New Seagate 4TB Drive (ST4000DM004) Drive -Did i get a bad unit ?

Plainman

Limp Gawd
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Just got a new Seagate 4TB Drive (ST4000DM004) as my main data drive. OS runs on my exclusive OS drive which is a Samsung SSD.

Now this new drive has been plugged into the SATA3 port of my motherboard. I initialized and then partitioned using GPT (3 equal partitions).

1. Firstly i ran Crystal Disk Mark on the empty partitions. Only 2 times or so i heard the drive beep for a second. I know HDDS cant beep so it must be a head screech ? It was very short (about 1 second) so sounded like a beep. After the beep sound the entire disk vanished. A reboot brought it back. This happened twice. Then i pulled out the old cable and switched for a new one. After the cable switch i ran the same Crystal Disk Mark tests several times and the beep/screech has never come back neither has the disk dropped out requiring a reboot to see it.

2. Secondly the Crystal Disk Mark test shows seq read and write to have a gradual fall off on each partition in order of creation.
The test shows 190 MB/s read & 185 MB/s write for the first partition. 171 MB/s read & 168 MB/s write on the 2nd partition. And 152 MB/s read & 149 MB/s write on the 3rd partition.
Is this normal ? To have a gentle fall off in read/write speeds for each partition.

Given these 2 above factors is my disk basically ok or is it better to return it for a replacement ?
 
Its been a long time since i felt the need to bench a disk, however for your second point, i wonder if each partition is further from the platter center resulting in the speed drop off. The nearer the data is to the outside edge the longer read/write would take... I'm not sure how noticable that effect would be though.
 
The test shows 190 MB/s read & 185 MB/s write for the first partition. 171 MB/s read & 168 MB/s write on the 2nd partition. And 152 MB/s read & 149 MB/s write on the 3rd partition.
Is this normal ?

Yes it is normal.


Remember that a disk's outer edge usually has a STR of about 2 times the inner edge.
 
Given these 2 above factors is my disk basically ok or is it better to return it for a replacement ?

Test the drive. I recommend a rigorous test using a linux utility called badblocks. However if you are not familiar with linux and don't want to have your computer test a drive for 4 days or so a full format could tell you if the drive is working and that should happen in only 8 or so hours.
 
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Anecdotal: I have a Seagate 500GB drive in my laptop. It was installed over 2 years ago after the original drive failed. The firmware in this drive will "beep" using electro-mechanical methods (ie. vibrating the heads at high speed) from time-to-time when it gets "unhappy". Usually it recovers. Sometimes it does not recover, and the drive locks up, taking Windows down with it. A full power off (hold power button down until laptop shuts off) and restart has always fixed it. There is no firmware update for the drive, so I just live with it. It's a work laptop anyway. Bottom line is that the firmware is buggy. SeaTools says the drive is 100% perfect.

My point is that my issue sounds similar to your issue. It's a Seagate thing. And it's another reason why I (usually) stay away from Seagate IDE/SATA drives.
 
Hi,

Ive been testing the drive non stop wih my ATX cabinet lying flat on the table. Seatools LONG DRIVE TEST took 11 hours to complete and showed as successfully passed. Ran surface scan tests via error testing/block analyzing using HD TUNE which took 6 hours but went smoothly and reported no errors. The noise also never recurred, neither did the drive disappear. After 3 days of such testing, i was finally satisfied and powered down the PC, straightened the cabinet which involved pressing the cables a little to fit flush into the cabinet before closing the cover. The beep screech came back on power on for 1 sec maybe. The sound is exactly like a dot matrix printer albeit a little softer and less rough. Then the drive disappeared. I experienced mouse freezes and select lock ups (as if i was holding down the button to select files though i was not). Did a reboot and the drive was recognized with the same beep for a second, then onward the beep didnt come back.

Anyway i laid the ATX back out lying flat for easy access and reorganized the cables neatly because this seems like something mechanical is causing the problem ? Because if it was disk error then it shouldn't recur only when the cables are disturbed. That too once every time the cables were touched or physically arranged (which i have to do practically to get it into the cabinet). Like it was re-initializing itself or something. Then on-wards it plays decent despite reboots and all sorts of disk test and torture apps. Guess what ? when i put it back flat and powered on it made the same noise once. Now its in the same flat position and hasn't made a noise since.
 
Plz see the transfer rates reported by HD TUNE (screen shot below) and tell me if you find anything wonky.
 

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This is a recording of the start up.
The ATX cabinet is open. The phone doing the recording is held right next to the HDD in question with the mic hole just 1" away from it. The first click/crackle you hear is me pressing the power on button. After that the CPU fan and PSU fan spins up. The LOUD beep is the motherboard bios speaker beep. The slight crackle after that like a paper crushing sound is the HDD in question. At the moment its not making the beep screech as explained, its in decent mode. Only when cables are disturbed again will the beep screech start initially.



Now im going to straighten the ATX and will record a boot up after that. If the screech occurs, ill get it on recording. Thanks.
 
That brief noise from the hard disk sounded completely normal to me. It's the startup head seeking/alignment that always must occur after first power-on. Basically the drive heads are aligning with the platter tracks to ensure proper operation. ALL hard drives do this on startup.
 
Hello Guys,

Thanks for all your inputs. I also think the drive is fine now. Must've been an initializing head noise or something because it occurred only when the SATA cables were touched, reconnected, etc. Also this will only be my data drive and the OS runs from my SSD. So far until today no abnormal noises ever. Performance is also quite satisfying, almost equal to what my 2TB (7200rpm) x2nos spanned was giving me.

Ran Crystal Disk Mark several times an im consistently getting these numbers. If any of you care to give it a glance.
 

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