Seagate Barracuda & A slower system

[BouncingSoul]

My HDD is failing. I bought a new one and plug it in and everything is slow. Almost stopped. I checked my documentation and I know my MB supports SATA at 3.0gb but to be sure I also jumpered the drive to run at 1.5. Neither works. I have tried multiple SATA cables and multiple SATA ports on the MB. It's all the same. The system boots, it takes forever and a day to detect my drives but it finds them (even the new one) eventually. It boots XP but SSSLLLLLLOOOOOOWWWWWLY. I run the program that came iwth the drive (Seagae DiscWizard) but it wont' detect my new drive, same thing with Windows Disk Management. I think I'm going to just take it back and get a different brand but I wanted to see if anyone could think of a reason for all of this. I mean it's just a HDD, nothing complicated!

 

[trukkmann]

Sounds like the hard drive controller might be running it in PIO mode instead of DMA. Open Device Manager and click the plus sign (+) to the left of IDE/ATA/ATAPI Contollers. Right-click the Primary IDE Controller and select Properties, then click the Advanced Settings tab and check to see which mode it is running in. If in PIO mode, change it to DMA. Also, some mainboards have different controllers for different SATA ports, might want to try a different port and/or consult your mainboard's documentation.

 

[BouncingSoul]

A SATA Device won't have anything to do with the IDE controllers.

 

[BouncingSoul]

Bad drive. I returned it and got another identical drive and it works like a charm.

 

[rotjong]

Seagate, unfortunately, seems to ship many drives with bad firmware and/or just defective drives. The problem is that sites like NewEgg have a stockpile of the bad drives and rather than checking serial numbers and returning them to Seagate they keep them and sell them and people end up with one of the bad drives. I have 5 Seagate Barracuda drives. 4 are the 750 GB drives. 3 are perfectly fine. 1 came had the bad serial number combined with the bad firmware version but due to being it manufactured in another location it actually wasn't one of the "bad" drives. I've had no issues at all with it. I recently got a 1.5 GB Barracuda and it has the bad model number. I contacted Seagate. They won't send you the firmware unless you are actually experiencing a problem because a firmware update can brick your drive and they don't want to replace any more drives than necessary. I have been using the drive and had no issues so I'm not going to worry about updating the firmware.

When they are doing something stupid Seagate makes good drives. Their main problem is shipping drives with the wrong or bad firmware. Worse yet some drives simply slip through their quality control and are DOA on arrival or once installed the heads grind on the platter. In the case of these last 2 points it can't be ruled out that shipped didn't cause some of the problems.

I'm extremely happy with the performance of all my Barracuda 7200.11 drives.

As you discovered you got one of the bad drives. Listening to your description just further makes me know that my 1.5 TB drive while it has the apparently bad model & serial number on it that it isn't bad.

I'm glad you got the situation worked out. It's just a huge pain in the butt. 🙁

 

[X-Istence]

I recently got all 1 TB drives from Seagate from Newegg, not a single one has had issues. They are all working like a charm in my RAIDZ setup that I have with OpenSolaris. The performance is also kick ass.

 

[rotjong]

I recently got all 1 TB drives from Seagate from Newegg, not a single one has had issues. They are all working like a charm in my RAIDZ setup that I have with OpenSolaris. The performance is also kick ass.

The problem is that NewEgg has a big stockpile in their warehouses. Take a look at the reviews for the 750 GB and 1.5 TB drives. You'll see complaints and mentions of the bad firmware. Go to the Seagate website and look in the forums. You'll see mention of the bad firmware.

Yes, you can get very nicely priced drives from NewEgg but it's a gamble whether you'll end up with one of the "bad" drives. I got all my drives in the area of $100 and I got them all with free 3 day UPS. Due to my location compared to one of their shipping points that means I get the drives the next day.

As far as performance, I wouldn't go back to WD. WD were great drives but power consumption of the Seagates are comparable to the WD equivalents, I believe the Seagate performance is better, and Seagate has the 32 MB cache while WD is still dragging its heels.

I believe Seagate drives, overall, are better. I just believe the quality control situation sucks. I also have to say that the Seagate customer service is also lacking. I put in a support ticket about my 1.5 TB drive the day I got it. I received a reply to my ticket just shy of 4 weeks later. There's some really solid support. 🙄

I'm happy with my drives and it appears that regardless of model numbers, firmware versions, and serial numbers that I haven't gotten a bad drive because they are all performing beautifully however I can't help but have the thought stuck in the back of my mind that the drive may go south. I contacted NewEgg when I got my 4th 750 GB drive about the model number, serial number, firmware being the "bad" one listed on Seagate's site. NewEgg's reply was "Not our problem. Contact Seagate." Now, I love NewEgg's customer service. I dealt with them a lot due to some major issues with a system build I had previously had and they were beyond friendly and accommodating but when it came to a possibly bad HDD they didn't care unless it was DOA. It wasn't DOA so I was stuck.

Anyway, I haven't done any research on the 1 TB drives. I know there are issues with some 750 GB and the 1.5 TB models. The 1 TB drives may have gotten off lucky or you may have gotten lucky and didn't get any bad drives.

Long story short, I will continue to use Seagate drives and continue to purchase from NewEgg but I just wish that Seagate had better quality control and prevented these bad drives from shipping and that NewEgg didn't actively sell the bad drives that have sat in some warehouse somewhere that require a firmware update. It's a very unfortunate situation and makes all parties involved look bad.