Seagate Barracuda 2TB problems since day 1.

Steviemoyne

Said I'd post and see what people think, it's not a critical problem just extremely annoying.

Since I built my own pc (many thanks to the lads over at PC Building & Upgrading) I've had problems with one of the harddrives I bought.

At the minute I run a samsung 120gb SSD (OS on this) and a Seagate Barracuda 2TB drive (specifically model ST2000DM001 Barracuda located and bought from Amazon.co.uk here). The Barracuda houses all my data from applications to games, I've about 1TB taken up by games alone with about 900+MB free (I've had the below problems even when the drive was near empty out of the box).

I face two problems, the drive itself stutters regularly. What I mean is if I'm playing a game or using an application installed on the drive it will make a "chirp" as if doing a sudden spin up from standstill. It will then freeze the game / application for between 1-8 seconds. It normally only does this every few minutes.

The second problem is that files on the drive keep becoming corrupt which causes check disk to run on the drive almost 5 times a week, every week. It normally causes me to be unable to delete certain files and folders until check disk recovers them. I have never had a case where a file has failed to be recovered, but it keeps "recovering orphaned files", no files are on bad sectors as the drive has no bad sectors according to check disk.

I was thinking of scrapping the drive and getting a Western Digital Blue drive instead, never had any luck with Seagate drives.


Background info:
I built that computer for gaming and software development (full specs here except with 8gb ram and not 4).

I relocated the "My Documents" or anything resembling a "Documents" folder (due to the mass amount of games saving there) and the Downloads folders to the drive.

I don't have any complex folder structure, the drive contains a mixture of everything, none of which is ordered. Steam is there, any non steam games, Origin games, any application that doesn't benefit from running on an SSD eg: Open Office is there...so on so forth.

yoyo

Steviemoyne wrote: »

Said I'd post and see what people think, it's not a critical problem just extremely annoying.

Since I built my own pc (many thanks to the lads over at PC Building & Upgrading) I've had problems with one of the harddrives I bought.

At the minute I run a samsung 120gb SSD (OS on this) and a Seagate Barracuda 2TB drive (specifically model ST2000DM001 Barracuda located and bought from Amazon.co.uk here). The Barracuda houses all my data from applications to games, I've about 1TB taken up by games alone with about 900+MB free (I've had the below problems even when the drive was near empty out of the box).

I face two problems, the drive itself stutters regularly. What I mean is if I'm playing a game or using an application installed on the drive it will make a "chirp" as if doing a sudden spin up from standstill. It will then freeze the game / application for between 1-8 seconds. It normally only does this every few minutes.

The second problem is that files on the drive keep becoming corrupt which causes check disk to run on the drive almost 5 times a week, every week. It normally causes me to be unable to delete certain files and folders until check disk recovers them. I have never had a case where a file has failed to be recovered, but it keeps "recovering orphaned files", no files are on bad sectors as the drive has no bad sectors according to check disk.

I was thinking of scrapping the drive and getting a Western Digital Blue drive instead, never had any luck with Seagate drives.


Background info:
I built that computer for gaming and software development (full specs here except with 8gb ram and not 4).

I relocated the "My Documents" or anything resembling a "Documents" folder (due to the mass amount of games saving there) and the Downloads folders to the drive.

I don't have any complex folder structure, the drive contains a mixture of everything, none of which is ordered. Steam is there, any non steam games, Origin games, any application that doesn't benefit from running on an SSD eg: Open Office is there...so on so forth.

Sounds like a defective drive to me. There is really only 3 mechanical hard disk manufacturers these days, Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba.. Seagate are ok in my experience, all brands can suffer catastrophic failures.
I'd send the drive back and just get a replacement, you may need to get another or an external to perform a backup in the mean time if important

Nick

Steviemoyne

yoyo wrote: »

Sounds like a defective drive to me. There is really only 3 mechanical hard disk manufacturers these days, Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba.. Seagate are ok in my experience, all brands can suffer catastrophic failures.
I'd send the drive back and just get a replacement, you may need to get another or an external to perform a backup in the mean time if important

Nick

Seems so, would prefer to avoid it. Probably need to think about getting a new drive anyway and definitely planning on going western digital. Wonder what's my warranty like with Amazon considering the hoops you have to jump through to send something back to Seagate.

stevenmu

You could use something like HD Tune to do a health check. It might not show errors even if you have them, but it's worth a run anyway.

Baked.noodle

Are you overclocking? I have a 500Gb Barracuda as a storage drive, and an SSD for my OS. The Barracuda used to chirp on me too when I got it first and eventually I solved the issue by giving my overclocked q6600 a small voltage boost. Haven't had a problem with it since.

Steviemoyne

Baked.noodle wrote: »

Are you overclocking?

Nope not overclocking.

Baked.noodle

You could try using the drive on a different SATA port but it sounds like you will need to replace the drive. Data corruption is not acceptable really.

Steviemoyne

I'd love to narrow down the cause of why the data corruption occurs, just for my own curiosity. The worst data corruption I got hit with was almost every single Oblivion Asset file having to be recovered (it was fine the night before as I was playing away with no problem). It's almost as if the drive itself does something strange to the last accessed files.

You're right, the data corruption is unacceptable I just don't see why after a check disk operation they magically get recovered and work again. The most basic comparison I can think of is the drive renaming a text files extension to .FFF and it's as if check disk renames it back to .txt.

As it is, because the files / folders are digital games I don't really mind. What bugs me is when I go to delete a left over folder only to be told no I can't as it's "corrupt".

Baked.noodle

If the SSD works without issue it is probably not your RAM, OS or CPU corrupting the data. I reckon its a sure bet a new drive would solve your problems.

Steviemoyne

Aye that's my thoughts too. Only other option I considered was the sata cable not being right (if that's even possible).

Baked.noodle

I suppose it's possible. There is a trouble shooting list here: http://www.wikihow.com/Fix-a-File-Corruption-Error

djerk

have you tried another sata cable?

Steviemoyne

If you still have new and additional file corruption, data corruption, data loss, CRC errors, new additional SMART CRC errors etc, after doing all this: Your SATA cable connectors may have poor contact design, or the metal may have oxidized/rusted over time.

Not something I'd considered until you said that, that could actually be the cause. I'm only using the one that came with the drive itself, I'm due to buy a new SATA cable shortly for another SSD I picked up a while back so should be able to get a decent 2 pack on Amazon or the likes.

I've always wondered if different SATA cables are better quality than others.

djerk wrote: »

have you tried another sata cable?

No but I definitely will be now.

djerk

so long as theyre not generic cables you shouldnt need to worry.

a high ultradma crc error count in hd tune could point to a bad cable. i doubt the controller is at fault if the other drive is working fine.

Steviemoyne

Just an update on this, bought and tried a brand new sata cable and I'm still getting checkdisk running on the drive ever 2-3 start ups that recovers orphaned files and/or deletes indexes. I've also tried a different sata cable port on the motherboard, no change.

I've just unmounted the drive while running windows and I'm running the disk checking options from the disks properties which appears to be more in depth judging from how long it's taking. After it's done I'm going to run seagates disk checker and see if that turns up anything.

If I was to pick up a new drive is it an easy process of migrating the files from the old disk given that 90% of them are installation folders for programs and the like? I also have the "My [Foldername]" folders redirected to this drive.

Edit: The longer checkdisk passed, acted like checkdisk from boot where it recovered a few orphaned files, deleted a few invalid indexes. Ran seatools, all the tests passed. Didn't run the bad sector test yet, none reported on checkdisk. Checked for a firmware update and there was in fact an update from my current firmware which I'm going to install and see if that fixes the problem.

beauf

When drives fail or become unreliable you replace them. Why are you spending so long at this?

If a replacement drive works fine on the same hardware it confirms its the drive.

You'll need a 2nd 2TB drive as a back up anyway.

Steviemoyne

beauf wrote: »

Why are you spending so long at this?

I'm not currently in a position to purchase a new drive, and the drive does not appear to be failing, just running check disk way too often.

Fixing the problem rather than just binning and buying a new one would be a better solution. I'm trying to approach all avenues before replacing the drive.

The data on it does not need backing up. It only contains programs which I can simply download again. Doing so however would take me a week if not longer.

I will be using upc fibre next month and will consider replacing the drive then.

beauf

Constantly running chkdsk suggests its failing and/or corrupting data, which is the same thing. You will never be able to rely on it. The concern is when you go to install those programs they will be corrupt. So you can't trust any of the data on the drive.

You either test a new drive in your system. or test your old drive in a different system. Can you borrow either? If you send it off to be replaced, you'll have its replacement by the time you get UPC.

I just think you are wasting your time messing around with it this long.

free_man

You are wasting ur time with frequent chkdsk.

I suggest sending the drive for replacement. If you bought via Amazon direct, they are quite handy and easy to deal with. No postage charge for return as you post via Anpost with their pre-made return label. You will have to live with loss of games and other data while you receive a replacement as you don't have money to buy another HDD for backup.

Steviemoyne

Since this thread appears to have run its course consider my matter resolved.

Thanks for the helpful advice.

Snowbat

Steviemoyne wrote: »

almost every single Oblivion Asset file having to be recovered

Does the file corruption happen only when the system is under heavy load? Crappy PSU maybe?