Seagate 7200.10 drives

[486]

Out of 3 Seagate 7200.10 drives 2 developed problems. One was RMAed due to complete failure. Replacement unit has some strange noise but works OK. Another has loud clicks but works fine. I am thinking of RMAing it too.

Is it my bad luck, or is it new trend?

[Eagle Eye]

Honestly it seems to be a bit of a trend among seagate users including myself. I just purchased a Seagate barracuda 7200.11 1Tb and I am convinced that the clicks its making is not normal operation.

EE

[486]

I noticed your youtube video. Your hard drive is candidate for RMA, I think.

[Eagle Eye]

Don't doubt yourself you are correct. My biggest concern is when I get my intel system up and running and a month or 2 down the road the drive dies on me, nonetheless the RMA has already been submitted pending approval from DC it should shipped out by tuesday next week.

EE

[Cheator]

My 7200.10 320 gig is fine, and i think i have some Seagate 500gigs, all fine. doesn't mean yours is any good.

[DarKStar]

This is strange ! I was just going to post a new thread about Seagate myself. Honestly I haven't had any issues with Seagate yet, but know many who have.

It seems Seagate has inherited Maxtor's quality control issues - They have gone downhill since - Cutting corners, troubled economy, cutting more corners, alleged problematic factory ! There has allegedly been a big batch of those defective drives on the market and perhaps some may still be in circulation. In my opinion Seagate is denying any problems and keeping quiet - now from experience when testing Seagate drives I found that use of ECC is higher by millions than any other drives - Is Seagate keeping quiet, relying on the drive's robust ECC ? One thing for sure, quality control has gone down and which is why I always buy my HDDs in pairs - I never bother with RMA - it is a waste of time and money - you will get a refurb anyways and paying $25 for a drive that cost me nearly $70 is not worth it - and so far knocking on wood, have not had issues with Seagate, other than the abnormaly high ECC and other smart values. And to be honest, you can never rely on diagnostics or SMART anymore - even Seagate's own testing tool which is nothing more than sector by sector testing and seek testing and some internal SMART checks - it can test fine out of the box, but is useless in predicting 75% of failures, mechanical, controller, etc.

Second - people put a lot of abuse on those HDDs - those are consumer drives and are not built fo 24/7 OPERATIOn, (not to confuse with on idle) drives are definately not built liek they were before - I have old DiamondMax Maxtor drivse, the good type before all problems began, and were using 3 in my system for Video NLE, and they were abused with 12 hours of continuous operation daily, for months at a time, way exceeding their duty cycle rating, and they haven't failed me once.

That noise you hear is a trend with Seagate ! Loud klonking is NOT a good sign, clicks 24/7 is NOT a good sign either - I know that the Seagates run their own offline testing, so you will hear "seeking" type noises from time to tme as the drive - mine is very faint seeking noise, not as loud as some people claim it is, that would be something else totally different. If you use a SMART enabled software, run it, and in the SMART area, hit REFRESH, you will hear this same faint "seeking click" - Why some drives do it and others don't, might depend on the firmware. From tests I've done, this offline seeking does NOT affect and SHOULD NOT affect drive performance - and the sustained transfer curve is even - whereas if you notice spikes and sudden drops, slowdowns, etc combined with noise, that is not a good sign. Most people when they hear the noise think the drive is bad - which is why I buy them in pairs and make 1:1 backups immediately, so if 1 goes wrong I have another one handy. Always run the seatools and run the long DST - while this does NOT predict failure, it is good to know if your drive has surface problems, bad sectors, seeking errors, uncorrectable errors, from the start.

To all here who are having problems with their Seagates could you pst your firmware revision and date code that's written on the drive.

[Eagle Eye]

Okay take a look at these 3 benchmarks of the HDDs I am working with pay close attention to the random access time of the 2 seagate drives.

First the 2 Maxtor DiamondMAX10 drives in raid 0 with a 32Kb chunck size.

Second the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1Tb 32Mb cache

Third the Segate Barracuda 7200.11 500Gb 32Mb cache house in an Antec MX-1 external HDD case hooked up to a SATA connection

Fourth the segate Barracuda 7200.11 500Gb 32Mb cache this time not in a enclourse hooked directly to the motherboard via a sata connection. Benched using HD Tune pro

[DarKStar]

Holy shit ! :)

I have 4 of the exact same drives as you, same date codes, same firmware......those random access are absolutely horrible - are you sure this is being reported correctly ??? I get access times in the single digits - aren't those drives rated for 7ms, 13ms at most for random ? but 115 ? Your access time is horrible for the 4th one considering you had this directly on your motherbaord.

Can you use a WORKING hDD directly to your motherboard to rule out other problems ?, using the same cable ?

I also watched your video that noise - definately not normal........ I own quite a few of these drives, none of which make that noise - it sounds more like a loud "klonking" noise - Some of the drives I replaced for relatives and their friends, made that exactl sound before failing and being completly unreadable...."klonk-klonk-klonk-klonk". Sometimes I wonder if those drives get damaged during transit - All my older maxtors "LOCKED" the heads - they stopped making that for years, and the head frictions on the platters when the drive is moved. You can see that for yourself if you hold a HDD flat on your hand and rotate your hand on a horizontal axis back and forth, you will hear the head rubbing against the platter..........I'm wondering if poor shipped drives cause excessive wear on the heads....

Better have a backup of your drive - If any of my drives did that noise I would stop using them :D

[Eagle Eye]

Here's a shot of the long bench run 32mb on the Seagate 7200.11 500Gb, I thought things couldn't get any worse.

[Eagle Eye]

Heres a shot of seagate barracuda 7200.7 100Gb ATA 100 IDE drive

HD Tach 8mb short bench *left*

HD Tach 32mb Long bench *right*