Other External products

[chyaddo]

I believe there is a major problem in the firmware that I discovered almost immediately after using this drive. After putting your computer in standby for a few hours the drive will fail when reawakening. If you wait long enough, It will give you a message saying that USB device has malfunctioned and you will need to power down the drive and restart it for it work (unplugging and replugging it in does not fix it). This is VERY annoying. I'm very disappointed Seagate could put out a drive with such an obvious problem.

Note: I am using Windows 7 Professional 64 bit.

If anyone knows a fix or workaround let me know. Thanks!

[Guven]

I Agree... I have exactly same problem!

[fairce]

I recently purchased a Seagate 2TB ST320005EXA101-RK external hard drive. I am having the same problem described here. After I come out of sleep mode, the computer is unable to recognize the drive. I get a message that the USB device has stopped working. The temporary workaround seems to be to unplug the drive and then plug it back in. This seems to work, but is a royal pain in the neck. I need a resolution.

Computer: HP Pavilion Elite e9180t with Intel i7-950 CPU and 9GB main memory. The drive is connected directly to the back USB port. I must concur on thinking that this is a firmware bug.

[Jman2704]

*bump*

I'm experiencing the same issue with my ST310005EXD101-RK which is connected to Windows 7 x64 running Media Center 7.

When the computer comes out of sleep mode the drive spins up but it does not wake up correctly.  If I select the drive via my computer either the drive will not read or the contained drive folders are there but 50% show empty even though the drive still reports the correct space - the files are really there.  If I power down the drive and repower it up the drive is then fine with all files and folders showing,

This as you can imagine is playing havoc with my Media center.

I will try disabling the drive sleep setting from 15 mins to never with FreeAgentCN and I will uncheck the box that says: "allow computer to turn off this device to save power" in the universal serial bus controllers root hub config but I'm not convinced either of these things will fix the issue.

If anyone has experienced this issue and knows a fix please do let me know.  Thank you.

[Jman2704]

Update.

Seems like I have fixed the problem by changing the computers sleep mode in the bios from S3 to S1

[xroadie]

Mine is even worse.  The drive disconnected itself while being written to.  It has happened twice in two days.  Is there a firmware update or do I need to send this fine unit back for a refund?

WinXP32 and I have no problems with other USB drives.

[Jman2704]

For info the S3 fix was not a long term fix -  S1 is really required for a proper power saving system. 

What I have done now is put the drive on an external power switch which I turn on when I take the system out of S1.  I switch the external power off when I put the system into S1 standby.  Not the best option but it works!.

@Xroadie.  If you disable the USB write caching option on the drive it should not corrupt the data if it disconnects whilst writing.  

[prescotr]

ologies for bring this one up from the dead, but is there any more news on this issue. I suffer from the same problem wth my 1TB expansion drive.

I have tried setting the drive to never sleep in the Seagate utility and the relevant USB root hub.

I am running Windows 7 64bit.

If this is currently being looked at by Seagate and will be resolved in the future, I am happy to put up with it for the time being, othewise, I guess I will have to cut my losses and chuck it in for a different model.

[AlanM]

It sounds like the drive can't wake up as fast as the computer.  I'd suggest you not put the computer to sleep like that, or if you experience the problem, just unplug the external drive (you can just unplug it from the connector on the drive rather than getting down on the floor to unplug it from the wall), wait a few seconds, and plug it back in.

[prescotr]

Apologies if I sound rude, but I wouldn't really classify "don't use that  feature" as an acceptable fix. The 5 year old 2.5" external drive (A Lacie) that the 1TB seagate replaced never suffered from this problem, so it isn't endemic to all external HDDs in Windows 7 64bit. If Seagate don't recognise this as an issue, then I would like to know so that I am not waiting around for a fix that will never come. This is a shame, as I have used Seagate drives for years and they have always been superb.