7200.11 - Sequential Write Speed

[bobknock]

Recent we bought 6x of the 750GB Seagate 7200.11 drives. All 6 had the same date code etc.

All 6 had the same profile for sequential read speeds - starting at over 100MB/s on outer sectors and dropping to 50MB/s on the innermost ones.

5 of the 6 had matching write speeds - "Good" drive curve

One of them has a much worse looking profile - "Bad" drive curve

I've tried flashing the firmware to AD14, but as expected, to no effect.

Newegg's Comments for the drive seem to have a few people with slower drives, and one person that bought a couple and got some fast, some slow.

Any ideas the cause? I would think bad areas remapped post-manufacture to normally unused innermost tracks would show up on the read graph as well, not just the write.

Any guesses on how common this is? Any recommendations for a 750GB drive that would be more consistent?

 

[EQTakeOffense]

Any guesses on how common this is? Any recommendations for a 750GB drive that would be more consistent?

Getting one drive out of six to be 'bad' isn't that horrible. If a few people have slower drives, then obviously it's probably something not too uncommon. However, I'd just RMA it and call it a day.

 

[bobknock]

17% bad is pretty horrible, any way you slice it.

For personal use I'd agree; just RMA and forget it. Unfortunately, I'm evaluating these for work in anticipation of needing a few thousand of them.

I should just fail them, but since I have no idea whats wrong with it, I really don't know that any other vendor is going to avoid similar problems.

 

[NKDietrich]

Yeah I'm not sure how people typically deal with bulk HD orders. HDs have a much higher DOA rate than other hardware due to its moving-parts nature.

Its hard to know whats acceptable in this case.

 

[gaspah]

Yeah I'm not sure how people typically deal with bulk HD orders. HDs have a much higher DOA rate than other hardware due to its moving-parts nature.

Its hard to know whats acceptable in this case.

as a system builder i see more dead mobos than hdd.. same with RAM... hdd comes 3rd...

 

[NKDietrich]

as a system builder i see more dead mobos than hdd.. same with RAM... hdd comes 3rd...

Yeah, but HDs also like to have crib death, where they work "fine" but die early. Of course some mobos and RAM do that too Like 680i boards and Crucial Ballstix memory.