Sea Tools Long Generic Test is taking forever

[Shane Hawk]

It has been almost 48 hours running on a 750 gig drive. How long should it take? The "Fix ALL" test failed within an hour and it said I need to run the Long Generic Test. The test is still going and hasn't failed, but I don't know if it just takes a really long time or if it is actually stuck.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[seagate_surfer]

Hello Shane Hawk. The long generic test takes a while to complete depending on HDD size but not this long. Go ahead and stop the test. If you need to contact support, you may do so here.

 

[Shane Hawk]

Thank you for the response. Unfortunately The drive is past warranty so I think that would be wasting my time.

I have stopped the test, and I am attempting A "Fix All Long" test again. If that doesn't work, I will just erase and overwrite with 0's to see if it is a software related bad sector.

 

[seagate_surfer]

Hi Shane Hawk, sorry to hear that. For futures sake, it is a good idea to have a good back up plan in place. The conventional wisdom by tech experts on backups is known as the 3-2-1 method.

Basically you want:

3 copies of any data you don't want to lose
2 different mediums it's stored on (so 2 different drives in your computer, for example)
1 copy kept offsite, to prevent against disaster.

Best of luck.

 

[Shane Hawk]

OK thanks for the wisdom. I was able to save pictures, documents and music. Currently, my concern is having to re-download my Steam "second" games library that was on this HDD. For reasons unbeknownst to me, I have no access to that library that is on my HDD (I had to purchase a USB sata dock to use the HDD as windows failed to boot with the HDD internally installed). This all happened a few days ago.

I have a metered connection and 3.5 Mb/s connection so reinstalling the games will take months.

 

[seagate_surfer]

OK thanks for the wisdom. I was able to save pictures, documents and music. Currently, my concern is having to re-download my Steam "second" games library that was on this HDD. For reasons unbeknownst to me, I have no access to that library that is on my HDD (I had to purchase a USB sata dock to use the HDD as windows failed to boot with the HDD internally installed). This all happened a few days ago.

I have a metered connection and 3.5 Mb/s connection so reinstalling the games will take months.

I feel your pain...happened to me once. What error are you getting when trying to get into your games library? It just may be that the drive is corrupted and wont let you access the library.

 

[Shane Hawk]

It shows them as uninstalled.

Side note, I just tried to overwrite and erase but it failed. next i tried just an erase and it also failed. could the reason be because the HDD is in a usb sata dock?

 

[Shane Hawk]

The strange thing is that the windows tool for disk error checking says everything is fine. I have read in random older forums that trying to do things such as formatting etc while the drive is using a usb sata dock doesn't work. I don't know if this is accurate or not, but it sounds like conjecture.

 

[seagate_surfer]

Shane Hawk, being uninstalled (Steam) and overwrite and erase are most likely due to the drive been the culprit. May want to look on Steam to see if you find anything relevant to your situation.

 

[Shane Hawk]

i would be happy if i could format/erase the drive so i can have my storage back. are you saying if sea tools fails to erase and overwrite, the drive is dead?

 

[Shane Hawk]

well, now all of the sudden, windows will boot with the HDD internally installed. i am going to activate the drive and see if all is well.

 

[Shane Hawk]

i did start a format of the HDD while in the usb sata dock, but i cancelled it because i wanted to try and install the HDD internally. maybe just starting the format actually erased everything?

 

[seagate_surfer]

Yes, if you format you loose everything but you already have the info backed up. Seatools will tell you the health of the drive and not been able to overwrite does not necessarily mean the drive is dead. There are other ways of formatting as well. Such as Diskpart Clean.

 

[Shane Hawk]

diskpart clean, ok i will remember that. i really appreciate you taking the time to help with the problem

 

[seagate_surfer]

diskpart clean, ok i will remember that. i really appreciate you taking the time to help with the problem

You are welcome. That is why were are here.!