Problems copying Steam library to new Seagate Baracuda 3.5 inch 1 tb spinny hard drive

[ConfusedOne]

Hi

 

I am trying to copy my Steam library to a 1tb Seagate Baracuda HD, a spinny one not an ssd.

 

Once copied I will use the Seagate drive for Steam instead of the current one which only has a small Steam partition (and which is full) so I can use the old Steam space for other files.

 

I have the Seagate drive plugged into a usb to sata adaptor which I have used without any issues in the past, and used around 3 months ago for a similar task. Once the copy is done it will go into the pc case; I’m doing it this way as I can also make sure the drive is working without having to open the case repeatedly.

 

However the copy is not working. It runs fine for around 10 mins and then just stops with a transfer rate of 0 bytes, which periodically rises to a few k or maybe a few mb before dropping to 0 again. As a result a copy that should take a couple of hours is likely to take a couple of decades.

 

I thought that Seagate used cmr for drives below 2tb but am now wondering if this is a symptom of me having an smr drive, or maybe I just have a dud drive? Could it be some weird caching issue?

 

Does anyone know if this is a symptom of a dud drive, smr – rather than cmr (I am confused as to effects of one or the other), or something else and how I might be able to find out?

 

Oddly I can access the Seagate drive while the copy is frozen and just reading directories etc is fine, so it does not appear to be a communications issue, rather a problem with the write speed.

 

There is no odd clicking from the drive and the heads are not hunting as far as I can tell

 

Hope someone can help and thanks in advance.

 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Can you by chance create a text file on the drive?

 

im pretty sure the usb adaptor you have is meant for 2.5 inch Hdds. Those 3.5in ones need 12v power, which isn’t supplied from usb.

[Kilrah]

3 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

im pretty sure the usb adaptor you have is meant for 2.5 inch Hdds. Those 3.5in ones need 12v power, which isn’t supplied from usb.

The drive wouldn't spin up at all if that was the case.

 

What's the exact drive model? With that you can check if it's SMR or CMR.

[ConfusedOne]

Hi

 

Many thanks for such quick replies

 

The adaptor has a 12 volt power supply so can power 3.5 drives, I've used it without issue for years. I can also create test files - as mentioned the copy runs for 10 mins or so before just grinding to a halt.

 

The Seagate drive is a ST10000DMZ10 - how can I use this to check what type it is?

 

Thanks again.

 

<Edit>

 

Ok I have found some data sheets for Seagate drives eg > https://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/barracuda-ds1737-1-1111us.pdf

 

But they don't state my specific drive - the DMZ10

 

</Edit>

[Kilrah]

It doesn't pop up in lists of known SMR drives and Seagate still says the 1TB Barracuda is CMR:

https://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/cmr-smr-list/

 

I would start by trying to copy other stuff, maybe it's the drive that currently holds the Steam files that has an issue reading it.

 

Then try it internally, if it doesn't help also ideally on another computer with the adaptor, if it misbehaves there too probably a faulty drive.

[ConfusedOne]

Hi,

 

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

The problem might be just a few files on the disk I am reading from. Copying from a different drive to the Seagate works as expected. Copying from different directories around the disk that currently holds the Steam library also works as expected. But a bunch of files within the Steam library cause this copy hang.

 

Is there any way I can test the part of a disk that a file occupies to see if it is partially bad? The disk itself looks ok - I don't think its a logic issue - but I'm wondering if I have some dud sectors on it.

[Kilrah]

I'm not aware of programs that can scan a specific area but you can always to a full surface scan. 

Before doing that you might want to back up important documents since when a drive starts having bad sectors it may not be long for this world anymore.