Seagate Drives

I just read an article on cnet.com (http://www.news.com/8301-13579_3-9823370-37.html?tag=nefd.top) regarding Seagate hard drives and firmware 7.01. The article cites a flaw that causes the drive heads to scratch the drive resulting in data loss.
I'm on my 2nd drive as is a friend who I convinced to move to a MacBook. In both of our cases, the drives failed about a couple months after purchase. After reading the article, I see that I have a Seagate drive (ST98823AS) and I'm running firmware version 7.01.
Since my initial HD failure, I back up on a regular basis, but should I be talking to Apple about a replacement? Apparently Apple is looking into the issue...

The 60G drive in my MacBook is a Toshiba MK6034GSX, 1.5 GB/s, 5400 RPM.
The problem is that every hard drive manufacturer has had batches of bad drives over the last decade. I have seen bad lots from: Seagate, IBM, Western Digital, Maxtor, Quantum, IBM, Samsung, Toshiba, JTS.
Up to now, I've had very good luck with Seagate. The problem is that a previously excellent manufacturer can suddenly produce a batch of awful drives. Over time, Seagate has been one of the most reliable brands for me.
The object lesson is making off-line back-ups is an absolute necessity, regardless what hard drive you may have. The manufacturer of the hard drive is not a certain predictor of any one model's reliability. You should be making back-ups to guard against catastrophic losses anyway.
Note that OEM hard drives and boxed retail drives do not necessarily have equal warranties. The drive manufacturer may sell the OEM versions at a discount to the integrator on the presumption the integrator will assume the risk for issuing replacement drives. That's why, if you buy an over-stock OEM drive from a liquidator, the drive manufacturer may not offer a warranty.
Best wishes for hard drive reliability,
Bill

Similar Messages

  • Seagate drive no longer found on Time Capsule

    I've been doing my Time Machine back ups to a USB Seagate drive that is attached to my Time Capsule for over 7 months now.  Everything was formatted correctly  from the start and had been working great. Until yesterday when I got an alert from Time Machine saying I was over due for a back up.  I went through Finder to my Time Capsule and couldn't find the Seagate icon.  I thought that was weird and restarted my Time Capsule and MBP. Still no luck and I even went and restored my Time Capsule to factory settings and it still will not read that the Seagate drive that is plugged into the USB port. Any help or advice on the issue???
    Thanks,
    Steven

    Plug the seagate into the computer and run disk utility on it.. how is it going??

  • TS1338 My time machine is failing to back up my Mac using my external Seagate drive.

    It will go through its motions, but in the end, it will say that it failed to back up. It has done it successfully in the past, but lately it has failed to complete a full back up. My 300GB Seagate drive still has plenty of space on it since I’ve dedicated it to do only that function. I have another 1TB Western Digital Book drive connected to my Mac Mini to perform the many other miscellaneous storage functions, but the Seagate is only for back ups.
    If anyone can give me some advice on how to get my Seagate to do the necessary back ups, I’d sure appreciate it.

    Please visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine.
    In the future when you report such a problem be sure to report any error messages received.

  • Having issue with GoFlex Seagate Driver Setting, Its always asking for the installation process whenever I am turning on my mac, any help will be appreciated.

    Hi Team,
    Unfortunatly, I plugged-in one of my friends external hard drive, and its asked me for the seagate driver instalation, after that every time when I am turning on my system, its asking for the goFlex software instalation process.
    I tried out some process by googleing, I tried to remove the complete segate from my system, still it didn't help me.
    Please help me with, to remove a complete segate package.
    Thanks,
    Jayaram.

    Thanks Richard.
    The 3 point did help me, now its not all asking for the each time instalation for the same driver.
    Here one question comes to my mind, by deleting the content of the temp folder for the segate and removing all the releated files from the application, library->application support, library->extension, library->LaunchAgents, I deleted all the releated files of segate, could you please let me know if I need to delete from any more location to avoid the garbage files.
    Thanks for your time and help

  • Where to find a driver for a seagate product or the operating system (OS) fails to recognize a seagate drive

    Where to find a driver for a seagate product or the operating system (OS) fails to recognize a seagate drive
    Name : Seagate Backup+ BL Media
              Type :           Disk
              Partition Map Scheme :           Master Boot Record
              Disk Identifier :           disk1
              Media Name :           Seagate Backup+ BL Media
              Media Type :           Generic
              Connection Bus :           USB
              USB Serial Number :           NA5B83S2
              Device Tree :           IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/XHC1@14
              Writable :           Yes
              Ejectable :           Yes
              Location :           External
              Total Capacity :           1 TB (10,00,20,48,85,504 Bytes)
              Disk Number :           1
              Partition Number :           0
              S.M.A.R.T. Status :           Not Supported

    Seagate website.
    Why don't you reformat the drive in Disk Utility or Terminal. Screw that rubbish backup software on the seagate drive.

  • Seagate drives not compatible with Time Machine causing OS lag/hangs?

    Setup-
    Intel iMac (Early 2006)
    Mac OS X 10.5.1
    Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750GB External Drive
    Reproducible Issues
    MacOS X lags at start up with the Seagate drive connected via Firewire and Time Machine enabled.
    MacOS X hangs at shutdown with the Seagate drive connected via Firewire and Time Machine enabled. The only way to turn off the iMac is to hold the power button down.
    I have contacted both Apple Support and Seagate Support. The outcome with Apple resulted in finding no issues with my iMac. The same can not be said of my 35 minute call with Seagate this morning.
    The Seagate rep took me through basic troubleshooting steps and then proclaimed that it was Apple's issue and that Apple had issued a patch for this problem. However, the rep was unable to even provide the name of the patch. The problem with this declaration was the fact that it was based on disabling Time Machine and restarting the iMac once. On the second, fifth and seventh reboot after getting off the phone, the iMac hung on shutdown and lagged on reboot.
    To add insult to injury the Seagate rep told me not to use the touch sensitive power button on the Seagate drive, since "it doesn't always work properly." Quoted word for word.
    A co-worker of mine uses Time Machine with a LaCie drive on his PowerMac G5 and has had zero issues from day one. At this point in time I'm probably going to wipe the drive and return it to Costco unless someone can suggest an alternative.

    Hmmm...bought at costco
    I bet it is formated with the Master Boot Record Format. it will mount and OS X will read it, but Time Machine will not be able to use it.
    You need to be in finder, under go menu, choose utilities. in folder that opens, double click disk utility. This will open a window that shows all your connected drives. Highlight the seagate drive ( the top choice, thats give the drives storage size). in the top group of buttons in the right side of the application window click the partition button. The Volume scheme will show current. Highlight this and choose 1. to the right of that is a place where you can name the drive. Use only normal letters and numbers here. On the bottom of that window, click the options button, and select GUID. click OK and give it a few minutes. close the disk utility application when it is finished
    After it is formatted, the drive should show up on your desktop and Time machine should recognize it.

  • Seagate Drive and Edirol FA-101 Won't Play Nice

    Turning on the power to my FA-101 somehow disconnects my Seagate drive. My iMac tells me that I should eject drives before disconnecting them, as if it were something I have done.
    Each device is plugged into a Firewire port--tha FA-101 runs on bus power, the Seagate on an ac adapter.
    This happens if the computer is running or is in sleep mode.
    To get my hard drive running again, I unplug it and plug it back in.
    I usually put the computer in sleep mode before flicking the power switch on the FA101, but since it seems to make no difference and my Mac now takes 30 seconds to go into sleep mode, I will sometimes skip that step.
    I've tried just leaving the FA-101 on, even though it is a waste of energy, but after a night away, the sound is crackly and poppy and I have to reset it anyway.
    1) Why??
    2) Is there a boot procedure I should be using to start up my devices? My Edirol manual warned against "hotplugging", but didn't tell me how to go about start up/restart.

    David_Pye wrote:
    I used one of these for years, I found this problem the first time I used it. So I just used the bus power, and never turned it off. It's just on when it's plugged in. Do you need to turn it off?
    I have to reset it after a while. I start to get crackling in the playback and recording. It's been on for about twelve hours today, and it's time to reset it already!
    So, either I sleep the computer to do it, or I shut down and do it.
    I found the power supply, but it was not with any socks.

  • Seagate Drive as Read Only

    Hi I was using my External Seagate 3 TB Hard Drive on a Mac Mini that I just Borrowed from a friend and I just bought my Mac Pro now when I use this Hard Drive in the Mac Pro seems to be Read Only but if I conect it back into th Mac Mini appears as Write and Read, how can I change that????

    maybe the mini has NTFS driver from someone like Paragon and the Seagate drive and any NTFS volume would be read-only normally unless you use 3rd party driver.
    Paragon updated their NTFS to v. 11 to support Mavericks and better support 10.6.8 and up.

  • Initial impression of 7200rpm 100GB Seagate drive; not good

    I installed the Seagate Momentus 100GB 7200rpm drive into my 1.83Ghz MacBook, which has 2GB of GigaRam RAM from NewEgg. My MacBook came with the 60GB 5400rpm FUJITSU MHV2060BHPL.
    The first thing I noticed about the Seagate drive was how much vibration I was feeling in the areas to the left and right of the trackpad. With the Fujitsu you cannot even feel it spinning. The Seagate was annoying.
    I decided to take it out and re-install the Fujitsu just to make certain my memory of that drive was not playing tricks on me. But before that, I decided to try a few simple tests of the Seagate that might tell me how fast it was in comparison the to pokey 5400 Fujitsu.
    Using iMovie and the iSight camera I recorded a 3 minute clip of me sitting in front of the camera. I then exported this movie into a Quicktime broadband low movie. It took the 7200 Seagate 2 minutes and 30 seconds to complete the task.
    Next I pulled in a previous podcast that was edited in GarageBand. It took the 7200 drive 28 seconds to send it to iTunes.
    After re-installing the 60GB drive I knew my memory was good. You cannot even feel this drive spinning.
    It took the 5400 drive 2 minutes and 7 seconds to convert the 3 minute I movie of me in front of the iSight into a Quicktime broadband low file. That could't be right, so I recorded it again and got the same results.
    Next I pulled in the same podcast into GarageBand. It took the 5400 drive 24 seconds to send it to iTunes. By comparison my dual 1.85Ghz G5 takes between 12 and 13 seconds to send this podcast into iTunes.
    Needless to say I'm sending this drive back and rethinking what to get instead. I'm pretty shocked by these simple little tests, which duplicates the kind of tasks I would perform on this MacBook.
    Maybe I got a bad drive? I did have two kernel panics on the 7200 when trying to install OS X before my successful third attempt.
    As always, YMMV.
    Dual G5 tower ~ MacBook   Mac OS X (10.4)  

    When you install a new HD with a fresh install of Mac OS X you will be subject to Spotlight whirring away in background in order to build its data base holding file meta data. This could be part of your performancei ssue you raise.
    Also, it could be that a new drive requires some sanity checking of all of its data space - again, this could interfer with your performance measurements.
    The vibration issue is another thing altogether. Of course it's spinning faster than the stock 5400 rpm HD, but if it's balanced it should not cause vibration to the degree you've reported. Others here report no such vibration so it could be you have a bad HD and should have it replaced. Then check again for vibrartion. If vibration persists then it's a function of your install procedure or your MacBook construction. The HD in laptops typically have small rubber supports to reduce/eliminate vibrations - maybe one of those rubber bushings has become dislodged during replacing your HD.
    Good luck and post back what happens next.

  • New 3tb Seagate drive external USB enclosure MAC OS X 10.6.8...

    I just purchased a new 3tb Seagate drive to replace a 2tb drive in an external USB enclosure, I can access, partition and format it using Parallels but can't even see it in Disk Utilities on Mac OS X 10.6.8...????!!!!!
    Any Help?
    I beleive it has a Jmicron chip in the USB to ATA BRIDGE....

    More info: the USB to ATA/ATAPI bridge can be seen in system profiler....
    The drive works, no problem through parallels...  ***?
    USB to ATA/ATAPI bridge:
      Product ID:          0x2338
      Vendor ID:          0x152d  (JMicron Technology Corp.)
      Version:           1.00
      Serial Number:          000000000000
      Speed:          Up to 480 Mb/sec
      Manufacturer:          JMicron
      Location ID:          0xfd143000 / 7
      Current Available (mA):          500
      Current Required (mA):          2

  • Seagate Drives are Junk?

    My MacBook, one year and 10 days after I purchased it, just died. I learned that the drive, made by Seagate, was dead and all data lost and unrecoverable.
    I am really ticked off because the Mac specialists who installed a new drive told me that these Seagate drives have been nothing but trouble and they've never been able to recover data once the drive crashed. Upon doing an internet search I discover quite a bit of info about this so Apple is not unaware of the problem. That's what makes me mad. There's no reason they couldn't have sent a technical bulletin to MacBook owners. I do back up on a regular schedule but still lost alot of valuable data; I'd have backed up alot more often if I'd have had some warning.
    This really clouds my impression of Apple after 23 years of happily owning their products, supporting the company, and assuring everyone that "Apple held itself to higher standards with its products and its customer relations." That turns out to be bull.
    I would sure like to have my data back, as well as my belief in a company that does things right rather than simply try to make a fortune off the backs of consumers. If anyone knows of a successful recovery of data from one of these dead drives, I'd like to know about it. In the meantime, quit reading messages and go back up your data!

    Hard drives are incredibly complex mechanisms which have numerous vulnerable components. At one time or another every drive manufacturer has had a bad run of drives. It is true that in the past year one specific model made by Seagate has had higher than normal failure rates but not high enough to cause any manufacturer, including Seagate, to recall that one model.
    Keep in mind that any hard drive, at any time, can fail - bad run or not. Further, keep in mind that with tens of millions of hard drives manufactured by Seagate every year, a very small failure percentage is going to result in a lot of failed hard drives. Reading online that lots of people have experienced hard drive failures without knowing exactly what model and lot number tells you absolutely nothing about the disposition of your hard drive.
    And finally, keep in mind that it was *your failure* to keep a current backup. As a tech and IT instructor I have talked myself horse about the importance of frequent backups because it isn't a question of if your hard drive will fail, it is a question of when. Your real problem isn't with Apple. It is with yourself. Your failure to take responsibility for your inaction is the real problem. If you lost a lot of valuable data you don't have a regular backup strategy.

  • Seagate driver interferes with boot up

    I purchased two Seagate GoFlex 500 Gbs pocket drives and chose to not use the included Disk Application (can't remember its name - a version of formatting and gauge application) since I use Techtool Pro (with E drive) and Diskwarrior to maintain health of all my drives and Disk Utility for Formatting and Repair.
    I use these drives with my MacBookPro 2.53 Ghz for iTunes and TimeMachine backup. Ever since I started using them I have noticed long startups. Some of the delay was music fonts, installed at the same time, for Sibelius, other issues were EV_Delete and so on but this "argument" with SeagateDriver and the System keeps featuring - sometimes the issues scrolls on and on - if the drives are attached - this sample is from todays startup without them attached!
    I have searched for it with Spotlight and continue to find nothing
    21/04/11 6:02:22 PM          kernel          Warning - com.seagate.driver.PowSecDriverCore declares no kernel dependencies; using com.apple.kernel.6.0.
    is followed three lines later by
    21/04/11 6:02:22 PM          kernel          com_seagate_IOPowSecCore overriding init
    21/04/11 6:02:22 PM          kernel          com_seagate_IOPowSecCore overriding init
    21/04/11 6:02:22 PM          kernel          com_seagate_IOPowSecCore overriding init
    21/04/11 6:02:22 PM          kernel          com_seagate_IOPowSecCore: No ValidUSBVendor found
    21/04/11 6:02:22 PM          kernel          com_maxtor_IOPowSec00_10_5: GetVendorAndModelIDInfo failed
    21/04/11 6:02:22 PM          kernel          com_seagate_IOPowSecCore overriding init
    21/04/11 6:02:22 PM          kernel          com_seagate_IOPowSecCore: No ValidUSBVendor found
    21/04/11 6:02:22 PM          kernel          com_seagate_IOPowSec00_10_5: GetVendorAndModelIDInfo failed
    21/04/11 6:02:15 PM          com.apple.launchd[1]          *** launchd[1] has started up. ***
    Does anyone have ideas about how I might find it and get rid of it?
    The MacBook is 10.6.4

    Try booting up into Safe Mode, this should stop the seagate drivers from loading to start with and then theres a few things you can try to sort this out, not in any particular order they are:
    Check the Login Items by going to Apple -> System prefs -> Account then clicking Login Items, if theres a Seagate application opening try deleting it from login items with the minus.
    Try updating your software to the latest Mac OS version ( which is 10.6.7 ) by going Apple -> Software Update
    Boot to your install disk and Verify/Repair Disk using the Disk Utility to sort out any file system errors.

  • Manufacture Date on Seagate Drives

    We've been having a fair amount of Seagate drive failures in our Sun systems lately. We are trying to find out a way to get a manufacture date so that we can proactivly replace our drives that have over 5 years of service. Is there a way given a drive's serial number and model number that I can get a manufacture date?
    Thanks

    <table border="0" align="center" width="90%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td class="SmallText"><b>Bill wrote on Sat, 05 November 2005 18:41</b></td></tr><tr><td class="quote">
    I would not `trust` any info on a disk spud bracket (maybe not even the FRU number). The bracket could be attached to <i>anything</i>.
    </td></tr></table>
    Couldn't agree more Bill, I've even picked up systems that have had generic Seagate disks installed in a spud ( Ultra 60 trade ins with 146GB for example!! ).
    The link to the handbook was used to try and make sense of the serial number on the Sun drives. Logic suggests that dating numbers of OEM components are consistent from OEM peripherals right down to drives. Wouldn't it be a nightmare to implement a different serial number scheme for each OEM component? But then again not everthing in the world of IT is logical!!

  • Hard drive replaced w/ Seagate drive -G4 starts up but won't recognize it

    Hi,
    I'm trying to help out a friend with a 733 MHz G4 that I'm giving to him. I pulled out the hard drive because, while it was working ok, Disk Warrior said that it was too damaged to make repairs. So I found someone at work who had an 80Gg HD Seagate Barricuda that he said worked great but was too small for him.
    I popped the damaged HD out and put the Barricuda in. I started up the 733 MHz G4, it chimed up, and displayed the little icon asking for a hard drive. I inserted a Mac OS install disk, and it proceeded to install. When it came to the part of actually assigning a hard drive to install the OS on, nothing showed up. It does not recognize the Barricuda hard drive. So my questions are --
    1) how can this mac start up without there being a hard drive?
    2) do I need to go back and fidget with the two cables?
    3) what else can I do to make this a happy marriage of barricuda meeting G4 - or did I snag the wrong kind of hard drive for this? The cables seemed to fit in perfectly.
    Any help is much appreciated!
    Sheila

    Just because the drive could not be repaired by DiskWarrior does not mean that there is anything PHYSICALLY wrong with it: It might just mean that the Directory is too badly mangled to make sense of.
    I am aware that I ended the above sentence with a "dangling participle," a practice to be avoided.
    In my many years of this sort of thing I have only ever has one case where a drive was too scrambled for DW but it can happen.
    If it were MY G4 tower, I would pull the 80-gig drive out & put the other (damaged) drive back in.
    Fire up off the System disk and eradicate erase reformat the old drive & re-install a fresh system on it.
    This will verify that the beast is mechanically firing on all cylinders. If your G4 (like mine) has a short ATA cable with TWO connectors make sure that the Bananacuda drive is the ONLY HD in the G4, connected to the LAST connector on the cable, and configured to be the Single or Master....
    OR....
    LEAVE the old HD, configured as Master, on the end connector and configure the Bananacuda as Slave and plug it into the MIDDLE of the ribbon cable.
    If the computer still fails to see the 80-gig seagate drive look for it by booting off DiskWarrior to see if it is actually present on the ATA bus.
    I love a mystery.
    The drive MAY be NFG, or the cable might be flaky (rare but possible) or simply loose. Make sure the POWER plug is good: try another one.

  • XServe and 3rd Party Seagate drives

    I have an XServe Intel 2 x 2.66Ghz Dual-Core Xeon server. It has 10.6.3 Server OS. I have used Seagate HD's in the unit for the last 4 years with no problems.
    One of the HD's in the Mirrored Data RAID failed. When I purchased a new Seagate drive on inserted it in the XServe, the XServe did not recognise the drive in Dusk Utility, and the light on the drive bay was amber. I tried restarting the XServe, the lights would all go green on the drive bays, but then would not boot into the OS. Even when I boot up into the Server OS disc, and then go into Disk Utility it cannot see the drive.
    I have tested all the drive bay modules and they are all working fine. It as if the new Seagate drive is not recognised by the XServe. What could have possibly changed. Is it a ADM firmware issue? Is there anyway to change this?
    I know the right answer is probably to buy an Apple Server drive, but they are just so pricey here in South Africa. The Seagate drives I am buying here are equivalent to $100, where as the Apple drives from the Apple supplier are about $600.

    You may want to try and fromat the drive exactly the same size as the old apple ones.
    Check this site as he states :
    The new non-Apple drive MUST have at LEAST as much storage capacity as the Apple drive you are replacing. I know - this sounds obvious at first, but it is NOT. For example, if you are replacing an Apple 500GB drive with a Western Digital 500GB, the ACTUAL formatted capacity of the WD drive MUST BE EQUAL TO OR MORE than the Apple drive. I have had instances where the new non-Apple drive formatted at a capacity that was only a few k less than the Apple drive and it would NOT work. Not all 500GB drives format at the exact same capacity. For example, my Apple 500GB had a formatted capacity of 465.76GB but the WD only had something like 465.72GB - this small difference was enough to cause the XServe RAID to reject the WD drive as a replacement in the existing RAID Array.
    http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=738389

Maybe you are looking for