[SOLVED] Is my brand new Seagate Barracuda 2TB working well?

[Doutor]

I bought a new desktop a few weeks ago. When it arrived I noticed the Hard Drive was causing a lot of problems and it was slow. I've made a couple of posts on here about the drive itself and I hope this is my final one.

I've collected a few diagnostics, tested a few things and now I'm making this post.

This is how everything went:
Last week I was trying to download stuff onto the Hard Drive but downloads were stopping and starting repeatabily and taking a long time even for small files like images (At first I thought it was the internet but I have 500mbps download speed). Decided to post about the drive and ask if the problem was the cable. One kind person told me to use HDTune and see what the results were. These were the results last week on the 18th:

https://imgur.com/a/3qZsH4C

View: https://imgur.com/a/3qZsH4C

https://imgur.com/a/rwLsPet

View: https://imgur.com/a/rwLsPet


After posting the results, said person told me the reallocated sector count was way above what a new drive should be.

So in response, I contacted the retailer (which I have to point out that I've never had problems with their products and usually buy anything computer related from them), showed them the results, they agreed to take it back and do their tests.

Yesterday, I get a message from them saying they did their tests and the drive is working perfectly and there's no problem with it. This made me slightly irritated as what I tested did show problems and was also unusable due to how slow it was. They sent it and today, a couple of hours ago, the drive arrived.


So I plugged it back to the computer, and lo and behold partition wizard showed the drive as a "Bad Disk".

https://imgur.com/a/H6N8EQI

View: https://imgur.com/a/H6N8EQI


Tried fixing it, after restarting the computer and this is how the drive currently shows up on there.

https://imgur.com/a/CWjeI3G

View: https://imgur.com/a/CWjeI3G




Yesterday upon receiving the answer from the retailer I decided to ask if a Sata cable can change the results about reallocated sectors. To which I was told no and of course it would make sense not to change as the results are from the drive itself not the connection. Is that thread another kind person told me to use Seagate's own tool to verify the hard drive.
Here are the results:

https://imgur.com/a/IfUkZiO

View: https://imgur.com/a/IfUkZiO

https://imgur.com/a/wNCqCgy

View: https://imgur.com/a/wNCqCgy

https://imgur.com/a/ybBdxUE

View: https://imgur.com/a/ybBdxUE



After seing that apparently everything was fine, I decided to test again on HDTune.
Here are the results:

https://imgur.com/a/tP5kCAo

View: https://imgur.com/a/tP5kCAo

https://imgur.com/a/D619S8g

View: https://imgur.com/a/D619S8g


It still shows a large ammount of reallocated sectors, not only that but the number itself grew from 33k to 41k and yet the Health status still shows up as "OK".


After all these tests I decided to be more practical and see what would happen when trying to install something. First thing that came to mind was Steam. The instalation itself was actually quite quick, I was not expecting that and made me think that it was actually working correctly. Upon opening Steam I had to install an update, and that's when something very familiar happened. It took over 10 minutes to download a really small update, like a few MBs small. Not only that but installing the update was taking so long, absurdly long even, that I had to cancel the installation.
I noticed also during this installation that my HDD was running at 100% and 0kb/s were being written. I was able to screen record it when it was installing steam.
Here's what it looked like (sorry my Windows is in portuguese):

https://imgur.com/a/2MTUzxn

View: https://imgur.com/a/2MTUzxn


This was all of the tests I was able to make before ripping my hair from my head.


So, the question is, is this hard drive working correctly? I know it's a SMR drive, but I don't really understand it's implications on speed.
Can these problems be caused by a bad Sata cable? Is the drive basically dead even though SMART scans show it as OK?

I'm hoping this is my last post as it's becoming quite annoying to not have a place to store my data. And sorry for the gigantic post.

 

[dreamteam]

this drive is almost dead right out of the box.
your vendor is a bad person I can't write here what I think a bout him. 🤐
I don't want to imagine how many customers who don't read forums have been fooled over the years.
not sure why you did trust on his words and accepted you drive back to home.
do ask for a refund and do a RMA directly with seagate if you can.

 

[fzabkar]

Name your vendor so that others will know to avoid them.

In the meantime keep scanning your drive until the reallocated sector count attribute drops below the threshold. Then you will see a SMART Fail. At the current rate it should only take a few days.

 

[Doutor]

Name your vendor so that others will know to avoid them.

In the meantime keep scanning your drive until the reallocated sector count attribute drops below the threshold. Then you will see a SMART Fail. At the current rate it should only take a few days.

It's a portuguese computer part company. I mean, they have never treated me badly and their support is good. They even told me to keep testing at home with the Seatools software to see if anything changes. They also can't do much in terms of testing since what they are given is SeaTools and it shows up as "OK".

What is usally the threshold? Currently it's not mounted in my computer but in that case, might be best to keep it turned on and let it degrade past the threshold.

 

[dreamteam]

It's a portuguese computer part company.

the snapshot above with ''recuperação'' and your username ''doutor'' made me think your were from either PT or BR
the barracuda series past the 7200.xx line has always been flawed I do wonder what they did with Samsung and Maxtor technology given there has been no improvement...

so I can't consider this a good after sales service and you are just wasting time and electricity for nothing.

Contato | Seagate Portugal

 

[Doutor]

the snapshot above with ''recuperação'' and your username ''doutor'' made me think your were from either PT or BR
the barracuda series past the 7200.xx line has always been flawed I do wonder what they did with Samsung and Maxtor technology given there has been no improvement...

so I can't consider this a good after sales service and you are just wasting time and electricity for nothing.

Contato | Seagate Portugal

We're that easy to spot, eh? 😀

I've written up a sizeable text with most of this information so that I can send them. If they stil believe that the hard drive is in top shape performance I'll try to contact seagate or just ask for a full refund and buy a new drive. But not a barracuda one, probably a firecuda

 

[dreamteam]

I'll try to contact seagate or just ask for a full refund and buy a new drive. But not a barracuda one, probably a firecuda

I prefer to support the small retailers than always feeding the big fish (see Amazon)
but when it comes to customer support it's like day and night so they don't deserve our money anymore.

the labor of distributors is not just to store boxes in a warehouse and make profit readily, they MUST be there and offer a service and replace your HDD with no excuses.

with WD sometimes you don't even need to send your HDD out to the Netherlands.
you take a screenshot and show it to them, they refund all your money or send you a new HDD (sometimes a refurbished unit)

 

[Doutor]

I prefer to support the small retailers than always feeding the big fish (see Amazon)
but when it comes to customer support it's like day and night so they don't deserve our money anymore.

That I have to agree with you. As much as I like to help smaller businesses, they just don't have the same standard when it comes to costumer support. If I can get a refund I have this small tech chop down the road and I might buy a new HDD if they have them in stock. Let's just hope the new one doesn't come with the same problems 😛

 

[dreamteam]

Check out the access time 7ms or 0.5ms... Maybe a 10K or 15K rpm drive might achieve the first result so this proves once again that this HDD is not working as intended and all sensors are mostly broken down

 

[fzabkar]

The threshold setting is 10. Currently your drive has developed 41744 bad sectors and has lost 16 points (= 100 - 84). When the Current value drops to 10, the drive will have developed 234810 bad sectors, or thereabouts.

• 41744 / 16 x 90 = 234810

BTW, this number probably reflects the LBAs (512 bytes) rather than the physical sectors (4096 bytes), so the actual number of bad physical sectors is 5218 (= 41744 / 8).

BTW2, your experience demonstrates why SeaTools, and other manufacturer's diagnostic tools, are a pile of excrement.