We have also experienced problems with the 1.5 TB Seagate drives here at work, specifically with Quicktime movies. We buy the drives in batches of 20 since we routinely work with 150 GB quicktime files. We have not experienced problems with any of the newer models but we do have some with the SD17 firmware that cause problems, even though we used Seagate's online utility and it claims our serial number for the suspect drives should be in the clear... they are not.

We specifically see problems when saving out self-contained Quicktime movies from a Quicktime reference file. When we first generate a file from Final Cut Pro, we save them as Quicktime Reference movies because it is so much faster. Then when we are ready for final output, we save all of those reference movies (typically overnight) as self-contained movies. If the reference files are on one of the SD17 drives, the save-out process stalls and then the entire Mac must be restarted. Usually, it will require a "force restart" because just trying to do a restart or shutdown from the menu will have it sitting there doing nothing for hours.

Anyhow, confirmed again today that it was, in fact, the Seagate firmware bug by copying all of the reference files that kept freezing to my internal Western Digital drive. They saved out with no problems from the WD drive, when I had spent all day yesterday failing from the Seagate (it wasn't until the end of the day that my boss suggested it might be the Seagate Firmware bug - good guess).

Not bashing Seagate (though I hate that they are being a bit shifty and hush-hush about this problem) since, like I said, all of the newer drives we have from them work well. If anything, for our specific problem I would be more inclined to blame Apple for the way Quicktime generates data - a pause or interrupt should be easy to get past. It should just pickup writing the file where it left off if an interrupt occurs; other file types have been able to do this for years.

Last year I buy 2 HDD Seagate 640 Gb ST 3640323AS I use them in Raid 0 Mainboard Gigabyte X48T-DQ6 ICH Controler, Firmware SD13 operating system Vista Home Basic x64 and from time to time Vista was freezing I can move only the mouse and after some time stop responding at all.

This year I buy 2 HDD Seagate 1Tb ST31000333AS same computer same OS same RAID same drivers, Firmware CC1H and are making same problem. I ask Gigabyte support and they send me to Seagate it's looking that the problem from here it's coming and from all 7200.11 hard drives. I found more messages reporting that 1.5 Tb its making this problems but for me it's looking that all has some problems hardware or firmware.

Dear Seagate do you have any suggestion?

What to do with these HDD?

Well I have had a ton of issues with seagate even using 750 GB drive raids. The 1 TB drives are even worse. They freeze up randomly while copying then start back up slowly. Also these freezes dont have anything to do with them going into sleep mode as they just happen while already in write state. I do think turning the cache off helps. But I dont want to keep doing that.

I have switched back to wd for sata and have had better luck. It seems if you do do not use raid or use these drives in an external usb enlosure the drives work fine. But in both cases I have found these drives to be highly unreliable. Constantly falling out of raid or disconnecting from a usb connection.

Also I'd think twice if you think seagate will make firmware to fix these problems. I have called seagate many times in the past for firmware only to be told there are no firmware patches for my drives. When I know there is! Sorry seagate you are dropping the ball here. The westerndigital re3 drives seem to be more stable.

I have just about given up on seagate but was going to look into them for 1.5Tb as western digital does not have one yet. But this even sounds worse then the 750 gb crashes. Also one last thing. These drives seem to get back into raid again after a restart of the system. But it would break the raid in a few weeks. Even after swapping out new drives. Finally many of the drives just failed to work at all. So they do fail period at the end. Seagate seems to think there is not a problem for the most part.

Oooh, big surprise :rolleyes: [/sarcasm]

After multiple Seagate external drives that have failed on me, and reports from a coworker that his friend has had the same "experience" (multiple drive failures), I recently switched to WD.

What was happening? The drives seemed to time out on writes, thereby corrupting portions of the FAT. The "Seagate Beep" (when the drive fails the write) should have a Wikipedia entry all it's own.

Then again, I've had 3 out of 4 Samsung drives fail, so what's to expect in modern drives anyway...??

Maybe this article should be "Seagate sells out" instead of "speaks out." I would like to thank the author, Cyril Kowaliski, for pointing out again the major issues that Mike Hall has chosen to ignore. The real issue isn't if Seagate drives sometimes has problems since every hard drive manufacturer has problematic hard drives. Also the biggest issue isn't if the problem is just to a small group of hard drives. The major issue that Mike Hall fails to answer is at the end of the day does Seagate hard drive actually come with a real warranty or toilet paper that just happens to have "5 years" written on it?

When a DVD player fails to function to specification, the manufacturer's support department may ask for side information such as what TV it is connected to or what audio amplifier. However, that information is never used by the manufacturer for ignoring a violation in supported specification.

Seagate has made it clear that it will use information provided by the customer in good faith to invalidate honoring it's so-call "5-year" warranty. At the end of the day, Seagate has a 0-year warranty and WD has a 3-year. The Barracuda 7200.11 has a stated random read seek time of "< 8.5 msec" and a stated random write seek time of "<10.0 msec" with an average latency of "4.16 msec." With that type of specification, the drive should never go unresponsive for over 100msecs (10x the stated maximum write seek time)! The fact that Seagate does not want to support GNU/Linux is not "unfortunate" because it is not support of GNU/Linux that is being requested. Instead, it is support of Seagate's stated specifications for the device that should be provided support. The fact that GNU/Linux is the scape-goat for failing the stated specifications by over ten times also is not "unfortunate" but inexcusable and unacceptable.

What is even worse is to scape-goat on RAID when the product is advertised for the application of "Desktop RAID." At first it seems like Mike Hall ignored this issue as well. But it appears that it is worse that that! He states "this does not result in data loss nor does it impact the reliability of the drive." For Desktop RAID (which in my experience ends up usually meaning RAID1), having both drives listed as unresponsive by the RAID does result in data be left unwritten and data lost. So Mike Hall has chosen to ignore the reality of the situation and spin this as if the problem does not really exist. In my case, the RAID issue only comes up when the drive is unresponsive for over 100ms (again, over 10 times the stated specification). Not only does this cause problems with the RAID array going to degraded and then failed, but has also sometimes required more than one attempt to perform a rebuild of the array.

Normally I look down on people that turn to lawyers as the answer to working with companies. But in this case, it really seems like Seagate is doing everything it possibly can with it's effective 0-year warranty support to try to encourage a class action. The fact they are working on a firmware fix is nice but should not replace providing actual warranty coverage. If the fix is not available now, then the drives should be replaced and once the firmware update is available then they can re-issue those drives as refurbished for future warranty issues.

Based on my previous experience with Seagate, I would have liked to say the official update from Seagate would be that they would honor warranty replacement for any major deviation from specification regardless of OS or use of RAID. It appears instead that Mike Hall is demanding customer just wait an unspecified time period for a firmware fix to be issued. And between the lines of Mike Hall's response is the message "NEVER trust our so-called 'warranty' ever again!"

Thanks Mike--at least we now know officially where we stand.

The fact that Seagate made millions of these drives and only a select few are having issues automatically makes the drives bad and Seagate at fault?

Good reasoning there. I have one of these drives right now and it works flawlessly. Since the problem seems to be in a RAID, how about checking with the RAID controller manufacturer? Nvidia saw this issue early and release a new driver to fix the issue. AMAZAZING.

Desktop RAID = RAID 0 or 1, not RAID 5, go get one of their ES drives for that.

Seagate needs to get burned for this as hard as possible ! As much as i approve of their 5 year warranty, i totally dislike the way they're handling this mess. I'll wait to see how this will pan out and they better do something fast or they'll lose another customer..

Adi

Hmm to start a fantastic flame war or not? Meh...at least I learned another thing that can be added to the 'will get long replieson TR front page comments'...mildly insulting Linux zealots.

I have a 200gb sata Seagate drive that does the exact same thing using the following config:

XP x64
C2D + GA-P35-DS3 rev2.0 P35 ICH9 AHCI (hacked to work only ICH9R supported on XP)

Looking forward to a new firmware. But turning off drive caching seems to have gotten rid of the problem (with a performance hit of course).

Sometimes the support monkey the gets the call talks out of his rear, but at least the company as a whole appears to try and do whats right.

Seagate and WD have both been great for me.

The official statement is slightly misleading...

1) When the problem occurs all hard drive operations stop until the OS times out the ATA command - typically 30 seconds. This results in the computer freezing for 30 seconds.

2) The problem can result in data loss if using a RAID system. Depending on the OS/RAID configuration the problem may cause a RAID system to think the drive has died. The RAID system automatically removes the drive and continues to run degraded (as designed). 20 minutes later when another drive exhibits the problem the RAID system drops the second drive and dies.

3) The problem may be a systematic problem rather than a small number of drives - all drives have I tested running the SD17 firmware have exhibited the problem.