the replies with names removed:

---

Thank you for contacting Seagate today. Give me some time to get with the developers so I can see what is going on with the SD26 firmware. Because of your discoveries we need to do a little investigating. We do very little testing with Linux. Let me see what I can find out and if further testing and a public release of the firmware is needed. I am attaching the ISO file. I will be getting back with you as soon as I hear back. Seagate is very customer oriented and we appreciate you bringing this to our attention.

---

(I have verified that the SHA-1 checksum of the bootable update CD for SD26 is indeed b7b0c7e1b9529925b0364b2cf19a62d608b58082.)

---

We usually do not make firmware available publicly. It can do more damage then good in the wrong hands. We receive a lot of bricked drives from improper updates.We like for consumers to contact us, so that we can verify that a firmware upgrade is needed and beneficial. Alan M. is our moderator for the forums and he will be making an announcement on your thread. Again, thank you for bringing this to our attention. Our customers are the best, and a great source of information and usually the first to let us know when things are not working as they should. Allow us the chance to fix the problem.

---

Here is the full list of requests and questions that I included in my email to Seagate Technical Support:

---

Requests:

1) I would like to get a copy of the bootable update CD for SD26. Please include the MD5 or SHA1 checksum.

2) I want to see the changelog for SD26.

Questions:

1) Why is SD26 not publicly released?

2) Are there any regressions or incompatibilities in SD26 that Seagate knows about?

3) Has Seagate tried reproducing the problem with file corruption on Linux? If so, what were the results?

---

Request (1) and question (1) have been answered, but I would still like to receive replies for request (2) and question (2). I am assuming from the email replies that Seagate is actively dealing with question (3).

I will PM AlanM to ask if he intends to post a reply in this thread. It has been four days since the second email reply stated that "Alan M. [...] will be making an announcement on your thread."

[AlanM]

---

Ironclaw wrote:

I will PM AlanM to ask if he intends to post a reply in this thread. It has been four days since the second email reply stated that "Alan M. [...] will be making an announcement on your thread."

---

Yes, so I just spoke to the agent who told you that I would be making an announcement on this thread.

I am very sorry that he misled you; I don't have any news to announce. It would have been great if he would've checked with me before making some sort of solid statement about what I would say.

Please accept my apologies; I don't have any new announcement or anything like that.

[hokoonho]

I've just read this thread and shocked.

I have simular problem with Mac OSX.

When I install this XT drive to my Macbook Pro, I use Firewire 800 HDD to transfer my photos and videos to the XT drive, and I have got some large video files corrupted. I just thinking there should be some problem with the cable or somthing... but after reading this thread. I think I should try create large files and have a deeper test. 

[creston]

Well Alan, can you or anyone at Seagate at least confirm or share what you know about OP's Request #2, importantly: does SD26 regress?

I'm sure we all know how/where to get SD26 by now, but so we have it, now what? is it a bullet in six chambers? seven? eight? no bullet?

And although I know it probably won't address my problem (APM frequent parking causes noise), I'd like to think an upgrade is an upgrade in any flavour.

[NDLBox]

I picked some of these drives up to test at work, ordered about 2 weeks ago.  I installed in an ASUS eeePC to test Win7 for users and Linux for myself (really helped performance on the netbook, will try in a Lenovo X200/201/220 next) and, after following this thread, decided I would contribute.

I ran the test through twice... once overnight many times until the 200GB partition filled, once closely monitored for a few hours (16x) - no failures either time.  I used a 4096MB file on a USB thumb drive.

The drive shows model ST95005620AS and FW SD26.  OS is Ubuntu 11.04 Desktop 32-bit, uname -r output is 2.6.38-11-generic

I am going to run the test with a 8192MB file next for the rest of the day (it takes a long time to generate the files and calculate the hashes on the Atom).  Will report what I find.

[NDLBox]

I ran the 8GB test 18 times, no issues.

[Ironclaw]

---

NDLBox wrote:

I ran the 8GB test 18 times, no issues.

---

Okay, that's good, thanks. So far, all posts here are consistent with the hypothesis that there is a reproducible issue with file corruption on Linux on pre-SD26 firmware, but SD26 seems to fix this problem.

I have tried downgrading the firmware from SD26 to SD25 - the file corruption issue resurfaces, as expected. So for my current Momentus XT, updating to SD26 definitely has a causal effect on the file corruption issue. I have tested this on two laptops through both SATA and eSATA.

[KrypteX]

Ironclaw, i have several questions for you, if you don't mind:

1. Is it possible for you to reproduce the file corruption with SD25 under Windows ? I would like to try to reproduce the problem under Windows XP SP3 on a Santa Rosa platform, for SD26 and SD28, to make sure that at least these 2 firmwares are not prone to corruption (I don't want to try SD25, since several people showed that it clearly has the bug)

2. Did you try to reproduce the issue on another Momentus XT drive ?

3. I understand that SD26 fixes this bug, but what about SD28 ? Could you please check ?

4. Can you give us the firmware history for your Momentus XT drive(s)?

5. What kind of southbridge chipset have you tried the drive on ? Would it be an ICH8 ? that would be reeeally interesting...

6. Can you please check with HDTune or CrystalDiskInfo if NCQ is disabled or enabled on the SD26 drive ? The file corruption issues in SD24 and SD25 are clearly related to a bug in NCQ implementation. (You can check how in the Toshiba TD27 firmware, NCQ was disabled, in the following thread. I wonder why...):

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

OTOH, one doesn't get the file corruption issues on SD24/SD25 if the drive is connected via USB, since NCQ doesn't work through USB !

You can also check this related thread:

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-Momentus/Firmware-SD26/m-p/116446#M3547

7. Would it be possible for you to check the corruption issues with SATA 1.5 Gbps instead of SATA 3.0 Gbps ? (by using a jumper). In SATA 1.5 Gbps mode, NCQ is disabled...

Please see post 49 in this thread:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1008471&page=2

Thanks !

[Ironclaw]

---

KrypteX wrote:

1. Is it possible for you to reproduce the file corruption with SD25 under Windows ? I would like to try to reproduce the problem under Windows XP SP3 on a Santa Rosa platform, for SD26 and SD28, to make sure that at least these 2 firmwares are not prone to corruption (I don't want to try SD25, since several people showed that it clearly has the bug)

---

I'm afraid I can no longer test my Momentus XT because I am using it in a netbook. I also don't have a Windows license.

---

KrypteX wrote:

2. Did you try to reproduce the issue on another Momentus XT drive ?

---

Yes, I reproduced the issue on all three Momentus XTs that I tested (I only had one drive at a time - I RMA'd twice). I also tested a Momentus XT on three different laptops with the same result.

---

KrypteX wrote:

3. I understand that SD26 fixes this bug, but what about SD28 ? Could you please check ?

---

The file corruption issues seem to be fixed in both SD26 and SD28.

---

KrypteX wrote:

4. Can you give us the firmware history for your Momentus XT drive(s)?

---

I don't remember. I did a lot of forced downgrading and updating when I was testing the Momentus XTs. I remember I bricked one of the drives when I downgraded to SD25.

---

KrypteX wrote:

5. What kind of southbridge chipset have you tried the drive on ? Would it be an ICH8 ? that would be reeeally interesting...

---

Not ICH8. I have tested on Intel PM55 (integrated southbridge) and AMD Hudson FCH. (And one other chipset I'm not sure about.)

---

KrypteX wrote:

6. Can you please check with HDTune or CrystalDiskInfo if NCQ is disabled or enabled on the SD26 drive ? The file corruption issues in SD24 and SD25 are clearly related to a bug in NCQ implementation. (You can check how in the Toshiba TD27 firmware, NCQ was disabled, in the following thread. I wonder why...):

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

OTOH, one doesn't get the file corruption issues on SD24/SD25 if the drive is connected via USB, since NCQ doesn't work through USB !

You can also check this related thread:

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Momentus-XT-Momentus-Momentus/Firmware-SD26/m-p/116446#M3547

---

NCQ is enabled (as reported by hdparm). Yes, I also thought that the file corruption issues were related to an error in the NCQ implementation, because of Seagate's response in the second thread that you pointed out. Seagate has kept quiet here though, so I doubt we'd find out if we are right.

---

KrypteX wrote:

7. Would it be possible for you to check the corruption issues with SATA 1.5 Gbps instead of SATA 3.0 Gbps ? (by using a jumper). In SATA 1.5 Gbps mode, NCQ is disabled...

Please see post 49 in this thread:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1008471&page=2

---

Again, I can no longer test my Momentus XT because I am using it in a netbook.

[KrypteX]

Thanks for your reply, it is good to know that both SD26 and SD28 are corruption-free.

I've sent you a PM, did you get it ?