Help, I think I have a bad drive!

[lovingHDTV]

I bought a Seagate 120GB drive a few months ago and think I have a problem.

When I ran chkdsk on it, it died with "unexpected error". So I finally got all me recordings off onto another drive and tried to re-format it within XP. So I did the 64kb thing and sent it off formating. Well the next day, ~12hours later it still was not done, so I killed the format. I then deleted the partition, re-created it, and hit format again. Once again 8hours later it still is not formated.

Also, when I copied my files off the drive onto another drive in the same system, it too 165minutes to copy a 10GB file from 1 HDD to the next. This seemed awfully slow. I have both drives on the same IDE channel, one master, one slave, but still this this is slow. I could stream the file over a 100Mb network at that rate.

I believe the drive has a 1yr warranty so it should still be covered. Is it time for me to figure out how to redeem the warrenty?

thanks,

[deadtoaster2]

Well the format times are indeed taking way too long. I reformatted my 80GB sea gate HDD in 64k clusters and it took about 30-45 Min's. The 120GB shouldn't take more than a few hours. One suggestion, maybe the cable you are using has a cut or something on it, try swapping out for another IDE cable and see if that helps any. It probably wont but its worth a try.

[salsbst]

Look out for a failed IDE controller. It can make any drive look bad.

[Kanati]

try changing the cable as deadtoaster mentions... It wouldn't be the first time I've seen an ide cable go south with no reason whatsoever... Nor would it be the first ide controller I've seen take a nosedive. But I'd put money on the drive having just bit the dust. Far far far FAR more likely than the other two options. Especially since a chkdisk reports errors and the format is taking so long. If you formatted it at the command prompt (not even sure you can do that any more really) you would be able to see it as it hit bad clusters.

Best bet... Just go buy a new drive of the same model at your local best buy or circuit city... And drop the old drive in the box and take it back. Hell of a lot easier than trying to claim on the warranty if seagates RMA policy is anything like it used to be when I was doing the tech support thing.

[lovingHDTV]

OK, so I tried again, deleted the partition and did a "quick format". This came back with the drive supposedly OK. I then ran a chkdsk and it came back clean.

What exactly is a "quick format"?

thanks,

[heffe2001]

Originally Posted by Kanati

Best bet... Just go buy a new drive of the same model at your local best buy or circuit city... And drop the old drive in the box and take it back. Hell of a lot easier than trying to claim on the warranty if seagates RMA policy is anything like it used to be when I was doing the tech support thing.

The rest of your advice I can see being good, but this is a terrible thing to tell someone to do. Getting warranty service from most of the HD manufacturer's is about as easy as it gets (just run their diagnostic program, get whatever error code it throws up, and file online for an RMA, should have your drive back in around 10-14 days, or do an advanced cross-ship and have it usually in a day or 2).

By putting a different serial number drive in a box and taking it back, you run a big risk of the retail outlet being out of a replacement. They DO check the serial numbers on their stuff, and MOST places like Bestbuy & such do also.

And to the original poster, if you want use Seagates HD utilities and run their extensive HD test, if no errors are found there, you're good to go.

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by lovingHDTV

OK, so I tried again, deleted the partition and did a "quick format". This came back with the drive supposedly OK. I then ran a chkdsk and it came back clean.

What exactly is a "quick format"?

thanks,

A "quick format" only formats the "structure" of the drive and assumes that the individual sectors are OK. Whereas a standard format checks each and every sector on the drive and notes any damaged sectors and marks them unreadable.

[Kanati]

yeah, don't trust the quick format... It just wipes the FAT and that's it.

If you have the resources, drop that drive in another machine and do a complete format on that machine. If it checks out (120 gigger should take less than an hour to format) on that machine then drop it in the original machine and just chkdisk it to verify it again.

The rest of your advice I can see being good, but this is a terrible thing to tell someone to do. Getting warranty service from most of the HD manufacturer's is about as easy as it gets (just run their diagnostic program, get whatever error code it throws up, and file online for an RMA, should have your drive back in around 10-14 days, or do an advanced cross-ship and have it usually in a day or 2).

To each his own... Last time I dealt with seagate on an RMA I had to dance circles for two days just to get them to admit the drive was faulty... and that was coming from an A+ certified technician working at a repair shop... And then they WOULDN'T cross-ship, period. And that didn't happen just once, it happened multiple times over the course of a couple years. Now if I was telling him to buy a 300 gig drive and take back an 80 gigger in the same box, that would be bad, and stupid on top of it. But if it's the same model, same size, etc, and you tell them the reason you are bringing it back is that it is A BAD DRIVE. SECTORS BAD ON THE PLATTERS... Then you are letting them deal with the RMA which is what happens. And you get your drive same day. Woot. As for the serial numbers..............

/me runs in the next room and opens a maxtor 120 gigger just to check this...

ACK! Well then... Good reason to keep your original boxes. Which I do. Yes, it's not exactly aboveboard, but neither is making you dance around like a circus chimp to get an RMA.

que sera sera....

[SHS]

Try runing the Seagate diagnostic toolkit

[lovingHDTV]

I ran the seagate diag tool from the web and it found errors on the drive. It said I should return the drive for exchange, my warranty period ends Nov 9 2009, I guess it has a 5 year warranty on it.

I submitted the RMA, we'll see how it goes.

thanks all for the help, I'll update as things happen,

[Kanati]

yeah, lemme know how long that takes. I'm interested to find out if they've gotten better in this little niche of customer support than they were about 8 years ago.

[lovingHDTV]

Quick update.

I RMA'd the drive and it got back on July 25th. No problems at all and quick service.

Go Seagate!