Question Brand new Seagate Barracuda 4TB is freezing my computer

[Sniipe]

I've just installed a new 4TB internal HDD which runs at 5400rpm (ST4000DMZ04). Its a storage hard drive for me.

I've tried to transfer large files from my M2 hard drive. Some work but eventually the whole operating system freezes.
I've recorded a video of the freezing.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP5OW2KCz8w

It shows the new hard drive's disk activity hitting 100% and never coming down.
The first file copies but the next one doesn't.

As a separate test I copied from the same source to another hard drive (an SSD) and it worked as expected.

My bios is up to date

My specs:

OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Version 10.0.19043 Build 19043
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name RYZEN3600
System Manufacturer Micro-Star International Co., Ltd
System Model MS-7C02
System Type x64-based PC
System SKU To be filled by O.E.M.
Processor AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor, 3600 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends International, LLC. 3.B0, 12/05/2021
SMBIOS Version 2.8
Embedded Controller Version 255.255
BIOS Mode UEFI
BaseBoard Manufacturer Micro-Star International Co., Ltd
BaseBoard Product B450 TOMAHAWK MAX (MS-7C02)
BaseBoard Version 1.0
Platform Role Desktop
Secure Boot State Off
PCR7 Configuration Binding Not Possible
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume4
Locale United Kingdom
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.19041.1081"
Username RYZEN3600\rcarr
Time Zone GMT Summer Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 32.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 31.9 GB
Available Physical Memory 15.2 GB
Total Virtual Memory 41.9 GB
Available Virtual Memory 16.6 GB
Page File Space 10.0 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
Kernel DMA Protection Off
Virtualisation-based security Not enabled
Device Encryption Support Reasons for failed automatic device encryption: TPM is not usable, PCR7 binding is not supported, Hardware Security Test Interface failed and the device is not Modern Standby, Un-allowed DMA-capable bus/device(s) detected, TPM is not usable
Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Virtualisation Enabled in Firmware No
Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection Yes

 

[rocktalkrock]

Have you checked the drives health with CrystaDiskInfo?
Have you checked for any yellow warning signs in Device Manager?

 

[Sniipe]

I downloaded crystalDiskInfo it looks fine

Device manager looks good also

It says good in crystal disk, but I'm not sure what these "Graphs" mean:

and

 

[rocktalkrock]

If you go to "Control Panel > Power Options" is it set for your Ryzen Processor?

 

[rocktalkrock]

This issue you are seeing with the new drive may have to do with the fact that the ST4000DMZ04 is an "SMR" HDD.

Seagate 'submarines' SMR into 3 Barracuda drives and a Desktop HDD – Blocks and Files

Some Seagate Barracuda Compute and Desktop disk drives use shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology which can exhibit slow data write speeds. But Seagate documentation does not spell this out. Yesterday we reported Western Digital has submarined SMR drives into certain WD Red NAS drives. The...

blocksandfiles.com

SMR? CMR? Which Hard Drive is best for which purpose? - reichelt Magazin

Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) or Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR)? Many people ask themselves this question when it comes to finding the right hard drive for the intended use. Because the different recording methods behave differently and are therefore sometimes better and sometimes...

www.reichelt.com

 

[Sniipe]

If you go to "Control Panel > Power Options" is it set for your Ryzen Processor?

Yes, its set to AMD Ryzen Balanced

This issue you are seeing with the new drive may have to do with the fact that the ST4000DMZ04 is an "SMR" HDD.

Seagate 'submarines' SMR into 3 Barracuda drives and a Desktop HDD – Blocks and Files

Some Seagate Barracuda Compute and Desktop disk drives use shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology which can exhibit slow data write speeds. But Seagate documentation does not spell this out. Yesterday we reported Western Digital has submarined SMR drives into certain WD Red NAS drives. The...

blocksandfiles.com

SMR? CMR? Which Hard Drive is best for which purpose? - reichelt Magazin

Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) or Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR)? Many people ask themselves this question when it comes to finding the right hard drive for the intended use. Because the different recording methods behave differently and are therefore sometimes better and sometimes...

www.reichelt.com

I don't really mind slow speeds, but slowing down the whole PC really irritates me. The riechelt site states:
SMR hard disks are a good choice if they are primarily used as pure data storage or if a large hard disk is to be used for a PC on which data is stored. They offer more storage capacity and are more energy efficient than CMR, which makes them ideal for archiving tasks. Basically, SMR hard disks are not particularly well suited if the hard disk is to be constantly and permanently doing write operations, as this can lead to a cache overflow. In this case, a hard disk with a CMR recording method should definitely be used.
This is essentially what I am trying to do - archiving data.

 

[rocktalkrock]

In your original post you say "eventually the whole operating system freezes", but in the accompanying YouTube video i see Ethernet activity in Task Manager right up until the end. Does everything in Windows actually freeze?

 

[Sniipe]

I was using OBS to record and it shut down at that point. But during the copying the system is essentially unusable.

 

[rocktalkrock]

I was using OBS to record and it shut down at that point. But during the copying the system is essentially unusable.

Have you tried plugging the 4TB HDD into a different SATA port? The 4 SATA ports at the side of your motherboard are controlled by the B450 chipset, while the 2 SATA ports at the bottom are controlled by the Ryzen CPU. See if using a different SATA controller eliminates the problem.

 

[Sniipe]

Thanks rocktalktock, that sounds like a great suggestion. Perhaps I'm better off converting all sata drives to the motherboard one. I really appreciate your help so far. Out of curiosity, how could you tell they were on different controllers?

I see it on their website:

I'll try it after work today. Hopefully I'm using SATA5 / SATA6 ports and that is the answer.

 

[Sniipe]

I tried a new SATA cable, it didn't fix it.
I downloaded the latest AMD chipset drivers, it didn't fix it.
I swapped the ports around with a working hard drive and the seagate drive seems to be working. BINGO...

So if I was to guess its probably a motherboard issue with SATA port 3 or 4 (or PSU issue)...

 

[tamtom85]

Hi @Sniipe

I am afraid it is a Seagate issue :-/

I have two brand new Seagate 8TB Expansion drives - one I dismanteled and put into a home server, the other I kept in the case.
Those drives are Seagate BaRracuda drives.

The performance is horrible: copying (writing to Seagate) starts with usual 140 MB /s - no matter if on USB or internal SATA ... after about 10 or 15 GB it drops to even something like 7 MB or even stops completely. After a while it got grooved in and finds its average between 40 and 60 MB/s (the source is not the issue: I tried it with SSD and with other USB drives; the files are always 1 GB split rar archives - also this cannot be the issue).

I also tried all the typical cache settings which are to find here and there.

I actually hoped it would be the f*cking Seagate USB controller only and not occur in my home server, but I have to admit that this is not the case :-(.

My copy diagram looks like a sinus curve.
It seems to be a common issue with Seagate ... according to number of google results once searching for those topics.

I am also pretty sure it wasn't like this years ago. Somewhere I already have Barracuda drives and have never noticed such sh*t. I have to double check that these days.

It is kinda disappointing, tbh.

 

[fzabkar]

I tried a new SATA cable, it didn't fix it.
I downloaded the latest AMD chipset drivers, it didn't fix it.
I swapped the ports around with a working hard drive and the seagate drive seems to be working. BINGO...

So if I was to guess its probably a motherboard issue with SATA port 3 or 4 (or PSU issue)...

That appears to be consistent with the UDMA CRC Error Count in SMART. This reflects communication errors over SATA.

A raw value of 0x2432A is equal to 148266 in decimal.

https://ipv4.google.com/search?q=0x2432A+in+decimal