Bizarre external Seagate Backup plus problems

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ShrinkMD

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Oct 24, 2016
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My Seagate 4tb drive seems like it was damaged by connecting to a laptop, as it was working fine before. It started blinking when plugged in, and wouldn't connect to any computer. I came back a few hours later, and then it connected fine to my desktop, and to another older laptop. I backed up all the files (they already were, but I had bought another backup drive) and it ran for 24 hours in a row copying everything, all disk tests were normal.

So then I plugged it back into the laptop which started the trouble, and voila, now it is blinking again and won't connect to anything. This is so weird, since if the drive was failing you think something would have shown up under Seagate Tools, diskmanager, etc. Now it just blinks again. No weird sounds or other signs of hard drive failure.

It is usually connected to a Win 8.1 machine and worked fine, the problem laptop has Win 7 64 Pro on it.

Any ideas? I can't believe that the HD is actually physically broken, but something funny is going on with it.
 
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JaredDM

JaredDM

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Jul 8, 2015
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I hate to say it, but there is nothing bizarre or unbelievable about a new Seagate failing. Their 3Tb of this model saw nearly 40% failure rate in some studies. They're being sued in a class action right now over their extremely high failure rates.

You should still try replacing the cable, etc. before you give up on it, but if you've got the data backed up it's probably just going to be another store return.
 
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ShrinkMD

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Yeah, but yesterday I had removed the bottom adapter and connected it directly to the computer, did not work, and every software thing I could think of. Then it spontaneously worked a few hours later, and was spinning without any problem for over 24 hours. I verified all the files, everything seemed fine. As soon as I plugged it into the offending laptop, blink city. I had been transferring things back and forth between my main computer and the other laptop, and no problem, plugging and unplugging, removed it with the USB removal tool on the taskbar. The hard drive only has 500 something hours of use on it.
 
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JaredDM

JaredDM

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Yep, totally normal for the firmware issue that caused all of these to fail. They have a problem with the media cache and bad sector reallocation function. As soon as the drives develop even a few bad sectors they start to get stuck busy, work sporadically for a bit, then stop working altogether. Try direct SATA connecting the drive and see if it's recognized in BIOS as the correct size now. Likely the motherboard will just hang if you try booting with it connected.
 
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JaredDM

JaredDM

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Also you should be aware that you may have a 512byte to 4K sector issue going from their adapter to direct SATA. These drives are a native 4K sector size, but they emulate 512byte sectors. The USB bridge adapter converts it back to the native 4K though. So often if you direct SATA connect it'll be trying to read 4K sectors as if they are 512 byte, so the partition table won't be reading from where it's supposed to be.
 
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ShrinkMD

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Oct 24, 2016
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Interesting, I guess I'm lucky it started back up again and I was able to rescue everything! It's too bad there is no way to fix the firmware. It "feels" like the other laptop messed up the drive, of course. Have these issues persisted with the 5tb seagate models?

When I tried connecting it directly to the motherboard, it did not recognize at all, machine booted fine, but was empty in bios.
 
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JaredDM

JaredDM

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I haven't seen too many of the 5TB ones come in for recovery yet. The 3TB were the worst, we see them every week, and it seems to have gotten a bit better since then. However there aren't a lot of 5TB's in circulation yet, so time will tell. While it is a firmware issue, it ultimately relates to poor manufacturing quality control. The fact is that the issue only arises after it starts developing bad sectors, effectively failing in that way.

While we do have tools here that can disable the features to make the drives work again so we can recover them, it's not really a permanent fix of the drive. They are just crap drives built to be sold cheap. Avoid the headaches and just get yourself a good HGST or Toshiba drive.

I personally think that Seagate is planning a jump into SSD's and is just letting their HDD division go to pot. Cutting corners to make it more profitable for now while putting more money into their solid state division. It wouldn't surprise me if they ultimately end up selling their own SSDs under another name from one of the NAND companies they've already acquired such as LSI.
 
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ShrinkMD

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And now this morning I plugged it back into my main desktop, and voila, it is working fine. I loaded up Seagate tools, and just started a "Fix drive" long disk option. I imagine it would take a week to sift through a 4TB drive. Besides making sure I have all the files somewhere else, is there anything else I can do software/firmware wise to make this thing work better?

Also, out of superstition, I am not plugging any USB hard disks into this other laptop!

Thanks for any further advice!
 
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