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Issue with Seagate 1.5TB?

caldigit ok for internal but must buy their disks for external

I was really excited about the caldigit raid card. I was going to use it for five or six internal drives (like why would any one use raid 5 on 4 drives and give up %25 of storage space) and another five or six drives externally. I called them and found out I must buy hard drives in a HD Element or HD pro, from them! Why is it I can use a Seagate ST31000340NS 1TB Drive and pay $99 for it on the inside, but then am forced to pay $499 for the same drive (with cute case around it) for the external HD Element case?
 
jasleinstein said:
I was really excited about the caldigit raid card. I was going to use it for five or six internal drives (like why would any one use raid 5 on 4 drives and give up %25 of storage space) and another five or six drives externally. I called them and found out I must buy hard drives in a HD Element or HD pro, from them! Why is it I can use a Seagate ST31000340NS 1TB Drive and pay $99 for it on the inside, but then am forced to pay $499 for the same drive (with cute case around it) for the external HD Element case?
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The enclosure and card were designed to work only with one another. No 3rd party units will work. :(

Greed. Nothing more. :rolleyes:
 
no, not greed... stability.

CalDigit builds complete solutions so that the hardware and software work together. With all of the hardware elements controlled by CalDigit, they can make sure their software works as good as it should. I'm (at least sort of) surprised to hear complaints about this on an Apple forum.
 
bigbossbmb said:
no, not greed... stability.

CalDigit builds complete solutions so that the hardware and software work together. With all of the hardware elements controlled by CalDigit, they can make sure their software works as good as it should. I'm (at least sort of) surprised to hear complaints about this on an Apple forum.
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I know that's what they claim, and ideally, should be the case. It's also aimed as a complete solution. Quite handy. ;)

CalDigit's made some errors in this particular package offering. It's very unstable, likely due to the compromises made for hybrid operation. Combine the internal drives and some external drives into a single array, and it ends in disaster. Drives drop out, the volume disappears,... The lack of Partition Table backups is also an issue to me, and many once something goes wrong. :eek: ;)

It just doesn't seem to perform as well as their HDPro system. :(
 
bigbossbmb said:
no, not greed... stability.

CalDigit builds complete solutions so that the hardware and software work together. With all of the hardware elements controlled by CalDigit, they can make sure their software works as good as it should. I'm (at least sort of) surprised to hear complaints about this on an Apple forum.
Click to expand...
No, greed. $500 "drive modules" have nothing to do with stability. Even Apple wouldn't charge $500 for a 1TB drive and prevent you from using any other drive than their ridiculously overpriced one (yes, Apple charges $450 for a 1TB drive, but at least they don't do anything to prevent you from using a $100 drive from Newegg should you want to do that).
 
NotChemist said:
No, greed. $500 "drive modules" have nothing to do with stability. Even Apple wouldn't charge $500 for a 1TB drive and prevent you from using any other drive than their ridiculously overpriced one (yes, Apple charges $450 for a 1TB drive, but at least they don't do anything to prevent you from using a $100 drive from Newegg should you want to do that).
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It's not the drives that cause the limitation. You can use whatever you wish for the 4 internals, but you must use the HDElement (enclosure) with the card, as it communicates a unique ID. Without it, the card won't let you use the enclosure. //Grr... :mad: So I'd definitely have to say greed on this one.

Of course you can swap the drives that come with it for something else, but more money is wasted to do so. :rolleyes: :p

Oh, and to top it off, the included drives are consumer units, not enterprise. :eek:
 
Continuing concerns of using the Seagate 1.5 TB drive , despite the firmware fix

Firstly, what on earth do posts 76 - 81 have to do with this thread? Can a moderator move them to somewhere more appropriate?

Secondly, although the firmware patch has been made available, having to email Seagate after a problem has occurred with all your details, and only then being able to apply the patch isn't ideal. Why on earth don't Seagate simply make the patch a freely available download from their website? Surely it makes more sense to patch the firmware as soon as you've bought the drive, before you've even formatted it, let alone trusted any of your precious data to it, rather than wait for a problem to occur.

Thirdly, I'm assuming that Seagate firmware updaters only run on Windows. What happens if you're using another platform and you need to update the firmware? Can you use Virtual PC (if you have a PowerPC Mac as I do) or Boot Camp/Parallels/Fusion for an Intel Mac to update the firmware? Or do you need to beg a PC-owning friend to let you open up their PC, disconnect all their existing hard drives, connect your Seagate one, patch the firmware, and then put everything back as it was? Hardly an elegant or efficient solution.

Fourthly, what about the quote from Other World Computing mentioned in Post number 66, that states that it isn't possible to use one of these drives as a single Mac partition without a performance hit?
 
Cant say much for most (bit drunk having celebrated quitting my job) but the firmware patch is an ISO that you boot - its platform independant (as is many firmware patches) :)



Diamond Dave said:
Firstly, what on earth do posts 76 - 81 have to do with this thread? Can a moderator move them to somewhere more appropriate?

Secondly, although the firmware patch has been made available, having to email Seagate after a problem has occurred with all your details, and only then being able to apply the patch isn't ideal. Why on earth don't Seagate simply make the patch a freely available download from their website? Surely it makes more sense to patch the firmware as soon as you've bought the drive, before you've even formatted it, let alone trusted any of your precious data to it, rather than wait for a problem to occur.

Thirdly, I'm assuming that Seagate firmware updaters only run on Windows. What happens if you're using another platform and you need to update the firmware? Can you use Virtual PC (if you have a PowerPC Mac as I do) or Boot Camp/Parallels/Fusion for an Intel Mac to update the firmware? Or do you need to beg a PC-owning friend to let you open up their PC, disconnect all their existing hard drives, connect your Seagate one, patch the firmware, and then put everything back as it was? Hardly an elegant or efficient solution.

Fourthly, what about the quote from Other World Computing mentioned in Post number 66, that states that it isn't possible to use one of these drives as a single Mac partition without a performance hit?
Click to expand...
 
costabunny said:
Cant say much for most (bit drunk having celebrated quitting my job) but the firmware patch is an ISO that you boot - its platform independant (as is many firmware patches) :)
Click to expand...
But what if you have a laptop? Can you leave the internal drive connected while you flash the Seagate drive in an eSATA enclosure through an ExpressCard adapter?
 
I just got my 1.5TB drive and I popped it in the two-bay enclosure that came with it. Disk Utility could mount it, but trying to erase and format it gave an input/output error. I threw it in my Hackintosh tower and updated the firmware to the non-freezing one, but Disk Utility still gives me the error. Is it my case that is causing the problem?
 
Today I received three Seagate 1.5TB drives from Newegg that I ordered on November 27th. All of the drives were -300 units with SD17 firmware. After burning an image of the SD1A firmware updater onto a CD-RW, I updated each drive, one at a time, in a Sonnet Fusion D500P enclosure attached to a Silicon Image 3132-based eSATA adapter in a MacBook Pro. The firmware updater didn't have any issues with the Hitachi hard disk within the MBP, which I left attached and which remained unaffected throughout the entire operation. The three 1.5TB drives are now in a raidz array; I haven't had time to do extensive testing to see whether the firmware update fixed the problem. Given that I never tried the disks sans update, I'm not sure how useful that data would be.
 
NotChemist said:
Today I received three Seagate 1.5TB drives from Newegg that I ordered on November 27th. All of the drives were -300 units with SD17 firmware. After burning an image of the SD1A firmware updater onto a CD-RW, I updated each drive, one at a time, in a Sonnet Fusion D500P enclosure attached to a Silicon Image 3132-based eSATA adapter in a MacBook Pro. The firmware updater didn't have any issues with the Hitachi hard disk within the MBP, which I left attached and which remained unaffected throughout the entire operation. The three 1.5TB drives are now in a raidz array; I haven't had time to do extensive testing to see whether the firmware update fixed the problem. Given that I never tried the disks sans update, I'm not sure how useful that data would be.
Click to expand...

Did you receive input/output errors from Disk Utility before or after the update at all?
 
Tallest Skil said:
Did you receive input/output errors from Disk Utility before or after the update at all?
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In formatting the drives for ZFS, I haven't used Disk Utility at all, other than to see if the drives were recognized. However, I haven't seen any errors from zpool status, for what it's worth.
 
NotChemist said:
In formatting the drives for ZFS, I haven't used Disk Utility at all, other than to see if the drives were recognized. However, I haven't seen any errors from zpool status, for what it's worth.
Click to expand...

The drive is recognized in Disk Utility, but it reads "Unformatted". Attempting to format gave me an I/O error no matter what I did, so I'm zeroing it out right now. Total time: 19 hours. Time left: 10 hours.

1. Would you recommend formatting as ZFS over HFS+ Journaled right now?
2. Will a drive formatted as ZFS now work with Snow Leopard in the future?
3. How did you do it so that I might do it, too? :D
 
Tallest Skil said:
The drive is recognized in Disk Utility, but it reads "Unformatted". Attempting to format gave me an I/O error no matter what I did, so I'm zeroing it out right now. Total time: 19 hours. Time left: 10 hours.
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I'd blame your external enclosure before blaming HFS+. Now that I've jumped to conclusions, more details on your enclosure could help you get a useful answer from someone who knows more than I do about your kind of enclosure.
1. Would you recommend formatting as ZFS over HFS+ Journaled right now?
Click to expand...
No. It doesn't "just work." A number of applications have problems with ZFS, and even within the OS there are issues. For example, the trash must be emptied manually (by running rm -rf /Volumes/Your_ZFS_drive/.Trashes/* in the terminal), and Spotlight must not be allowed to run on the ZFS volume. I haven't lost any files on it, but it is very unfinished. Though if you want to beta test it, don't let me discourage you.
2. Will a drive formatted as ZFS now work with Snow Leopard in the future?
Click to expand...
Yes. Also, ZFS filesystems can be read in any current 10.5 system.
3. How did you do it so that I might do it, too? :D
Click to expand...
To create a ZFS volume for read/write access, you need to get the latest ZFS bits.
 
Same here

Cave Man said:
One of my two 1.5TB drives just failed after two weeks of use. Back for a replacement...
Click to expand...

I just lost one this morning....

SMART warned me it was going bad, and sure enough it did. (had already updated the firmware)

Another is on it's way from Seagate. I hope I don't have an issue soft-raiding it with the old one. :(
 
You can update the firmware on your Intel Mac pretty easily, you don't have to put the drive in a PC.
Open Disk Utility --> Drag the .ISO image to Disk Utility's left pane --> Put in blank CD and press Burn --> Restart your Mac holding down the C key (to boot off the CD) --> Follow the instructions. At the end where it warns you to do a full power down cycle, just shut down by holding down your power button. Done.
 
Any reports of bug free operation of these drives in a Mac Pro or in a Drobo now the firmware update is available?
 
Ripmax2000 said:
You can update the firmware on your Intel Mac pretty easily, you don't have to put the drive in a PC.
Open Disk Utility --> Drag the .ISO image to Disk Utility's left pane --> Put in blank CD and press Burn --> Restart your Mac holding down the C key (to boot off the CD) --> Follow the instructions. At the end where it warns you to do a full power down cycle, just shut down by holding down your power button. Done.
Click to expand...

I have never used DOS, so "Follow the instructions" doesn't help me much when the instructions are "At the DOS prompt run the flash.bat file." What the heck does that mean?

I tried to type "flash.bat", it seems it searches the text in the DOS window and shows me the word. I tried "run flash.bat" and it again searches the text.

My Google searches don't give much better info, and I'd love to update this firmware. I am booting from the CD that was created from the .ISO file in the update I downloaded from Seagate. The CD is booting a C2D 2.4 GHz MBP running 10.5.5.

Thanks. Joel.

PS Seagate told me (in the web page that came up when I entered the specific key to get the firmware) that the zip file I downloaded was specific to the serial number of my HDD. Take that as you wish, but it sounds to me that you wouldn't want to mess around with someone else's updater.


PPS I am trying to flash the drive connected via FireWire 800 to an OWC Mercury Elite Pro. I'm assuming that will work.
 
Ripmax2000 said:
You can update the firmware on your Intel Mac pretty easily, you don't have to put the drive in a PC.
Open Disk Utility --> Drag the .ISO image to Disk Utility's left pane --> Put in blank CD and press Burn --> Restart your Mac holding down the C key (to boot off the CD) --> Follow the instructions. At the end where it warns you to do a full power down cycle, just shut down by holding down your power button. Done.
Click to expand...

Thank you!
 
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