Testing A New Seagate Disk

[astral]

I have just bought a 300Gb Seagate disk and installed it in an external enclosure for use with my notebook.

Being a suspicious soul, I thought I would run a test on the disk before I commit any real data to it,

so I downloaded the test programme from the Seagate site.

When I run the quick diagnostic it shows lots of Bad Sector messages,

but does not mention them in the summary at the end.

I then decided to run the full surface check. After 3 hours it had completed 1% and was predicting

another 240 hours to complete, so I gave up.

Does anyone know a quicker way to check out a disk?

Edited May 8, 2006 by astral

[Tywais]

Don't take this wrong, just some fundamental questions. I assume it is an ATA (parallel - IDE) drive and as such make sure the jumper is in the Master position on the drive. Cable select can be flacky and can cause misreads. Second, how did you format the drive initially, and if NTFS or FAT32?

If those are OK then if you have a desktop computer, just put it in there temporarily to verify it. Could be a problem with the USB communication and also some external enclosures can't properly supply enough power to a 300GB drive. This will check it fully.

[astral]

The drive is S-ATA and formatted as NTFS in 2 partitions, 80Gb

and 220Gb.

The external enclosure has an independant power supply.

I am not saying there are any problems, but I would like to verify the disk.

My desktop is too ancient for SATA.

[Tywais]

The drive is S-ATA and formatted as NTFS in 2 partitions, 80Gb

and 220Gb.

The external enclosure has an independant power supply.

I am not saying there are any problems, but I would like to verify the disk.

My desktop is too ancient for SATA.

You probably have already done this but if not just open up a DOS window and run CHKDSK x: /V where x is the drive letter. May not be as vigorous as the Seagate utility but would think it would be sufficient. CHKDSK x: /F will fix any errors but a newly formatted drive should not have any in the first place.

[meadish_sweetball]

Was the drive bag completely sealed when delivered to you?

Whether it is true or not I dont know, but I talked to a hard disk repairman here in Chiang Mai who said it is not uncommon that old hard disks get refurbished and sold as new.

[Tywais]

Was the drive bag completely sealed when delivered to you?

Whether it is true or not I dont know, but I talked to a hard disk repairman here in Chiang Mai who said it is not uncommon that old hard disks get refurbished and sold as new.

The problem is that the bag will probably have been opened to put the warranty sticker on it. I have had drives that they just put a small slit in the bag to put the sticker on the drive to show that it hasn't been opened and possibly used. Also being a 300GB drive, can't be too old.

[astral]

The bag was sealed and the disk unformatted.

[Para]

Astral I recently bought the 300gb Seagate for my laptop. I wanted a 500gb but the guys just laughed and said 300 was the biggest in Thailand. I now wish I had bought an external case with a fan as this little baby get seriously hot.

I use freeware software from HDD Temp software so I can keep an eye on just how hot it is.

[astral]

Astral I recently bought the 300gb Seagate for my laptop. I wanted a 500gb but the guys just laughed and said 300 was the biggest in Thailand. I now wish I had bought an external case with a fan as this little baby get seriously hot.

I use freeware software from HDD Temp software so I can keep an eye on just how hot it is.

Interesting idea.

At the moment the ambient temperature here is only 20C.

Is that programme supposed to be a working version?

I cannot get it to give me any useful info.

It only shows 2 servers that must be defaults, they are certainly not mine.

[MikeWill]

On the desktop system, you just need the PC Wizard ( http://www.cpuid.org/pcwizard ) to know the HDD's temp.

I do not recall who had recommended this excellent tool. Is it were you astral?

[SMS]

I wanted a 500gb but the guys just laughed and said 300 was the biggest in Thailand.

I got a 400 GB(ATA) about a year ago from Hong Kong.

No reason why its not available here now.

[Tywais]

I wanted a 500gb but the guys just laughed and said 300 was the biggest in Thailand.

I got a 400 GB(ATA) about a year ago from Hong Kong.

No reason why its not available here now.

500GB is available. One place priced it at 14,500B for a Seagate Barricuda SATA 16MB buffer.

[Firefoxx]

The bigger sizes are available, just not available at most shops. You can go directly to the dealer (like Dcom) or go to the specialty shops.

Most external 3.5" enclosures don't come with any sort of fan (5.25" usually do). Probably because the fan would have to be extremely small and inefficient to fit. They rely on the case itself to dissipate heat, and with the huge amounts of heat generated by today's harddisks, that isn't enough for extended used.

As for the actual problem... you should find a desktop that has SATA and check it there. If it has no problem, then it's probably just the controller in the enclosure.

[Para]

I wanted a 500gb but the guys just laughed and said 300 was the biggest in Thailand.

I got a 400 GB(ATA) about a year ago from Hong Kong.

No reason why its not available here now.

500gb's are easily sourced in the UK. No one in Tukom Pattaya had anything over 300gb. That said it did only cost 6,000 baht so no complaints here!

[meadish_sweetball]

If you live in Pattaya, it might be worth a trip to Bangkok to get new gear.

[bkk_mike]

Seagate just introduced a 750Gb drive last week. How long until that's available here?

And although it's a 7,200 rpm drive, it's supposed to be almost as fast as their 10,000 RPM drive.

In something that's a bit more relevant. I have a 250Gb Maxtor which I had problems with when in an external enclosure which has no fan, but which works with no problems in my main PC.

(The enclosure also has no issues with the 80Gb Maxtor I put in it instead).

I think the lack of a fan causes problems if the drive runs quite hot.

Edited May 11, 2006 by bkk_mike

[Firefoxx]

The main problem with the uber-large harddrives is that they are very expensive, on a cost-per-gigabyte scale.

For example, Seagate's SATA drives:

80GB 2290 baht 28.6/GB

160GB 3190 19.9

200GB 3590 17.9

250GB 3850 15.4

300GB 4990 16.6

400GB 10900 27.2

500GB 12900 25.8

You can see the "sweet spot" for "most gigs for the buck" is the 250GB flavor. For the ultra-big or ultra-small sizes, you're paying nearly twice as much per gigabyte. Of course, there are applications where you need the most capacity in one drive, so there is no choice. For me, I just pack a lot of 250GB's in one case.

[breconion]

I have just bought a 300Gb Seagate disk and installed it in an external enclosure for use with my notebook.

Being a suspicious soul, I thought I would run a test on the disk before I commit any real data to it,

so I downloaded the test programme from the Seagate site.

When I run the quick diagnostic it shows lots of Bad Sector messages,

but does not mention them in the summary at the end.

I then decided to run the full surface check. After 3 hours it had completed 1% and was predicting

another 240 hours to complete, so I gave up.

Does anyone know a quicker way to check out a disk?

I expect you are using the USB connection. If you are using USB 1 then it will be slow USB 2 will not be quite as slow.

Best suggestion would be to put it in a computer and run the check from the computer.

If you have to use your laptop then let the thing run without nothing else in the USB and not running another programs.

I have a small 100 G ext HD as backup and I only have 10 G of files to back up and that takes a couple of hours, but there again I'm using a krap dell 1.8 BTY that is a company supplied machine.

[lomatopo]

Does the external enclosure support S-ATA?

I think it's best to use ATA drives in external enclosures, slightly less expensive too.

I use a AMS Venus external enclosure (which has an extremely large fan) for a Seagate 250 GB ATA HDD even though my desktop supports S-ATA (I have two Seagate S-ATA 300 GB HDD's in the desktop.) I share the external enclosure between the desktop and my notebook, without any problems.

[Firefoxx]

There's actually a good reason to buy SATA for your external drive. The reason is eSATA, or external SATA. It's basically SATA cabling that's adapted for external use, but gives the same performance as internal SATA. Not only that, with certain SATA controllers (like Sil) you have port multiplication support, which means that you can use that single cable to connect to multiple SATA harddisks.

Now, you say that USB2 at 480megabits/s and firewire at 400megabits/s is already fast... but eSATA runs at 150megaBYTES/s and 300megabytes/s. And 1 byte is equal to 8 bits. Basically, you would be getting the same native performance as you do for an internal device, but it would be removable. There are also notebook adapters available. New mainboards are shipping with eSATA ports, and you can buy adapters to switch internal SATA ports to eSATA ports.

[The Coder]

eSATA doesn't sound appealing to me. Performance is great, but people don't buy an external drive because they want performance; that's what internal drives are for. The huge drawback is SATA is not bus powered meaning you need an AC power brick to use it. Ideal external drives are both compact (2.5" or smaller) and portable (work on any computer). I'd rather have a standard USB connector that fits anywhere rather than lug around an odd new converter dongle and AC adapter that I might lose or forget. Also SATA has a very limited set of devices you can attach like HD & optical. So I'm not sure who is really going to want this contraption.

[Firefoxx]

Well, there are different uses for different things, Coder. This thread actually deals with a 3.5" disk, and that requires a power brick, no matter what. A 2.5" disk is nice in that it's small, light, requires no power brick, and doesn't get as hot (if you use the slower ones). However, it lacks the capacity and speed of the 3.5" form factor.

Now, people don't buy these external harddisks for all the same reasons. Some buy them for a little extra space, some buy them for multimedia applications, some buy them because they need a lot of high-performing space but have a notebook, or need interoperability between systems. Now a 2.5" harddisk would satisfy the needs of certain people, but others would shun the idea.

An example: I deal with multimedia editing a lot. That requires a *ton* of harddisk space, the more the better (I currently have more than 1.5TB in my computer alone, and I need more). It also requires that the storage be as fast as possible, and for this firewire and usb just don't cut it. Say I also do editing on the go with my notebook (whcih I do), and so I need an external solution that's fast, big, and portable.

And yes, I'm seriously considering just this kind of solution. Of course, you and I aren't the same person, and need vastly different things. Other people would also need different things. So, even if you or I can't find a use for something, be it a piece of scrap or a million dollar sportscar, it hardly means that there's no one that will find that it satisfies his every need.

Oh, and it doesn't need an odd new converter dongle. You either have a PCMCIA cardbus card in your notebook, or you have the connector on your desktop. Yes, it's not as widespread or convenient as USB, but it's not as generic and slow as USB. It's not meant for convenient ubiquitous portable storage, it's meant for DAS, or Direct Attached Storage, which means the equivalent of internal storage outside your computer.

[Tywais]

Nice reply Firefoxx I started to respond but felt it might get into a debate as often happens with technology topics.

Edited May 13, 2006 by tywais

[Firefoxx]

I actually own an external 2.5" USB harddrive. It has memory card slots for copying the contents of memory cards to the drive. It's very convenient and portable, and much easier to bring along than a notebook.

However, it's not big enough or fast enough for my multimedia needs. It fills a need, but it doesn't fill all needs. Nothing does, or else there would be no competition... everyone in the world would just buy product A and all their needs would be fulfilled.

[astral]

Yes my external case is SATA, but also includes a legacy connector for

an IDE if that is required (the cable was included but I do not use it.)

As the disk is mainly for backup I keep it off most of the time

and power up when I want to backup files.

I went for SATA as I can forsee the disk in a noew desktop at some later stage.

Future proofing if you like.

Edited May 13, 2006 by astral

[The Coder]

I hadn't read the whole thread, just saw your response was last and opened as usually that means there is some good info. But yeah, people are different. I wouldn't try to tune a laptop for things a desktop is better and cheaper at doing; one of those things is laptop hard drives are too small and too slow for my needs (though some higher end laptops let you have a raid of 2).

For me, a decently quick and high capacity mainstream SATA drive will do for the desktop.

If I wanted performance I would get an internal 10K RPM raptor 150GB SATA, a fibre channel 15K RPM drive, or stripe multiple.

If I wanted external attachment I would get a compact and portable bus powered USB drive.

If I wanted a blend of performance and external attach I would get FireWire 800 which has been out for some time (that's 800mbps and their roadmap is 3.2gbps by the way). The speed is higher than the read/write speed of most any drive which is the critical performance element. It's bus powered so no brick. You can have 4.5 meter cables which are twice as long as eSATA, and you can plug into existing FireWire ports in other systems. Only problem is most laptop firewire ports don't supply any bus power so in those circumstances you need a brick AND the weird firewire 4-6 wire cable which basically ruins all the potential connectivity advantages .

What the industry really needs is a new, faster USB. USB 2.0 at 480mbps was nice 5 years ago and trumped FireWire at that time, but it's not enough for fast drives anymore. Seems the USB guys have been working on a wireless standard so don't know if a faster cabled version is a priority or not.