Maybe dying 1.6-yr-old Seagate M9T 2TB 2.5" HDD? RMA? Replace w/what? (Almost full, but...)

[PianoPlayer88Key]

TL;DR: 2TB Seagate M9T dying? (30->31 pending sectors, failed SMART test.)

RMA? (bought ~Nov 2015)

Replace w/2TB BarraCuda/FireCuda?

Or replace with similar-price SSD? (Btw it has 1.7TB used.)

Attempting copying data off drive as I type this.

 

 

Whelp... My 2TB Seagate M9T has 31 pending sectors & failed the SMART short test.

 

Now, to replace with Seagate 2TB BarraCuda or FireCuda, or equivalent-priced SSD?  It has almost 1.7 TB used, or 1.55 TiB.

 

I may consider having less stuff on it, with the overflow being on my desktop's HDDs.  I would like at least 500-800 GiB free for 4K videos recorded (from my Panasonic FZ1000) on trips/vacations/etc.

 

I bought the M9T around Nov/Dec 2015, and it has 1 year 9 days power on time.  Maybe an RMA should be considered?

 

I do have 2x 2.5" bays and 2x M.2 slots.  There is a 250GB Crucial MX200 M.2 in there too, which has Windows 10 Pro, and about 30-35GB or so free.)

 

 

So I went to open a music file on the drive on my laptop, and explorer froze.

After a bit Chrome started freezing / acting up, as did Task Manager.  (A twitch stream's audio was still playing without stutters.) I ended up power cycling the laptop, then applied a Windows update, then shut down & pulled the drive.  I was able to run CrystalDiskMark prior to shutting down, and that's when I saw 30 pending sectors.  A few min later it incremented to 31.

 

Popped the drive in my desktop, booted Linux, and ran a self test, which failed with read error at 10%.

 

Right now it's in progress copying data from the 2TB drive to a partition on an 8TB drive.

[Mr.Meerkat]

If you still have warranty, RMA it.

IMO, getting a new drive is probably the best idea as you'll probably end up getting sent a 'refurb' drive if the RMA gets accepted so... o_O 

[PianoPlayer88Key]

4 hours ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

If you still have warranty, RMA it.

IMO, getting a new drive is probably the best idea as you'll probably end up getting sent a 'refurb' drive if the RMA gets accepted so... o_O 

Ahh.  I checked the warranty status with Seagate and it's in warranty until January 19, 2018.  Also I was looking on their site for RMA instructions, warranty check, return policy, etc, and they specifically say "Replacement products are factory-repaired products".

 

Yeah, I'd definitely prefer a new drive rather than a refurb/recert unit.  (What do the HDD manufacturers typically do when R'ing a unit?  DO they swap out the platters, head, actuator, etc with new ones in a clean room, and do whatever else it takes to give SMART a clean slate?  Or do they just plug it in, see if it runs and if not, fix the isolated error, while the drive as a whole still has however many hours / years of runtime under its proverbial belt?)

 

Some options I might be considering for a replacement drive include:

• 2TB Seagate Barracuda ST2000LM015 2.5" HDD = on sale for $79.99 today at Newegg or Amaon - the amount I'd prefer to spend.  (Newegg typically ships much faster to me than Amazon.)
• 500-525GB WD Blue, Crucial MX300, Samsung 850 Evo M.2 or 2.5" SSD = $149.99 - 163.99 at Newegg or Amazon - the minimum space I'd need, even if I frequently offloaded things to a larger desktop HDD.
• 1.00-1.05TB Crucial MX300, WD Blue, or Samsung 850 Evo M.2 or 2.5" SSD = $279.99 - 319.99 at Newegg or Amazon

There's also a 2TB Crucial MX300, but it's $550, much more than I want to spend.

 

 

There's another option I just thought of as well, for replacing the drive.

 

I had recently bought a 1.05TB Crucial MX300 2.5" SSD.  I was planning to reinstall Windows on my desktop onto that drive, replacing a 256GB 2.5" Crucial M550.  I was planning to put the M550 in my dad's 9-year-old Core 2 Duo + 2GB DDR2 laptop to replace a still-good WD5000BPKT, in hopes that having an SSD instead of a HDD would help it be a bit more responsive for them.

Anyway, in the course of cloning stuff ... (I'm leaving out some details) ... I now have a bootable clone of Windows 10 (from the M550) on a 2009-built WD7501AALS and maybe also a 2007-built WD7500AAKS, as well as non-bootable clones/images on an 8TB HGST NAS, and a 2009-vintage WD15EADS, IIRC.  However, now Windows won't boot from the 256GB M550 - complains about a missing device or something with a BSOD immediately on bootup.  (I used CloneZilla to make the clones, and was getting device ID conflicts in disk management while booting the new install of 10 on the 1TB SSD.)

 

 

 

So ... instead of buying a new drive, should I consider using the 1TB SSD as a data drive in my laptop instead of as an OS drive in my desktop?  (Then I'd need to reinstall Windows on the 256GB SSD in the desktop.  I tried copying a working clone back onto it, and it didn't work.  I suppose I *could* use it off the HDD, but it's MUCH slower that way.)

I still may want to RMA the M9T though, pending checking it out a bit more.  (For example, once I'm done copying files from it, I want to run SeaTools.)

[Mr.Meerkat]

How important are the files on your Seagate drive? If its not that important then I guess a refurb unit will do fine however if they are, you could always just get a new drive and have the refurb as a dump drive  (i.e. RMA nonetheless as a refurb drive is still a working drive).

 

Anyway, what you get is down to what you need where we can't really tell you exactly what to get.

[seagate_surfer]

Hi PianoPlayer88Key,

 

we are sorry to hear that you are having issues with your Seagate HDD. However, given the lifetime, the drive might still be under warranty, so please go ahead and check you RMA eligibility HERE.

 

If you are looking for new drive(s), the combination of a smaller SSD (OS and programs) plus a regular HDD (for storage space) is recommended. If you are looking for a single drive solution, you can also take a look at a SSHD, combining a small flash portion for increased performance with increased storage space. 

 

Please just make sure you pick the right drive type for your projected usage behavior:

there are roughly three main types of hard drives: Desktop & Gaming (current Seagate lineup: BarraCuda), NAS (current Seagate lineup: IronWolf), and Surveillance (current Seagate lineup: SkyHawk). They all connect in the same way, but were engineered with different uses in mind. For example, IronWolf drives are rated for 24x7 use and optimized for NAS enclosures and extra vibration protection, so they have a lot of firmware optimizations and extras that make them costly for a typical desktop user or gamer.

 

Thanks for considering Seagate and let us know if there is anything else we can assist with!

[PianoPlayer88Key]

On 7/14/2017 at 3:37 PM, seagate_surfer said:

Hi PianoPlayer88Key,

 

we are sorry to hear that you are having issues with your Seagate HDD. However, given the lifetime, the drive might still be under warranty, so please go ahead and check you RMA eligibility HERE.

 

If you are looking for new drive(s), the combination of a smaller SSD (OS and programs) plus a regular HDD (for storage space) is recommended. If you are looking for a single drive solution, you can also take a look at a SSHD, combining a small flash portion for increased performance with increased storage space. 

 

Please just make sure you pick the right drive type for your projected usage behavior:

there are roughly three main types of hard drives: Desktop & Gaming (current Seagate lineup: BarraCuda), NAS (current Seagate lineup: IronWolf), and Surveillance (current Seagate lineup: SkyHawk). They all connect in the same way, but were engineered with different uses in mind. For example, IronWolf drives are rated for 24x7 use and optimized for NAS enclosures and extra vibration protection, so they have a lot of firmware optimizations and extras that make them costly for a typical desktop user or gamer.

 

Thanks for considering Seagate and let us know if there is anything else we can assist with!

Thanks for the reply.   I had things going on so wasn't able to get back to it until now.

 

Here are a few screenshots / photos I took tonight of a few utilities looking at that drive (or trying to).

 

1. Windows: GSmartControl Logs (showing LBA of self test failures), HDTune Error Scan, CrystalDiskInfo SMART Stats.
2. Windows: SeaTools w/Fail & Log (with test code), Photo of drive (from Google Photos), GSmartControl SMART Stats, Seagate Warranty Check results (expires 19-Jan-2018).
3. Linux: GSmartControl Attributes, Disks Utility info & SMART.  (Interestingly, GSmart says drive passed, Disks says SELF-TEST FAILED.
4. SeaTools DOS 2.23 - no drives detected.
5. SeaTools DOS 1.12 - no drives detected.  (If it matters, I'm using the built-in SATA ports on an ASRock Z97 Extreme6 motherboard, with (brb rebooting...) Bios Revision UEFI P2.70, during testing.  Previously it was installed in my Clevo P750DM-G laptop.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For now, I've copied everything off the 2TB Seagate onto a partition on an 8TB HGST NAS drive.  Then, I copied some things onto a 1TB Crucial MX300 I had recently bought, and installed that in my laptop.  (The ST2000LM003 is currently in my desktop for diagnostic purposes.)  My boot drive is currently a 250GB Crucial MX200 M.2 drive.  I'd had Linux on the 2TB Seagate (was the original OS as I bought the SSD a bit later), but didn't copy it over.  There's a partition set aside for Linux on the 250GB MX200, but it's not currently installed iirc.

Spoiler

I had bought the 1TB MX300 a week or 2 before, with a different purpose in mind for it originally.  I was going to replace my 256GB Crucial M550 SSD with it, installing Windows 10 (latest release from tool) & Ubuntu Studio 16.04 LTS on it.  The 256GB M550 was then going to replace the WD5000BPKT in my dad's Dell D830 laptop.  I was going to do some cloning to get his Windows XP install onto the 256GB SSD (using my 8TB HDD as an intermediary).  I didn't think it was worth doing a fresh install, as his laptop struggles enough to run XP on 2GB RAM on a Core 2 Duo T7250.  I think Vista (we have a disc that came with it), 7 or 10 would be too punishing for them.

 

Anyway, turns out I was unable to boot off the 8TB drive's cloned partitions (even to test things), due to MBR vs GPT issues (<2TB vs >2TB ; I had used GParted to do the clones).  So I ended up digging out some other WD drives, among them a couple 750GB Blacks, a 1TB Green, and 2 each 1.5TB and 2TB WD Greens, checked SMART status on them to see which ones looked like they were in the best shape (none were coming up with serious errors, but there were a few minor things on a couple drives), and Clonezilla'd the 256GB M550 to a couple of those.  I haven't gotten around to re-cloning the WD5000BPKT, but then I ran into other issues, and the Seagate dying, which changed my plans.

 

One of those issues was, interestingly enough, in the course of things, I was able to get a clone of my Windows 10 to boot off the spinning platters, but it would no longer boot off the SSD.  Around this time the Seagate started having issues, too, if not slightly later.  As I may have said earlier, I tried opening a file that was on the Seagate, and Explorer froze.  I knew that meant something was wrong, so I opened CrystalDiskInfo and it showed 30 pending sectors.  In the course of things, it increased to 31 that night, then when I was copying files off in Linux onto the 8TB drive, each time it came across a file it couldn't completely copy it incremented the count, ending up at 36.  Then, yesterday when I ran the HD Tune scan, it saw a couple bad sectors there, and today the count stands at 38.

 

Anyway, I ended up doing a fresh install of Windows and Linux on the 256GB SSD.  Interestingly, though, I can't figure out how to set up GRUB properly to choose which OS to boot.  For now, if I want to boot Windows, I either let it boot normally, or hit F11 on bootup and select "Windows Boot Manager".  If I want to boot Linux, I hit F11 on bootup, select "CT256M550SSD1" or whatever it's called, then pick Ubuntu from the Grub menu.  (Interestingly, today when I booted with the aforementioned 8TB drive hooked up, it detected a bunch of the cloned OS's on that drive and stuck them in the GRUB menu.

 

For now, I have no current plans to get another spinning 2.5" HDD for the laptop; I plan to use all SSDs from now on, unless I have a good reason to get a hard drive.  (If I did need one now, the Seagate Barracuda 2TB 2.5" ST2000LM015 would probably be what I'd get.)  OTOH, if I RMA the drive and get a replacement, I'm not yet sure what I'd do with it, or if I'd put it in my laptop or use it as a spare or something.  For a while though, I was wishing the 4TB or 5TB Seagate Barracuda 2.5" HDDs were available in 9.5mm, as that's the max size my laptop will accept.  (15mm is too thick, although I almost wonder if the way one of the drive bays is made, it might be possible to shave something off and make one fit there.  Not in the other bay, though.)