Seagate Hard Drive Failure
erco
Posts: 20,256
My Seagate HDD just went down, probably once & for all. It was a remanufactured 500GB unit, less than 6 months old. Looking online, this is a chronic problem with the 7200.11 family of drives. Here's just one listing: http://www.dailytech.com/Update+Seagate+Firmware+Update+Bricks+Barracuda+720011+HDDs/article14011.htm
Looks like it was so rampant that Seagate was offering free data recovery. Hope they still do. Anyway, if anybody else has this drive, be aware that your drive's days are numbered! Mine was remanufactured since they first learned of this problem and it still died an untimely death in·my little-used home computer.
Anybody have any glowing recommendations on long-lived HDDs? I'm staying clear of Seagate from now on.
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·"If you build it, they will come."
Looks like it was so rampant that Seagate was offering free data recovery. Hope they still do. Anyway, if anybody else has this drive, be aware that your drive's days are numbered! Mine was remanufactured since they first learned of this problem and it still died an untimely death in·my little-used home computer.
Anybody have any glowing recommendations on long-lived HDDs? I'm staying clear of Seagate from now on.
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·"If you build it, they will come."
Comments
The Seagate 500GB HDD in my computer died back in April just before tax day. I was able to recover my data off of the drive. I was not able to get any help from Seagate or the PC manufacturer. I was told I should have bought the extended warranty. Mine lasted for 13 months.
The PC manufacturer knew about the problem with the HDD, and still installed a drive with the know problem. A firmware fix was available at that time. They did not even notify any of their customers that the HDD could/would fail.
-Phil
Jay
-Phil
Back it up:· A number of viable choices, including mirroring, bqckup to disk to an edternal hard drive, pick up a used tape drive (not a DAT, but a "real" tape drive), heck, you can get an entire PC for what you used to spend on a small hard drive.· Just buy two, and back one up to the other over the network.
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John R.
Click here to see my Nomad Build Log
Rich H
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The Simple Servo Tester, a kit from Gadget Gangster.
An IT guy at work tells me that my drive might function OK as a slave for my own data retrieval, or that a SATA-USB adapter sometimes works when a direct SATA connection won't. Nice to have options.
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·"If you build it, they will come."
how dead is it?... does the system recognize it's presence? ... If the system can recognize that there is a drive there you might be able to swap it into another system you have and at least read from it. If not directly through software made for recovering the data.
I have used Active Undelete on a home drive that contained ALL of our family pictures and video dating back to 2000. That little software gem saved my marriage. Run the DEMO version and if you can 'see' your lost files, it may be worth the $40 for a license.
...So lesson learned, what I do now is basically the equivalent of a Raid drive on two physically separate drives. You DON'T want to setup a Raid drive system on a single drive that has been partitioned into multiple drives or else your just asking for it.
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Beau Schwabe
IC Layout Engineer
Parallax, Inc.
If the drive has "died" from the problem that plagued the 7200.11 drives (and the maxtor relatives of those - which I have 10 of) then you can probably recover it by clearing the G-list in the firmware. Do a search around and there are a couple of forums where people have posted the instructions to connect to the drive (I used a prop plug with some jumpers) and talk to the firmware using a terminal program to reset the log file. If your drive has not suffered any other failure (mechanical for example) then your data should still be there.
*found it*
www.msfn.org/board/topic/128807-the-solution-for-seagate-720011-hdds/
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"Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?"
001 . I tried the repair option, and let it try for many hours, but I don't think Windows can even find the drive. I'll check tonite to learn if the BIOS sees it.
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·"If you build it, they will come."
Just make sure you rule out malware, erco.
I have one of those external drive cases and taking it out and putting it into another computer may tell you if it is the drive or not.
I've also heard you can't drop those 1 TB drives or they're done.
That sounds like its getting as far as reading the bootloader, so it's probably not the BSY state hangup I was referring to. There is another failure mode where the drive reports having 0 sectors, but I don't know if in that case it will let you read the first sector.
If the machine can see the disk then I'd get a linux live-cd and see what the drives SMART stats have to say.
As for which drives are reliable, I have 15 Maxtor Maxline-II 250G drives here with over 35,000 hours on the clock. I've also got 9 1TB Maxtor units (same drives as the Seagate 7200.11) with ~16,000 hours on them and 3 WD 750GB 7500AAKS drives with 21,000 hours on them.
I was lucky with the 1TB drives in that I could get the new firmware on to them before they hit the bug.
I had 10 1TB Maxtors, but I found out they don't bounce from waist height and had to replace one with a WD GP drive (it was all I could get).
I generally find every manufacturer has had their disasters, but if you keep the drives relatively cool and in a nice environment they'll last longer than you need them to last. (I retired a 250M WD after about 15 years 24/7 recently)
Those Maxtor units have 35,000 hours but only about 30 power cycles on them.
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"Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?"
As for backing up, I run a WHS (Windows Home Server) box with 2TB of storage and do nightly backups of all my machines. I can't recommend WHS enough, seriously I refuse to live without it now at home.
Phil, one way to use up HDD space is via music and video, pile on a bunch of games and you start to use up space on those big drives. Of course, the largest chunk of space is used by art and data assets for work related stuff.
Anyway, erco, I hope you get your data back. I've used http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ to help recover data for friends and it's also handy for checking out machines.
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Check out the Propeller Wiki·and contribute if you can.
I totally agree, if you have multiple computers at home I can't recommend WHS enough! Backups & restores from WHS are super easy.
Jay
My web server has over a petabyte of storage. I don't expect to ever fill that.
As for backup. I use a RAID system for my main drive system. I also have 2x 500GB hard drives I use to backup the most important stuff that I keep in a fire proof safe. And for added safety I keep a duplicate copy of the most important stuff on my web server in Toronto which has many backup systems of its own and is in a completely different province. just in case.
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Lots of propeller based products in stock at affordable prices.
-Phil
Sorry to hear about your drive failure. I have a similar drive in a system and I think I'll make it a point to do backups more often...
A friend had a drive die where it smoked something on the drives main logic board. They contacted this place to get one to try and revive it to get the data off (pictures, etc)
http://www.hdd-parts.com/
Luckily they sent a board that worked and all the data could be read from the drive. May not help with your drive but well worth checking into if it looks like the controller board is toast...
Robert
I use My Server with Yahoo for Off site and I use a Gtech Gdrive minis to do My disc dumps .
I rotate them so incase I have a error on the Main Int driove and it crashes the backupp I have a Independent backup fro rhe mnonth before .
My most dear data is also On some CF 128 GB cards . pricy little things but thay are easy to store in a small safe.
Peter KG6LSE
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"Carpe Ducktum" "seize the tape!!"
peterthethinker.com/tesla/Venom/Venom.html
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. —Tanenbaum, Andrew S.
LOL
"
About SystemRescueCd
Description: SystemRescueCd is a Linux system rescue disk available as a bootable CD-ROM or USB stick for administrating or repairing your system and data after a crash. It aims to provide an easy way to carry out admin tasks on your computer, such as creating and editing the partitions of the hard disk. It comes with a lot of linux software such as system tools (parted, partimage, fstools, ...) and basic tools (editors, midnight commander, network tools). It requires no installation. It can be used on linux servers, linux desktops or windows boxes. The kernel supports the important file systems (ext2/ext3/ext4, reiserfs, reiser4, btrfs, xfs, jfs, vfat, ntfs, iso9660), as well as network filesystems (samba and nfs). "
http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
·http://www.carbonite.com/
At less than $5.00 a month and unlimited backup. I have 200-300 GB up there at times. I have used the restore feature twice on my laptop. Once when I had corrupted XP files, and the second time just so I could clean the laptop out and put the files back fresh, kinda like a major defrag. I also use a 1TB USB drive for the times internet is down. These externals can be gotten for <$100 now. Still, there is nothing like off site storage.
Jim
@Phil Pilgrim - You know Phil I always said that I would never fill the 250GB drives I have as my System drives, but both my PCs have < 60GB free on the C: drive. Since I do a lot of video editing both PCs also have a D drive which I capture to and render on. I hadn't realized until recently just how much space editing HD video takes up. I had 100GB free before a project and in the middle of rendering it said my HD was full! This is a 250GB drive as well. So now I have two 1TB network drives that save all my media files and the D drives remain empty except current projects.
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Chris Savage
Parallax Engineering
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I have been building systems for 15 plus years now and have used WD drives in every system I have ever built. In all those years I think I have had one (maybe 2) issues within the first year. I will say that older drives seem to have been built better, but even since 500 GB plus drives have been on the market I have had the best luck with WD.
A couple years ago I purchased 16 Seagate Seial Attached SCSI drives. Of those, 4 were bad right off the bat. I had them replaced only because they were what the client wanted. They are still running, but I would not use them again.
Jim
As I was loading my trailer today I thought of you and you Seagate crash. While Seagate hard drives do not last forever, they did use a darn good shipping box. These are boxes from 1990, and I have used them on 6 moves totaling 6500 miles. We would go through 125 of these a day at Compusa during the Christmas season. 40MB, 49MB SCSI and 89MB, all IDE. The box is 14x8x11 and these where all 3.5” drives! I shudder to think how much foam went into the landfill to ship these drives!
Jim
Post Edited (hover1) : 6/29/2010 11:34:28 PM GMT
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·"If you build it, they will come."
Jim
I have two 500gb external drives, Maxtors.
I think they have the same problem that the Seagates do
and I believe the two brand names belong to the same company?
Anyway, each of mine became suddenly absent under windows.
I used a recovery utility (I forget which one..something like "get data back")
and recovered all the data. Then I used a Linux utility disk to reformat them
as NTFS and have never again had a problem with them. (over a year of constant use)
I think there is something amiss with the original factory formatting of these drives.
I recommend anyone that has one moves all the data off and then does
a fresh NTFS format on them.
@Holly: I def did a fresh NTFS format when I first got it, and Windows did another before its fresh install, so it wasn't the factory formatting. Check those links above, there are documented firmware issues on this series of drives.
Based on my own experience, I agree with the other recos here: when a hard drive flinches ONCE, grab your data and run. It's a time bomb after that.
Never give a sucker an ever break, never give a HD (especially a Seagate!) a second chance.
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·"If you build it, they will come."