So I have a 3tb seagate drive, and yeah i know seagate hasnt been all that reliable for some years now but Ive got several seagate drives and have never had an issue before. Drive specifics: Seagate 3tb ST3000DM001-1CH166 firmware revision: CC24 also since getting the drive a few years ago ive run hdparm to turn off the APM to stop the constant head parking / chirp noise... But anyway I use this drive for basically just videos (its pretty full, 12% free space which is about 345gb). And recently while trying to stream stuff on my TV (using serviio & a samsung tv) Ive been getting random disconnects. But I just figured it was a problem with my router or something since streaming from to my phone seemed to work fine. Now today I noticed the drive disappeared from explorer and after refreshing a few times it showed back up. Its happened a few times tonight and one time it only showed back up after rebooting, Also now while browsing the folders on it, sometimes it takes 10-15 seconds for a folder to open up. Also while playing videos off it (on my pc, not streaming) every now and then the video will pause. If i run O&O defrag and analyze the drive it seems to take a bit longer then usual and it shows one file fragmented and it seems to be unable to defrag that file as its still fragmented everytime after trying. I tried playing that video file (its 2.82gb) and about half way through it froze up and the drive stopped responding for a minute or so. (makes me think part of the file may be in a bad sector) Tried running chkdsk but it seemed to be stuck at 10% even after maybe an hour. So now im running the error-checking option from the drive properties page and it seems to be going quite slow.. its been quite a while and its only up to 180 files Trying to view the SMART data is also proving to be an issue.. The only thing that I can get to even load the SMART data is Aida64 and it take a bit for the data to show up (though I dont know if it was instant in the past but this seems too long). Sometimes it only loads a couple of the entries, other times I get a long list. Sometimes the entry names show up as "vendor-specific" for each entry. But when it seems to load the data somewhat correctly, its showing lots of errors.. Aida64 also shows the partition type as "basic data" where as all my other drives it shows "ntfs" here is the best ive been able to get from the SMART data: Spoiler ID Attribute Description Threshold Value Worst Data Status 01 Raw Read Error Rate 0 117 97 141305848 OK: Always passes 03 Spinup Time 0 95 93 0 OK: Always passes 04 Start/Stop Count 155 100 100 550 Advisory: Usage or age limit exceeded 05 Reallocated Sector Count 174 100 100 0 Pre-Failure: Imminent loss of data is being predicted 07 Seek Error Rate 0 56 51 5445230 OK: Always passes 09 Power-On Time Count 77 89 89 9803 OK: Value is normal 0A Spinup Retry Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passes 0C Power Cycle Count 0 100 100 516 OK: Always passes B7 <vendor-specific> 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passes B8 End-to-End Error 1 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal BB Reported Uncorrectable Errors 1 45 45 55 OK: Value is normal BC Command Timeout 29 56 56 21758284 OK: Value is normal BD High Fly Writes 0 98 98 2 OK: Always passes BE Airflow Temperature 90 71 55 488308765 Advisory: Usage or age limit exceeded BF Mechanical Shock 81 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal C0 Power-Off Retract Count 29 100 100 65 OK: Value is normal C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 0 100 100 1099 OK: Always passes C2 Temperature 0 29 45 29 OK: Always passes C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 1 1 19688 OK: Always passes C6 Offline Uncorrectable Sector Count 142 1 1 19688 Advisory: Usage or age limit exceeded C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate 139 200 200 0 OK: Value is normal F0 Head Flying Hours 22 100 253 9765 OK: Value is normal F1 <vendor-specific> 0 100 253 1415330163 OK: Always passes F2 <vendor-specific> 0 100 253 2551182473 OK: Always passes Ive always found the SMART data on drives to be mostly useless in the past but all these errors (especially the 'sector' related ones) has got to be something lol.. Although "Advisory: Usage or age limit exceeded" seems like an odd one I also tried running seagates 'seatools' and it doesnt even see the drive, even while im able to browse it in explorer pretty sure its going to be hard for anyone to doubt that the drive is failing with all these red flags popping up lol. I think im going to disconnect the drive and order a new one (i'll probably spend the extra $$ for a WD this time around) and hope that I can get everything off the drive before its too late. I guess if anything I should be thankful that Im getting warning signs here because it would be quite devastating to lose almost an entire 3tb drive worth of data
Firstly, if you want a 3 TB drive, get the Toshiba DT01ACA300 if you can (the 300 at the end is the 3 TB version, the 2 TB version ends in 200). They're a brilliant drive . If you want something a little bigger, it appears that Toshiba have their 5 TB drives on special at the moment: http://www.toshiba.com/us/accessories/Storage/Hard-Drive-Replacement/5TB/PH3500U-1I72 US $179 isn't bad for that! Once you get the new drive and transfer your data, it may be that there's 'nothing wrong, per se' with your current drive. It's possible your drive is 'suffering' from magnetic degradation, which leads to what is known as soft bad sectors. Soft bad sectors are completely recoverable and fixable, it's hard bad sectors that means the drive is failing. Now this might some like a load of crap, but it is actually a real thing. If this has happened to your drive, using diskfresh http://www.puransoftware.com/DiskFresh.html in 'raw' mode will help. You could probably do two full runs on the drive. Of course, if the drive is actually failing this won't be any good...! If you get a new drive move all your data off, and very very carefully (yes, the two 'very's' was necessary) do the following: run diskpart from an elevated command prompt (command prompt with 'run as administrator' through right click) list disk select disk # (where # is the drive number of your failing Seagate drive. DO NOT get this wrong!) clean all clean all create partition primary assign format exit The reason for the two clean all's is it will give your drive a little workout (helps with testing), but more importantly it will write to every sector of the drive, including hidden sectors and non-data areas a couple of times. This will resolve any issues with 'soft' bad sectors. The format command is actually a long slow format as well, so you get two complete drive wipes and one data area drive wipe. Keep in mind this will take a long time, and there is no progress indicator. By long time I mean several hours on each pass! If it runs for two days and still hasn't finished the first pass,then the drive would be truly questionable! The reason why the drive disappears etc is sometimes the computer doesn't like it when the drive has reading issues due to soft or hard bad sectors. The other thing is when you get the new mechanical drive, regardless of what brand, run the same process as above on it, although you can get rid of one of the 'clean all's' and use format quick instead. It will help identify if there are any hard bad sectors with the drive, or other issues, and also you start off with a nicely formatted drive with strong magnetic signals in the sectors (again this might sound bull, but it does seem to help). Even if it is 'bull', it is still beneficial as it writes to every sector of the drive and helps identify any SMART issues etc before you entrust it with data.
Looking at the SMART data, it suggests the airflow past your HDD's is terrible (under BE Airflow Temperature). The reallocated sector count is hidden sectors which are used to take the place of marked bad sectors. You have run out of these, and now have a whole heap of uncorrectable bad sectors. So, hopefully you can copy the data off it, but some files may be uncopyable or corrupted. It still could be the case that your drive is suffering from soft bad sectors (magnetic degradation) as opposed to hard bad sectors (physical platter degradation). The above process I suggested will help identify this, Keep in mind that running diskpart like that will completely and utterly wipe your data off the drive, which is why it is important to make sure you identify the right drive when listing the disks!
thanks for the reply! and as for the airflow data, pretty sure that has to be wrong as the drive has a decent amount of open space around it and theres a 120mm fan that blows right on it, and at least 90% of the time my pc is turned on, that drive is just sitting idle anyway so it should rarely be generating a lot of heat and just looking around at new 3tb drives, it seems that all large drives have some issues (at least way more common then say 1tb drives). Like looking at reviews on newegg, unless if I want to spend an insane amount on a nas/enterprise drive (which i dont lol), most 3tb drives have pretty subpar ratings and a lot of negative reviews about drive failure after anywhere from a month to a year. Seems almost like everything else is getting better while mechanical hard drives seem to be getting worse. kind of funny that this 3tb is my 'newest' drive.. while I have some WD drives that are 10-15 years old and I havent had an issue with them
I have had 2-3 hard drives (I forget now...) die on me over the past two and a half years, two of them in the last year, and ALL of them have been Seagate hard drives! I will definitely not be buying any more of them and my current two 3 TB drives now have a time-bomb ticking in them as those are Seagate drives I bought to replace those faulty ones. :3eyes:
So today I was trying to think if ive ever had a drive die in the past at all since my very first computer when I was a kid. Pretty sure Ive only ever had 1 drive die and it was a small WD and that was way back during the windows95 days. And it wasnt even a total loss, I remember I was still able to get about half of the data off the drive. So I guess ive been lucky lol, I still have several drives that are over 10 years old that I use on a somewhat regular basis that seem to still be doing just fine. And over the past few years ive seen plenty of horror stories, mostly about seagate drives.. Its a shame that they apparently went downhill so bad as I remember a time when seagate wasnt considered bad drives and their price was always great when compared to WD. But it also seems that all brands are suffering from issues now days to some degree.. I would assume they all probably have components that are made by the same companies which are probably where the issues are. And probably from china or some such where it seems even 'basic' quality levels have taken a definite back seat to quantity production, not to mention production costs are always being lowered, while retail cost doesnt reflect that. IMO at this point hdd's should be way cheaper then they are and drive redundancy should be more cost effective
so i popped the drive out of my case and plugged it into my usb 3.0 dock to see if perhaps theres an issue with my sata 3gb ports and not actually the drive lol (I tried changing it to a different port but not a sata 6gb port as my ssds are on them and idk, guess i didnt think of that or something, and this is the only drive on my sata 3gb ports so if there was something wrong with them it wouldnt show up with my other drives.... plus i can hope right?) and right away after turning on the usb dock i get a popup about the drive possibly having corrupt files or some such and asked if I wanted to run an error check, so I ran a basic one with just 'automatically fix file system errors' and it flys through the error check and comes back saying no problems.. so now im running it again with the 'scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors' checked as well and its already processed more files in a few minutes then it had after an hour with the same check last night when it was hooked up internally. Not that it means anything.. Im uncertain if even running this error check is a) worth it and b) a good idea because I probably shouldnt be using the drive at all until I have a replacement and attempt to copy over the files before risking things getting worse.. but i guess if this error check seems to either freeze up or slow down in a major way, or just take way too long, I'll probably stop and power it off. *edit* and since its been a long time since ive formatted or done anything similar to a large drive, ive been informed that 3tb drives showing as "basic data" instead of ntfs is normal for being able to see/use the whole drive
It's not unheard of for a drive coming up as being possibly corrupted and have nothing wrong with it. The reason for the message showing up is because the file system is marked as being bad. It's got to do with transactional metadata and other stuff that is a little 'heavy' to explain (plus I'm not really sure myself). Scouring over MSDN documents like: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb968806(v=vs.85).aspx will probably just confuse you more . Anyways, like I was saying I fully suspect the issue with your Seagate drive is of a magnetic 'soft bad sector' nature, and not a physical 'hard bad sector' nature. Sure, magnetic breakdown is physical, but by physical 'hard bad sector' it means the actual platter itself is damaged. Running chkdsk scans etc. will usually result in good sectors being reallocated, if available, and the bad sector being marked as bad. It does not distinguish between physical and magnetic breakdown. The diskfresh I linked earlier rewrites literally every sector of data, HOWEVER, it should be pointed out that if the sector is already passed the readability threshold it won't help. In other words, it is a preventative tool, not a fix tool . That said, it would be a good idea to run maybe twice a year on mechanical drives to ensure the magnetic signal is strong (which will very much greatly reduce the risk of soft bad sectors). Of course there is HDD regenerator etc, but that can be a little tedious. Ideally you would copy all your data off onto a new drive, then do the process I listed earlier on it. If you do a full chkdsk on it then, you will find that the disk comes back completely clean (unless there really is physical bad sectors). Most bad sectors are typically soft bad sectors, so there's probably nothing actually wrong with the drive. They are probably more common now than previous due to the Areal density of the platters. Remember that each bit of data is stored magnetically, and as the density increases the interference between the bits increase. Even moving magnetic fields of the earth caused by solar flares can affect magnetic platter storage... remember this exact thing knocked down the power grid in Quebec, Canada, in 1989. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/sun_darkness.html Of course, hard drives have come a long way since then, so what would actually happen to them is probably unknown. In any case, I recommend getting a Toshiba 3 TB (DT01ACA300) as a replacement, do the process I said earlier on it, and copy your data off it. Remember after doing 'clean all' on it, if you want the drive as GPT instead of MBR, to type in convert GPT I forgot to write that . Once you copied your data, try the process on the Seagate drive. No harm done right? (unless you wipe the wrong disk :3eyes.
