Question My Seagate 4TB HDD stopped working on my main PC but works on every other PC

[EpicSOB]

This same post is copied from my LTT forums post about the same topic with some updated information.

TL: DR My pc can't initialize or read from one of my hard drives, I get an I/O error when I try, the hard drive works in other machines and all its data is intact and backed up. I already tried 6 different SATA cables and all the active SATA ports my MOBO has. I tried a USB dock as well.

Okay here is the long version. Last week, my Seagate Barracuda 4TB hard drive started randomly disconnecting while in the file manager, the file manager would close while It was opened to anything on that drive. After a few hours, it stopped connecting entirely. This is actually the second time this has happened and I don't remember the fix from the first time. when I try to initialize the disk I get an I/O error. disk management can see the size and model of the drive but that's it, Seatools can grab the basic info about the drive, and Crystal disk info can't see the drive. The hard drive works when attached to another windows 10 pc running the same build, so I backed up my data to an external hard drive I am borrowing. I am at a total loss as to how to fix this issue.

so far I've tried:

• deleting the drivers
• 6 different cables
• 4 different ports
• initializing the disk from device manager
• scanned it with Seatools (Seagate diagnostic program)
• (update) connected hard drive to pc via USB dock
• bashed my head into a wall.
• preyed to the omnissiah

here are my PC Specs incase it will help
I'm running Windows 10 Pro build 19044.2130
CPU: Ryzen 5 1600
GPU: Radeon RX 580 8GB
MOBO: gigabyte b450 Auros elite
RAM: 32GB corsair vengence pro

if I don't find a fix I am going to try to get a USB dock and use that since I need one anyway but that will have to wait until payday. now that the USB dock has failed to solve the issue I'm at a total loss. I'm also going to avoid Seagate drives from now on in case it is a driver issue which is unfortunate as they have the cheapest mechanical drives available.

 

[fzabkar]

Can you show us a SMART report with CrystalDiskInfo?

 

[USAFRet]

I'm also going to avoid Seagate drives from now on in case it is a driver issue which is unfortunate as they have the cheapest mechanical drives available.

Whatever happens with this drive, avoiding Brand X is a false premise.

There is no real reliability difference between the major brands.
My last two dead drives were a WD and Toshiba.

 

[EpicSOB]

Can you show us a SMART report with CrystalDiskInfo?

I ended up formatting the drive and reloading all the info from a 70% backup. Still, I would appreciate any potential help in avoiding this issue in the future. I think this is what you are asking for. Sorry for the weeb skin in Crystal disk info, but it's funny.

Whatever happens with this drive, avoiding Brand X is a false premise.

There is no real reliability difference between the major brands.
My last two dead drives were a WD and Toshiba.

I have 12 different hard drives, and of those 12 only 2 are younger than the Seagate drive, 10 of those are western digital blue drives, and 1 is an m.2 SSD from Sabrent. the first and only Seagate drive I've ever bought failed (in a recoverable way) after 3 years with power-on hours of just under 16k. whereas the average among the WD blue drives, excluding the newest drive located in an office pc less than 3 months old, is 24k and all over 6 years of use. My Seagate drive has lost me approximately 700GB of data. with all this said I am not willing to risk putting important data on Seagate drives. all the data I lost this time is replaceable this time, mostly installs of games that I can download again over the next couple of weeks, however next time it could be something important.

 

[fzabkar]

The Reported Uncorrectable Errors has hit the threshold. There are now 1225 (= 0x4C9) of these errors.

https://www.google.com/search?q=0x4c9+in+decimal

There are also a significant number of Command Timeouts. There have been 12 (= 0xC) occasions when the drive has required more than 7 seconds to complete a read or write request.

https://www.disktuna.com/big-scary-raw-s-m-a-r-t-values-arent-always-bad-news/

 

[DSzymborski]

I ended up formatting the drive and reloading all the info from a 70% backup. Still, I would appreciate any potential help in avoiding this issue in the future. I think this is what you are asking for. Sorry for the weeb skin in Crystal disk info, but it's funny.

I have 12 different hard drives, and of those 12 only 2 are younger than the Seagate drive, 10 of those are western digital blue drives, and 1 is an m.2 SSD from Sabrent. the first and only Seagate drive I've ever bought failed (in a recoverable way) after 3 years with power-on hours of just under 16k. whereas the average among the WD blue drives, excluding the newest drive located in an office pc less than 3 months old, is 24k and all over 6 years of use. My Seagate drive has lost me approximately 700GB of data. with all this said I am not willing to risk putting important data on Seagate drives. all the data I lost this time is replaceable this time, mostly installs of games that I can download again over the next couple of weeks, however next time it could be something important.

That's not how statistics work; your sample isn't even in the same galaxy as meaningful data. There was a very specific Seagate problem some years ago with very specific 2 TB hard drives (identified by proper use of data), but unless it was one of those old drives, it's not relevant here.

All hard drives are dying from the second they're turned on. A proper backup plan should take that into consideration; that's why responsible PC upkeep means multiple backups of important data. If I ignore maintenance on my car or furnace and they break, they didn't let me down, I let me down.

 

[USAFRet]

I have 12 different hard drives, and of those 12 only 2 are younger than the Seagate drive, 10 of those are western digital blue drives, and 1 is an m.2 SSD from Sabrent. the first and only Seagate drive I've ever bought failed (in a recoverable way) after 3 years with power-on hours of just under 16k. whereas the average among the WD blue drives, excluding the newest drive located in an office pc less than 3 months old, is 24k and all over 6 years of use. My Seagate drive has lost me approximately 700GB of data. with all this said I am not willing to risk putting important data on Seagate drives. all the data I lost this time is replaceable this time, mostly installs of games that I can download again over the next couple of weeks, however next time it could be something important.

And of my dead WD and Toshiba, the 3TB WD was 5 weeks old, and the 16TB Tosh Enterprise was 7 months old.
It happens.

A dead drive should never involve loss of data.

 

[EpicSOB]

The Reported Uncorrectable Errors has hit the threshold. There are now 1225 (= 0x4C9) of these errors.

https://www.google.com/search?q=0x4c9+in+decimal

There are also a significant number of Command Timeouts. There have been 12 (= 0xC) occasions when the drive has required more than 7 seconds to complete a read or write request.

https://www.disktuna.com/big-scary-raw-s-m-a-r-t-values-arent-always-bad-news/

so it sounds like a driver error could have caused the issue, deleting and reinstalling the driver was one of the first things I tried but it didn't fix the issue. should I be worried about the Reported uncorrectable errors? is that number high?