Seagate Hard drive problems....

Eye

Ok this is really annoying me now and it's a long story so bare with me

Couple of weeks back i bought 2 hdd's, one was a maxtor 160Gb s-ata the other was seagate baracuda 200Gb s-ata. first off i installed the maxtor with xp pro and not a problem. then i tried the same thing with the seagate drive but ran into nothing but problems.

When the seagate drive was installed i popped in the xp pro cd and let windows partition and format it before installing windows. so far so good, next comes the part where windows copys the files from the cd to the hard drive and this is my problem. it pauses consantly and eventually freezes, now it does'nt freeze at any particular point just randomly at 68%, 72%, 77%.... and the highest i think it ever got too was about 92%. to be a bit more precise the cd reads a chunk of data and then it will stop and the hard drive light comes on and remains on for upwards of 30secs before it reads another couple of % from the cd, but like i said it never gets all the way even when left for 30mins or more.

Initially i thought it would be something straight forward and tried all sorts of things, swapped power cables, swapped s-ata cables, changed cd drives, i then tried booting into windows from another drive and partitioning and formating the new seagate drive from there, go to install windows and same thing happens when copying the setup files from the cd. eventually i went onto the seagate site and downloaded the seagate discworld setup program and let that partion and format the drive, still the same. next came the seatools diagnostic program, did all the scans and the drive was fine apart from 1 thing and error with the ntfs file system structure.

Another quick point to mention, when i booted up with another drive and tried to use the seagate drive as a storage drive only, when copying files to the seagate drive it would copy for a few seconds then stop and no hdd activity for maybe 15-20secs then it would do another little bit. so obviously things were not quiet right with this drive.

I had been trying to partition the drive as a full 200Gb drive on ntfs so at this point i tried partitioning as 2x100Gb drives with fat32 instead and again still he same thing occurred, tried the local pc shop for ideas and was advised to return the drive since the diagnostic software had found the error with the ntfs structure. So this i did, and just the other day i got the replacement drive.

New drive has just been put in and low and behold i'm getting the very same problem when copying the setup files from the disc, stopped at 72% first time, then 90%, right now i'm sitting here waiting for the diagnostic check to finish on this drive now and if i get the same ntfs file structure errors as i did the last time i think i'll just forget seagate altogether and get the refund now and stick with good ol reliable maxtor, got 5 maxtor drives atm and not a single problem with any of them (and no they are not all in this machine).

dunno why i ever decided to change to seagate

anyone got any suggestions?

leeroybrown

Download Seatools, Seagate's drive test utility and use it to test your drive. It should be able to tell you if there is a probalem with your drive.

quarryman

he tried that. got lazy reading the post?

seems a bit strange that you're getting the same error witha new drive. Seagates are actually my fav drives and have never had a problem.

have you tried the drive in another pc?

leeroybrown

D'Oh. Got distracted by someone at work in the middle of reading it and missed the end of the paragraph.
I should have realised he was using SeaTools when he said diagnostic in the last paragraph though.

Is the version of WinXP on your install CD recent enough to include fully working support for drives > 137Gb?

Try creating one small NTFS or FAT32 partition at the start of the disk and see if Win XP will install on this.

Eye

unfortunately my other pc is ageing a bit and it does'nt have s-ata and anyone else that i know has't got s-ata either :-\

just finished off the diagnostics check on the new drive and it's the same error, no physical errors with the disk just that ntfs file structure error again

my windows disk is only a month or so old, it was bought at the same time as the 2 hdd's were, has sp1a built in.

really starting to annoy me now, i did try creating small fat32 and small ntfs partitions with the first one, i could do it with this but i have a feeling it would end up the very same way. maybe my system just don't like seagate

The Muppet

Not sure if this will help but you could try This.

Its not the problem you are having but it could be something along those lines.

Eye

thanks muppet but that ain't really the problem, the bios sees the hdd no problem as does windows once i load up the appropriate S-ata raid drivers.

it's as if the hdd is having trouble writing to the disk as it's stopping and starting while trying to copy the files, but surely the odds of getting 2 faulty drives are fairly slim which is why i wanted to see if there was something else i'm missing or not doing right here

StRiKeR

what chipset is your sata controller?
if its sil 3114 chipset, is your bios version 4.x.x.x? if so flash the bios to 5.x.x.x and your problem solve!

the sil 3112 also got some issue with the bios that was ship on the card, for some reason that crad came with a bios which will install the os no prob but it wont boot from it till you flash the latest bios to it! flash it to the latest and you'll be fine!

Eye

aha...you might be onto something there striker

it is a sil 3114 chipset, not sure on the bios version though so will have a look in a couple of mins and see what it is

Eye

ah bugger, was kinda hoping i had an older bios version thee for a min as it might have sorted it out but alas the biso version i have is 5.0.18B.

will have a quick look about and see if there is any other updates for it but in the mean time keep those suggestions coming

StRiKeR

Eye wrote:

ah bugger, was kinda hoping i had an older bios version thee for a min as it might have sorted it out but alas the biso version i have is 5.0.18B.

will have a quick look about and see if there is any other updates for it but in the mean time keep those suggestions coming

I go check my bios version if its newer than yours i post it up! by the way you didnt tell me which card you have yet, i pressume you got the sil 3114 right?

StRiKeR

ok on my 3114 bios is 5.0.34 which appears to be newer one than yours, is you sata onboard or pic card? my 3114 is onboard and i have a 3112 pci card also, bought with bios flashed to latest after having some weird things happening! like what you are experiencing and what i have mentioned above!

Eye

ok just to clear up any possible confusion with this,

my motherboard is a DFI Lanparty NFII Ultra B
the s-ata chipset is the sil 3114
it's not an actuall s-ata card as i think you are talking about striker

just been into the dfi site and there is a bios update for my board which i'm just getting now and will install, from what i can tell all my other drivers are upto date, but will double check em all anyways.

having just done that now i see that there is indeed a slight update to the s-ata driver on the site so i'll get that and give it a shot. damn slow 56k modem

StRiKeR

i think you got the same problem I had before when I had the DFI NFII Infinity Ultra, I updated the system bios which also updates the sata bios and everything were fine! theres another thing to watch out, if you have like 2 3 or 4 drives, keep them away abit from each other and get a fan for them, I notice they do heat up in times and start going mad when it gets a bit too hot, I have my system on 24/7 and HDDs always on, now I have fans blowing at the 6 drives and they sit apart, dunno how this will go but when the last time they heated up which was before i got the stacker case, I shut down the system and pull out 2 drives to give room for air, added fans for them, and bingo no more locks up by the HDDs, thats why i got the stacker case, but that only happeded after the HDDs been on for 2 weeks solid with not enough cooling!

StRiKeR

it has to be the bios, I bet when you were formatting everything went fine, only have problems when you trying to write or read from the drive!

Eye

Many thanks Striker

you were spot on there that little update to the bios worked wonders and everything installed okay this time

as for drives heating up yeah i know all about that one, noticed that when i bought me 2nd hdd that they were heating up, so noawadays i have 4 in this server case and they are all completly seperate with there own cooling too

only problem i got now is the damn hdd activity light is on constantly from the min i power up the machine, it's hardly anything to do with the seagate drive? they would'nt cause that to happen would they, i mean all my maxtors never did.

thanks anyways

StRiKeR

no prob bro good to hear your good news, na the drive wouldnt do that to your led unless they are doing something, check you connections on drives and oh your led on the board connection as well, you didnt happen to have removed that and put back in the wrong place would you? that can easily happen, if not I'm not sure, its a bit late and I cant think too good, let me know tomorrow and see if I can think of anything else!