Help ! Installed a brand new 500gb seagate HDD internal,,,,EXTREMELY SLOW !!!

[plainman007]

Hi,

I finally corrected the problem. Permanantly i hope. I wanted to share how i did it just so others reading this thread and plauged by the same problem of taking home a brand new disk to find a bad block reported can benefiit from this. I tried all methods including norton disk doctor. A full (non-quick format). Sea Tools, which i think was ridiculous that they claim it has tools to set right this problem, but it doesnt. And even if it does they've either misnamed it. Or its not clear how to do it just by looking at the menus and tools within.

I however kept reading everything i could on the net before i returned the drive, as i knew i would get a REPAIRED (second hand) hdd in exchange for the brand new one i bought a few days back, thanks to seagate !

I found what they call a 'Low Level Format'. It formats the disk similar to the process used at the factory from what i understand. Its a REAL format unlike the ones windows does. Any data you have on your HDD is literally wiped out and there is no way even a professional data recovery company can recover your data. It doesnt just flag the sectors of the drive as free and formatted, like windows does, but really does fill in the drive with zeros thereby ensuring every bit on the HDD is really reset to factory condition.

I found a freeware LLF tool and used it skeptically. It took a long while (maybe because this is a 500gb drive). But it was a pleasant surprise that my HDD is now clean of bad sectors. This application saved me the trouble of having to put up with some junk repaired HDD that Seagate would dish out to me. The program is called HDD Low Level Format Tool 2.36 and it really brought the disk back to factory condition with no bad blocks/sectors. HD tune reports all fine. My system now doesnt stall as it was doing since i connected the drive. And my copy speed to the drive etc is now as what one would normally expect from a drive like this.

I hope this helps any of you guys out there with this problem as you can avoid giving away your brand new disk before trying this last remedy. You can google up this program and download it. Alternately you could use this tool before you sell off/give a computer or HDD to someone and you dont want them to be able to recover data from it using recovery technologies that we may not know of.

[ctal]

Wow! Glad you found a good solution, and thanks for sharing the info.

This Wikipedia writeup provides some good background. The term "low level format" doesn't mean what it once did, and is often misused, or used inconsistently, in conjunction with utilities offered by drive manufacturers and others. So other utilities that may be described as doing what the one you used does may not really be doing the same thing, and therefore may be less effective.

Disk formatting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Regards,
-- Al

[DBoone]

Informative link. Thanks Al!

[plainman007]

Hi Ctal,

I did read about the issue you mentioning too. I read that there are a lot of applications that say they do LLF but dont do it as per what it really means. But i read here and there that the program i mentioned is one of those rare ones that does a real LLF. I guess it must be true as it corrected the problem which i thought was irreversible. And i was just about to return it to Seagate under warranty. .

Is there any other freeware out there that can confirm the 32 MB buffer Ctal ? Id just like to see it once for my self.

Thanks..

[Alegria]

Originally Posted by plainman007

Is there any other freeware out there that can confirm the 32 MB buffer Ctal ? Id just like to see it once for my self.

Thanks..

I just checked with my old AIDA32 freeware V3.93 and it reports the buffer size under ATA, check this:

[ctal]

Originally Posted by plainman007

Is there any other freeware out there that can confirm the 32 MB buffer Ctal ? Id just like to see it once for my self.

I don't know specifically, but you could also try some of these:

hard drive benchmark software downloads and reviews - CNET Downloads

I wouldn't really worry about it, though. If the part number marked on the drive's label is indicated at the Seagate site as having 32mB, that would be good enough for me.

Regards,
-- Al

[plainman007]

Hey thanks for the link Ctal am off to download a few of them and see if any can report the Buffer size. I checked the site and this model no is mentioned as having 32Mb as a buffer size. Maybe i need to manage my anxiety factor. Lol.

[plainman007]

Hi Ctal > I tried some of these programs (not all though) and could not find any that reported the buffer/cache size. However i called Seagate and had a chat with the technician, who didnt know what a buffer or cache was, she said such things dont come in the drives, and its purely a HDD. . Then i got upset . Then she got like.... She promised to check and call me back. But i received an email from her this morning saying 'its not possible to tell the buffer speed with any application'. I send a reply thats like.... To this i recieve a reply from her saying 'Yes its possible to see the buffer size from within seatools, sorry for the confusion'. I tried it and it does show up in Seatools. Install seatools and then click RUN TESTS > DRIVE INFO and it shows the buffer speed accurately as it also identified my older drives as having 8Mb buffer.....

So until the next complication..so long....


On a side note Seatools has a complete disk imaging solution included for free within seatools which includes disk imaging, cloning, with compression varied compression levels, and system restore bootable disk creation. Its powered by Acronis. Just a tip for those that may want to use it since its free anyways

[ctal]

She not only did not know that a hdd contains a buffer, but she doesn't seem to know the difference between size and speed.

With none of the other programs being able to report buffer/cache size, perhaps the hdd hardware simply doesn't make it available to software, and the Seatools software reports it by having a lookup table in its program that stores cache size vs. part number for Seagate drives. Just a speculation.

Thanks for the info about the imaging program. I haven't encountered any comments about how good it may be.

Regards,
-- Al

[plainman007]

Hi There,

Yes, can you imagine how well trained their tech support staff must be !

Their imaging program may not be all that fantastic for people like you and me who need customization, but it must be a simple bare bones imaging program. I did see that it had the capacity to only clone/image whole drives and partitions. No file or directry selections allowed. But it may serve the purpose for some simple needs.

Thanks

[plainman007]

Hi Ctal > How have you been. Its been a while !

Sorry to dig up this thread from the dust but i got the 500gb drive replaced under warranty and the new one wont even format. Same noise same errors. It started a format to begin with after installation but the the format failed half way through. Whats with the Seagate drives nowadays i really dont know. Its come down to real bad quality i guess. Have u had any experiences with these ST3500-320AS drives ? I cant believe they are all in bad quality. Even the service center told me that that entire model is a flop and that most are being returned on complaints.

[ctal]

Hi Plainman -- Doing pretty well here lately. As you may have noticed, I'm now a moderator!

I've been purely a WD person in recent years. Seagates have been getting a lot of bad press. Here is a Newegg link at which you can find a great many user comments on your particular Seagate model. Only 59% of them gave it the best possible rating, and 19% gave it the worst possible rating. Not very good.

Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives

Best,

-- Al

[plainman007]

In fact you wouldnt believe it, but i was about to PM and congratulate you. So since you beat me in timing... CONGRATULATIONS !!!!! .

If anyone deserves to be a mod here im sure your from the finest to pick, so it suits you well.

Glad to know your doing great. I hope to speak to you someday soon. From my side of the globe.

Thanks for the link. Will read away right now.



Yours truly......