Seagate drive problems! Crashes Windows AND Ubuntu!

Natima

Natima

Natima

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Joined
28 May 2008
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847
Had the drive for ages, no problems. It was NOT the main drive in the system, it was the E: drive.
Here is the sequence of events.

1. Made a system image of my PC and stored it on the Seagate Barracuda ST3100528AS 1TB drive.
2. Put my PC to sleep.
3. PC refused to wake from sleep, restarted PC.
4. Drive no longer working in BIOS or Windows.
5. Diagnose for many days until...
6. Conclude that it's a firmware issue known as the BSY bug, known to occur in Seagate drives.
7. FIX the problem like this: https://sites.google.com/site/seagatefix/ (it took 5 hours!)
8. Drive still broken - but in a very different way.

Now what happens is that in the BIOS everything looks totally dandy, drive is detected perfectly. Upon entering Windows it shows up in Computer, but with no volume. It also grinds explorer to a halt until it crashes. Weirdly, other programs seem to work. i.e. Firefox/Steam.

Symptoms now include
1. Crashing Explorer
2. No volume to drive (doesn't display a drive size in Computer, but BIOS reads it normally.
3. Windows update trying and failing to find drivers for ST31000528AS.

I fixed symptom 3 by updating the firmware! This was tricky, as Explorer kept crashing. So I had to run the Seagate firmware update, and plug the SATA cable in half-way through the PC re-booting up to perform the update.

In an attempt to at least scan the drive for errors (Explorer doesn't work!), I stuck Ubuntu onto a USB drive and booted in. Upon connecting the trouble-disk, Ubunto slowed and ceased to function. Just like in Windows.

All I can think is that maybe the drive is somehow sending quadrillions of messages to my CPU or RAM and just totally grinding the system to a halt?

ANY help much appreciated.
 
I think the best option is just to return it as faulty,you could spend days trying to figure it out

as always be sure to use latest mb bios too and try a long cmos clear,then see if it still does it

also test in ide mode if originally in ahci
 
Well it has LOAADS of important data on it.
Like the master files for every recording I've ever done.
I'm sure that it's mechanically fine... maybe...
It doesn't make weird noises or anything. I think the data is all still there.

It was my backup drive, and I temporarily moved everything over in order to reformat and disassemble my RAID 0 array and the next morning it didn't work.
Worst timing ever for the drive to break :/
 
Last edited:
wazza300 said:
Oh I thought you said you backed it up?

Tried different SATA port and cable
Click to expand...

I'll try a different port.
The backup was onto the drive that's buggered :( It WAS the backup which was only supposed to be a temporary measure before reformatting.

Do I need HD Tune Pro? I'll try run it but I reckon the OS will freeze before I can do anything.

Is there some way I can configure Windows to NOT try and search the drive so it doesn't freeze?
 
Probably going to need a bit more advanced data recovery if its the typical issues that affected seagate 7200.11 and some .12 1Tb drives. The data is probably still there but the interface faulty and further messing with it potentially could result in losing that data assuming its still there.

Some people have bought/salvaged another drive to transplant the electronics but if the data is important you probably want it professionally done.
 
Yeah used to be a big fan but wouldn't touch their regular drives with a bargepole these days, if I was to buy another mech drive would be WD probably :|
 
you could try seatools,see if anything crops up

Seagate are pretty hit n miss for reliability from what ive been reading,ive only had a few older seagates which were and still are reliable but were noisy,dunno how the modern ones compare
 
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