• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

New HDDs keep lose data

L

Lisa Gerrard

n00b
Joined
Aug 18, 2013
Messages
14
Hi, first I bought 2 Seagate ST3000DM001 and now 8 Seagate ST4000DM000, to replace old 2TB HDD in my tower; I did initialized (GPT), partitioned (just one partition) and tested (2 passes with badblocks) them with gparted and everyone seemed ok, I use w7 ultimate 32bit, no raid
In just 2 weeks I got these problems (never happened in last 5 years):
1) When I started to transfer some files to one new ST4000DM000 (maybe a pure coincidence) I got a problem and the partition of one ST3000DM001 get corrupted losing lot of data. I wiped it and rebuilt the partition
2) While coping a big folder (about 1TB) system crashed and get a bsod (maybe problem was a windows update just done), now I use teracopy and copy is not more an issue
3) After I find out that hd tune was showing problems for one ST4000DM000 (End To End Error Detection 88 88 99 12 failed, Interface CRC Error Count 200 200 0 25 attention : do you suggest me to rma it or wipe it and rebuild the partition? it works good, but it’s still under warranty)
4) Gparted showed these warnings for at last 2 ST4000DM000 “The backup GPT table is corrupt but the primary appears OK” and "The backup GPT table is not at the end of the disk, as it should be. This might mean that another operating system believes the disk is smaller"
5) Now file system of another ST4000DM000 get damaged and lose data after chkdsk (it works good and smart info are ok)

Could be just bad luck? Maybe I did some mistakes with gparted? Could be an hardware related problem? Please, do you suggest me to keep to use everything in this way or try to change something?

Thank you and best regards
 
This doesn't sound like bad luck. Partitions shouldn't be corrupted just by coincidence, either you have a hardware or software problem. Why did you use gparted to partition them and not the built-in windows tools?

Do they show up with the correct capacity in both the bios and windows?

Do you have enough power for all the drives? Which controller(s) do you use? Are all hdds that experience problems connected to the same controller?

Can you swap your cables? Did you run a longer smart test?
 
Have you bent the SATA cables? If they are bent any more than they would if you wrap them around your thumb, that can certainly cause data corruption, while not necessarily damaging the drives. Also, make sure the cables are plugged all the way in on both ends.

My next step here would be to get new SATA cables, be careful not to bend them when installing them, and start over with checking the drives with badblocks.
 
evilsofa said:
Have you bent the SATA cables? If they are bent any more than they would if you wrap them around your thumb, that can certainly cause data corruption, while not necessarily damaging the drives. Also, make sure the cables are plugged all the way in on both ends.

My next step here would be to get new SATA cables, be careful not to bend them when installing them, and start over with checking the drives with badblocks.
Click to expand...

Not sure if serious.

Brand new SATA cables generally come packaged with a lot more bend in them then what you are cautioning against.
 
I guess what I mean is creasing. Spiraling and curling (like this) is okay, but a 90 degree or less corner could break the cables inside.
 
Thank you for your answers

• My psu is enermax 620W and it was ok till now and still going good for other drives
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/psus/2009/06/25/enermax-liberty-eco-review/5
• I did use gparted because I read it’s better and w7 built in can’t do a single partition bigger than 2 TB
• W7 sees them at full space on every port, but hd-tune sees them at full only when they are plugged to gsata port, on intel sata port they are only 801 or 1801gb (by the way, on info tab of hd-tune even speed of drives plugged to intel sata port seems very capped, I will open another topic about it), on bios they seem ok, but screen page is fast and I didn’t see it clear
• I did run long test on disk, maybe I have to do it again on the disks which get problems?
• I did swapped cables (they are not bent too much), but partitions get corrupted after I get the files on them, so I don’t think it’s a sata cable problem (they were the same on 2TB models)
• I don’t remember on which ports they get corrupted and if it was a different one every time
• Recently I installed my new gpu, gigabyte gtx660, but I never played with it, so it don’t drain so much power
• I have just start using these sata power chords (one molex to 4 sata and one Sata Power Extension), but I didn’t check if the corrupted drives were pluged to them (but it’s highly probable), I will try to use it with only 2 hd plugged
http://i.ebayimg.com/t/4-pin-Molex-daisy-chain-cable-black-sleeved-turn-1-connector-into-5-/00/s/Mjk3WDQwMA==/z/d58AAOxyhlJRdXWi/$T2eC16dHJI!E9qSO9w3VBRd%28WiKFWQ~~60_12.JPG
http://i.ebayimg.com/t/30cm-12-Sata-Power-Extension-Cable-/00/s/NDAwWDQwMA==/$%28KGrHqV,!i0E+LZvikFrBQDYB3OmD!~~60_12.JPG

what do you suggest me to do with the drive that failed on hd-tune? rma it or try to rebuilt the partition?
 
Use seatools. They will probably not let you RMA unless it fails in seatools.

Also format and partition using windows and see if that works.
 
run spinrite on it pick level 5. see what it says

level 5 will write to every single part of the drive twice and test it i do this on every new drive i get.

this can also take days.
 
staticlag said:
Use seatools. They will probably not let you RMA unless it fails in seatools.

Also format and partition using windows and see if that works.
Click to expand...

I know you can RMA drives that pass seatools. At work we send back 10+ drives a year to seagate. There is an option in the RMA form that is like "The drive is bad I can't get a code" and they accept that.

With that said, please make sure that the drive you send in is actually bad. There is a chance that the drive you get back from RMA is DOA or will die within a few weeks. We have had that happen more than a handful of times. This was with the third party facility (Jabil Global Serivces) in Mcallen Texas the last RMA we did was to Seagate in California.
 
Last edited:
Windows Disk Management can initialize a GPT disk and use over 2TB just fine.

I would zero fill the drives for a second or two (to wipe out anything GPARTED set) then reinialize with Disk Management as GPT disk and recreate your partitions.

Also, you said no raid on these, right? They are not raid ready disk.
 
Non-Raid ready disks might be it.

I used to have WD drives drop out of raid arrays all the time when they first made green power and eventually admitted some drives were not raid ready.

These days for storage I use sas drives...
 
I hate to sound silly on this, but you are using 36TB of storage, why are you not using win7 64 bit instead of 32 bit? Just seems odd to me.
I switched to the 64 bit version a long time ago and really haven't had any problems that used to plague me with the 32 bit version. I also haven't really run into any compatibility issues...
I also have quite a few sata cables that have 90 degree bends in them with no issues with data loss, although I was gentle about the bending, and I would suggest being cautious about things like that since some people seem to be kind of brutish on their systems for no reason.
 
I have no raid, my cpu is Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, chipset is Intel P35, I don’t think 32/64 bit could be the issue (all other hdds are ok)
I installed Seatools 1208, but I couldn’t run it, it shows this message: Argument “length” must be greater or equal to zero. System.String Mid (System.String.Int32,Int32): it seems a common issue, not depending on my system
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/SeaTools/Argument-Length-Must-be-greater-or-equal-to-zero/td-p/174294
Seatools 1206 gives a fatal error, Seatools 1205 works, every HD passed the test (smart, automatic fast and generic fast, I didn’t try full and advanced)

another partition dropped in these days, the drive (not one of those already failed: 3 or 4 out of 10 new ones :mad:) was linked to a intel sata port and powered by a normal cable, so it seems that molex to sata cables are not the problem; I started to erase it with disk wipe for some seconds and rebuilt it with Windows Disk Management (it still was GPT, how can I initialize it again? :rolleyes: Maybe I can change it to MBR and back to GPT) now it works good, let see how long
I don’t know what to try, I will swap the cables and note every info about new corrupted partitions :confused:

thank you and best regards
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top