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Seagate Acknowledges Problems With 1.5-TB HDD
AnInkle writes "Seagate's 1.5TB Barracuda has been available for a couple months from multiple retailers. But shortly after release, reports of random freezes appeared on several sites. The hang apparently occurs in Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows Vista when streaming video or transferring files at low speeds. After a couple of weeks of silence, Seagate has finally officially acknowledged the problem. In a response to The Tech Report, they say they're investigating the 'issue' affecting 'a small number of Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives.' Acknowledging the 'inconvenience' is a start, but most users expect at least average performance and prompt service from the capacity king of data storage." In a related story, reader Lucas123 plugs a ComputerWorld piece examining the question of Seagate's plans to stay relevant at a time when SSDs increasingly capture OEM mindshare.
The problem appears to manifest itself in lockups for 30 seconds or so at a time which kills music streaming, video streaming, etc. The only reports of success appear to be from people who are using it for an archive disk and thats it. Some people claim the problem can be avoided somewhat by disabling the write cache, but naturally you get a serious performance hit from that (especially since the memory cache is 32MB!)
Reading the forums, it appears that Seagate has not only thus told people that the drives aren't meant for a RAID environment, but even gone so far as to tell people that RAID doesn't stand for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, but rather "Independent Drives". Hmm. Seems that time has changed this definition (FOLDOC and Wikipedia seem to claim the change in name as well).
I'm rather disappointed since now that I have a taste for a 1.5TB drive, I'm not looking to buy "just" a 1TB. Hopefully one of these companies can resolve this.
On a more serious note, I read something in Maximum PC this month that there are thermal reliability issues with perpendicular storage technology? Does this mean that all perpendicular drives are less reliable?
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
I've never had too many problems with seagate, and consider them to be a great brand. I also like western digital, but when I have a choice, I go seagate for the 5 year warranty.
As for SSD drives, I'm not exactly sure what everybody's worried about here. I don't see any affordable SSD drives, let alone any in the 1TB range.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
Where are SSDs "capturing mindshare" anywhere other than the portable market?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The 1.5TB drive is part of a family of Seagate drives, the 7200.11 drives. Supposedly the only differences between the different drives in the family are the number of platters and the size of the cache. So if there's a bug, I would expect the same issue with the smaller 7200.11 drives. (If not, the the root cause is probably related to the increase in power draw from spinning the fourth platter.)
HDD manufacturers will always face a large amount of negative press. The reason is simple. If your DVD drive breaks...ho-hum I'm out $XX and need a new one. Guess I'm not watching Kung Fu Panda tonight. If your HDD breaks...OMFG!!!I had 5 years of tax returns, 20000 hours of music, 1000s of irreplaceable pictures!...and I'm out $XX!!!
Simply put, the cost of failure for a storage manufacturer is an order of magnitude above the rest of the industry. People don't just lose money, they lose memories, they lose costly business information. Of course you and I know that we should back up our data. But its hindsight talking, because we've probably lost data before too.
-=Bang Bang=-
There are two different technologies for SSDs, single and multicell. The former is used in the $600 for 32 GB enterprise drives, the later in the $100 for 128 GB cheapos. The MC drives are the ones with the low write cycles. But if you use your SSD in a fast read-little write application like a database server it lasts forever and you can take advantage of the blazing read spead (most write performance I've seen isn't much ahead of a good HD array).
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
Throw in some external storage in the form of a USB drive and I've got a system that boots in ~10 seconds, restarts in ~15, and cut my compile time by a factor of 10.
Not to mention all the apps open a lot more quickly. I don't know if I can go back to a non-SSD setup honestly. I've got one at home and I almost never use it anymore...need to switch that one over.
I think it shouldn't matter the definition, either way Seagate has no excuse. That out of the way..
But the whole theory of RAID doesn't dictate anything about price nor, in my opinion, even require them to be 'disks'. Maybe 'inexpensive disks' is the term coined by the originator, but I think the originator should recognize the more general applicability of the concept.
For ultimate wrongness with respect to the declared meaning, how about a RAID-0 of high-capacity SSDs. A non-redundant array of expensive non-disk things.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
"Seagate is investigating an issue where a small number of Barracuda 7200.11 (1.5TB SATA) hard drives randomly pause or hang for up to several seconds during certain write operations. This does not result in data loss nor does it impact the reliability of the drive but is an inconvenience to the user that we are working to resolve with an upgradeable firmware."
"We are therefore asking customers if they feel they are experiencing this issue to give our technical support department a call with any questions."
"Affected part number: 9JU138-300, 336 with firmware revisions SD15, SD17, or SD18."
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.
I prefer to calculate biting satire...