Is my new 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 HDD affected?

On 24 Jan 2009 01:13:32 GMT, Arno Wagner put finger
to keyboard and composed:

Previously Ant wrote:
On 1/23/2009 12:54 AM PT, Franc Zabkar typed:

As for your other questions, I can't answer the one about SMART error
logs, but I'd just like to make an observation about your drive's raw
Seek Error Rate.

Hmm, this looks bad. It seems to be getting worse? Or am I misreading
this? Is this related to the old firmware and HDD issues, and will the
newer firmware fix this? Or is this something else?

I think it may actually be ok. Seek errors happen due to a number
of events like vibration, power spike, weak PSU and do not
necessarily indicate damage or even risk of damage. Unless you
see a sharp rise here (say, 1 in 1000 seeks fail), I would not
worry.

I also read the longer reply by Franc and agree to most of it.
Although I have invested far less time into this issue and
less experience with Seagate.

Arno

My only experience with Seagate drives is as an end user. I've been
fortunate (?!) in that I've had a dud drive to experiment with. That's
about it.

BTW, I suspect that the Read Error Rate and Hardware ECC Recovered
attributes may follow a similar format, in which case most drives
would have a zero error rate (the uppermost 4 nibbles are usually
zero).

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

OK, I upgraded my firmware even with the other drives hooked up (readme
recommended disconnecting them). Of course, I made backups before doing
this. So far everything is working.

Damn Seagate, fix your problems so we don't have to go through this again!
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In message Franc Zabkar
was claimed to have wrote:

On Sat, 24 Jan 2009 01:44:10 +0000 (UTC), David Lesher
put finger to keyboard and composed:

So iffen you have one of the afflicted drives; how do you go about
patching it? Is there some Windows utility?

If so, what do non-Windows folks do?

Seagate supplies an ISO file which you burn to a CD-R. This is a
bootable FreeDOS image containing the flash loader and the firmware
file, among other things.

Alternatively, I have used ISObuster to extract the BootImage.img file
from the ISO. This is a 1,474,560 byte floppy drive image. I then used
FreeDOS's Diskcopy command to copy this bootable image to a floppy
diskette. I suppose Linux users would use the dd command to achieve
the same end.

I'd imagine Linux users would not, Linux users would do the same thing
as Windows users do, burn the ISO, boot from it and patch the drive as
needed.

No particular OS required, beyond the software needed to burn the ISO,
Seagate provides the OS.

On Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:56:51 -0800, DevilsPGD
put finger to keyboard and composed:

In message Franc Zabkar
was claimed to have wrote:

On Sat, 24 Jan 2009 01:44:10 +0000 (UTC), David Lesher
put finger to keyboard and composed:

So iffen you have one of the afflicted drives; how do you go about
patching it? Is there some Windows utility?

If so, what do non-Windows folks do?

Seagate supplies an ISO file which you burn to a CD-R. This is a
bootable FreeDOS image containing the flash loader and the firmware
file, among other things.

Alternatively, I have used ISObuster to extract the BootImage.img file
from the ISO. This is a 1,474,560 byte floppy drive image. I then used
FreeDOS's Diskcopy command to copy this bootable image to a floppy
diskette. I suppose Linux users would use the dd command to achieve
the same end.

I'd imagine Linux users would not, Linux users would do the same thing
as Windows users do, burn the ISO, boot from it and patch the drive as
needed.

Sorry, something got lost in the translation. I offered a floppy
solution as an alternative to the CD-ROM solution, in which case dd
would have been the Linux alternative to diskcopy. By creating the
floppy, you can see the actual files. You also don't need to waste a
CD-R disc.

BTW, ISTR some peculiar posts in Seagate's forums where people have
been unable to boot from their CD-ROM ISO until they enabled the FDD
in the BIOS.

No particular OS required, beyond the software needed to burn the ISO,
Seagate provides the OS.

Yes, I understand.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

DevilsPGD writes:


No particular OS required, beyond the software needed to burn the ISO,
Seagate provides the OS.

But hardware to boot from the ISO is needed.
That rules out non-intel Macs at the least.

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& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

On 24 Jan 2009 01:13:32 GMT, Arno Wagner put finger
to keyboard and composed:

Previously Ant wrote:
On 1/23/2009 12:54 AM PT, Franc Zabkar typed:

As for your other questions, I can't answer the one about SMART error
logs, but I'd just like to make an observation about your drive's raw
Seek Error Rate.

Hmm, this looks bad. It seems to be getting worse? Or am I misreading
this? Is this related to the old firmware and HDD issues, and will the
newer firmware fix this? Or is this something else?

I think it may actually be ok. Seek errors happen due to a number
of events like vibration, power spike, weak PSU and do not
necessarily indicate damage or even risk of damage. Unless you
see a sharp rise here (say, 1 in 1000 seeks fail), I would not
worry.

I noticed this forum thread where the SER attribute has failed SMART:
http://stx.lithium.com/stx/board/mes...thread.id=2285

7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 030 030 030 Pre-fail Always
FAILING_NOW 8890584769423

The raw value of 8890584769423 = 0x08160025a38f

This represents a seek error rate of ...

0x816 / 0x25a38f = 0.000839176828 = 839 seek errors per million

That's 1 error in about 1200 seeks, so your guess was very close.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

Previously Franc Zabkar wrote:
On 24 Jan 2009 01:13:32 GMT, Arno Wagner put finger
to keyboard and composed:

Previously Ant wrote:
On 1/23/2009 12:54 AM PT, Franc Zabkar typed:

As for your other questions, I can't answer the one about SMART error
logs, but I'd just like to make an observation about your drive's raw
Seek Error Rate.

Hmm, this looks bad. It seems to be getting worse? Or am I misreading
this? Is this related to the old firmware and HDD issues, and will the
newer firmware fix this? Or is this something else?

I think it may actually be ok. Seek errors happen due to a number
of events like vibration, power spike, weak PSU and do not
necessarily indicate damage or even risk of damage. Unless you
see a sharp rise here (say, 1 in 1000 seeks fail), I would not
worry.

I noticed this forum thread where the SER attribute has failed SMART:
http://stx.lithium.com/stx/board/mes...thread.id=2285

7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 030 030 030 Pre-fail Always
FAILING_NOW 8890584769423

The raw value of 8890584769423 = 0x08160025a38f

This represents a seek error rate of ...

0x816 / 0x25a38f = 0.000839176828 = 839 seek errors per million

That's 1 error in about 1200 seeks, so your guess was very close.

Pure random chance ;-)

Arno

On Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:25:48 +1100, Franc Zabkar
put finger to keyboard and composed:

On 24 Jan 2009 01:13:32 GMT, Arno Wagner put finger
to keyboard and composed:

Previously Ant wrote:
On 1/23/2009 12:54 AM PT, Franc Zabkar typed:

As for your other questions, I can't answer the one about SMART error
logs, but I'd just like to make an observation about your drive's raw
Seek Error Rate.

Hmm, this looks bad. It seems to be getting worse? Or am I misreading
this? Is this related to the old firmware and HDD issues, and will the
newer firmware fix this? Or is this something else?

I think it may actually be ok. Seek errors happen due to a number
of events like vibration, power spike, weak PSU and do not
necessarily indicate damage or even risk of damage. Unless you
see a sharp rise here (say, 1 in 1000 seeks fail), I would not
worry.

I noticed this forum thread where the SER attribute has failed SMART:
http://stx.lithium.com/stx/board/mes...thread.id=2285

7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 030 030 030 Pre-fail Always
FAILING_NOW 8890584769423

The raw value of 8890584769423 = 0x08160025a38f

This represents a seek error rate of ...

0x816 / 0x25a38f = 0.000839176828 = 839 seek errors per million

That's 1 error in about 1200 seeks, so your guess was very close.

Is it possible that the SER attribute is logarithmic?

90% = 1 error per 1000 million seeks
80% = 1 error per 100 million
70% = 1 error per 10 million
60% = 1 error per million
50% = 10 errors per million
40% = 100 errors per million
30% = 1000 errors per million

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

Previously Franc Zabkar wrote:
On Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:25:48 +1100, Franc Zabkar
put finger to keyboard and composed:

On 24 Jan 2009 01:13:32 GMT, Arno Wagner put finger
to keyboard and composed:

Previously Ant wrote:
On 1/23/2009 12:54 AM PT, Franc Zabkar typed:

As for your other questions, I can't answer the one about SMART error
logs, but I'd just like to make an observation about your drive's raw
Seek Error Rate.

Hmm, this looks bad. It seems to be getting worse? Or am I misreading
this? Is this related to the old firmware and HDD issues, and will the
newer firmware fix this? Or is this something else?

I think it may actually be ok. Seek errors happen due to a number
of events like vibration, power spike, weak PSU and do not
necessarily indicate damage or even risk of damage. Unless you
see a sharp rise here (say, 1 in 1000 seeks fail), I would not
worry.

I noticed this forum thread where the SER attribute has failed SMART:
http://stx.lithium.com/stx/board/mes...thread.id=2285

7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 030 030 030 Pre-fail Always
FAILING_NOW 8890584769423

The raw value of 8890584769423 = 0x08160025a38f

This represents a seek error rate of ...

0x816 / 0x25a38f = 0.000839176828 = 839 seek errors per million

That's 1 error in about 1200 seeks, so your guess was very close.

Is it possible that the SER attribute is logarithmic?

90% = 1 error per 1000 million seeks
80% = 1 error per 100 million
70% = 1 error per 10 million
60% = 1 error per million
50% = 10 errors per million
40% = 100 errors per million
30% = 1000 errors per million

Would make sense. Linear scale would give pretty bad resolution in
most cases here.

Arno

On 25 Jan 2009 19:57:07 GMT, Arno Wagner put finger
to keyboard and composed:

Previously Franc Zabkar wrote:

Is it possible that the SER attribute is logarithmic?

90% = 1 error per 1000 million seeks
80% = 1 error per 100 million
70% = 1 error per 10 million
60% = 1 error per million
50% = 10 errors per million
40% = 100 errors per million
30% = 1000 errors per million

Would make sense. Linear scale would give pretty bad resolution in
most cases here.

Arno

After looking at more SMART data, I believe that during the early life
of the drive when a statistical average is being accumulated, the data
may not be meaningful, in which case the SMART values of "rate"
attributes are flagged as 253 (0xFD).

Here is one such example:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum...fm/811449.html

(07) Seek Error Rate 100 253 30 576461
(09) Power On Hours Count 100 100 0 3
(01) Raw Read Error Rate 100 253 6 0
(C3) Hardware ECC Recovered 66 64 0 220661454

Another peculiarity is that reallocated sectors don't necessarily
generate read errors, assuming the Raw Read Error Rate attribute is
encoded in a similar fashion to the SER.

Here is a SMART report for my old Seagate 13GB HDD:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/SmartUDM/13GB.RPT

Raw Read Error Rate 1 0 79 78 00000753BA8Eh
Reallocated Sector Count 5 36 98 98 000000000077h
Seek Error Rate 7 30 53 38 052E0E3000ECh

My understanding is that the total number of read errors is zero.

The following historical analysis for the same drive would suggest
that seek errors are not related to the RSC either:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/Sma...SMART_13GB.XLS

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.