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Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB HD Now Shipping?

Stalling

I've had this drive for about two months ( was backordered for about two months ... ) and I was pretty content with it up until now.

The first benchmarks were good, actually they still are.

When I first got the drive I was in a slow period where I didn't do loads of work so the issue may have been there but I simply hadn't noticed.


The hard drive seems to stall at times. This makes the whole machine freeze up for a split second and everything goes back to normal. The workload isn't crazy either on the cpu ...

any suggestions?

This is driving me insane, especially because now I can't work on Logic pro, frequently stops in mid sessions saying cpu or hd overload. This may be coinciding with the upgrade of the software (from 8.0 to 8.0.2 ) and could also just be software related(it's an ongoing issue with Logic pro with apple has been denying for the longest time but which I had not experienced up until just recently).
After verification I cannot work reliably with this hard drive when I need constant data output on logic pro. I will hear a faint clicking sound from the drive and right afterwards I will get a cpu/hd overload warning which stops everything in Logic pro.


Various things and issues, but basically the drive stalls....

What to do???


machine specs:
MBP Santa Rosa 2.2 C2D
4 gigs
and the 7200.4
 
Feng Shui said:
Hate to break it to ya'll Seagate users, WD is better and more reliable. Their stock is doing better, so there is a better management team, therefore better quality control. Seagate no longer has a 5-year warranty advantage over WD. WD has proven to be more reliable recently.
Click to expand...
Where is WD's version of a 500GB (465GiB) 7200 rpm drive?

I've had my share of failed WD drives over the years, and I certainly wouldn't be using their current stock price as an indicator of them somehow building more reliable hard drives these days.
 
my fatal story

Its been four months since I bought the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB and I say four months because it broke on me, there was no warning, only that it was kaput. I had been running a CPU intensive process (converting a ScreenFlow screen cast to a MOV, about the fifth in a row for use on YouTube (so <10mins)) and came back to be greeted by a black screen - curiously with the cursor still active! So I force quit and rebooted, to be presented with a "?"in a square box (Macs way of saying the OS is not on the installed HDD).

I also got the following error "invalid b-tree node size" which I read up on and saw that this was pretty fatal, enough to prevent me from rebooting anyway. So, instead of a trip to the Mac Store I thought I just get a new HDD immediately and reinstall from TimeMachine, hoping that it would work. It did and Time Machine (TimeCapsule) saved everything, my life really!

I ordered a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500GB Sata 8MB Cache 2.5 Inch Internal HDD and at the advice of a post online the Blue version (not black at 7200rpm) because it could get too hot, but I don't know, it never seemed to be ..but always made seeking noises - not to be confused with a constant wiring, periodically. But I got used to it and maybe that was the warning?

So in my experience always have a backup, if you can have access to another computer to get back online and research what to do, and what I am going to do is to use my original 256GB HDD to have a space copy of OS X just in case so I can get right back using my MacBook.

I was however able to recover the majority, and I mean a lmost everything, pretty much, of the damaged Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB HDDs data with an excellent OS X recovery tool called DiskWarrior which is $99, or about £65. Yes I know that's money to spend but its the only tool to get your stuff back and it really does work.

I remember I tried to access the HDD from a FireWire connection via my other Mac and it wouldn't read it, Disk Utility only giving the option to format it when the data was definitely recoverable! Even the Geniuses at the Mac store would shy away from advising that DiskWarrior would be a good option as it supposedly damages your data - I don't think so, I got all my stuff back my TC didn't have time to backup!! (even those bloody ScreenFlow files that 'caused' the issue ;) )

Emergency Recap:

1. Always have an up to date backup
2. If possible have a secondary computer to get back online on a second HDD with an OS installed
3. Recovery software like DiskWarrior is your best hope
4. Backup TimeMachine to a second ext HDD - this means you have two backups, but if your computer crashes TC would be the only thing between you and oblivion otherwise


BTW I heavily researched and waited for the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB 2.5" HDD and waited until I thought it was robust enough to get, I was not necessarily wrong, just unlucky. If my WD goes the same way I will have a backup plan to better the one that saved me and will post my experiences.

note: Aperture is an ******* to put back together and if restoring from TimeMchine restore from it and not on top of a clean OS X install otherwise your backups will not be accessible.


Good Luck!
 
so this drive is not worth the hassle?
alot of failed drives postes have said.

can someone just give me like 3 diff drive options.

this is very very difficult.

black macbook.
i want 500gb..... preferable 7200rpm .... but seems its more bother?
shall i just stick with 5400rpm??????? to be safe.......?

i use alot of apps all the time...after a day or two i get a kernal panic and i just reboot.....

toshiba and fujitsu have some, but all are 5400rpm.

cheers.
 
bob2131 said:
so this drive is not worth the hassle?
alot of failed drives postes have said.

can someone just give me like 3 diff drive options.

this is very very difficult.

black macbook.
i want 500gb..... preferable 7200rpm .... but seems its more bother?
shall i just stick with 5400rpm??????? to be safe.......?

i use alot of apps all the time...after a day or two i get a kernal panic and i just reboot.....

toshiba and fujitsu have some, but all are 5400rpm.

cheers.
Click to expand...

I recommend to buy other hard drives, like WD 500GB. I won't buy another Seagate, this drive failed on me TWICE.
 
basically ALL 7200rpm laptop drives are hit and miss. More horror stories than good experiences.

i think im gonna go with 5400rpm (500GB).... and save the bother.

sensible yeah?
 
Go with a 7200. The performance is amazing. I have lots of friends that are
using the 320's with no problem. Mostly Seagates and WD's.
 
skye12 said:
Go with a 7200. The performance is amazing. I have lots of friends that are
using the 320's with no problem. Mostly Seagates and WD's.
Click to expand...

based on one days reading net, majority of users have have too many probs with 7200 drives.

320's?? what is this?

5400rpm 500gb will be fine.... the extra empty space also helps performance.

500GB Fujitsu MJA2500BH 2.5", SATA 3Gb/s, 5400rpm
good choice??
 
bob2131 said:
basically ALL 7200rpm laptop drives are hit and miss. More horror stories than good experiences.

i think im gonna go with 5400rpm (500GB).... and save the bother.

sensible yeah?
Click to expand...

I concur, I think the 7200RPM was the issue for its failure, I too opted for the 1 of Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500GB Sata 8MB Cache 2.5 Inch Internal -- note the "Blue" version is 5400RPM while the "Black" is 7200RPM.

I have no issues and don't feel that I will with this one, but sure have a better backup system in place now. One that will have me up and running quicker than the 10 day turn around from before.
 
I went with a 5400 500GB Blue. The performance is ALMOST the same as the Black.

Who cares if my system boots 3 seconds faster, at least I'll avoid the noise, vibration and failure that the 7200 drives seem to experience.

My Blue should last be until SSDs become larger (1TB+) and much more affordable.
 
I regret my ST9500420AS purchase. I've had TWO of them fail on me. The first failed within the first year and was replaced under warranty. The second failed to work out of the box.

Seagate support has been good, but now I've had to dole out upwards of $20 in shipping and static bags to get them to replace their broken drives. I'm calling them today and asking for an upgrade to the ST905003N3A1AS.
 
DrivinWest said:
I regret my ST9500420AS purchase. I've had TWO of them fail on me. The first failed within the first year and was replaced under warranty. The second failed to work out of the box.

Seagate support has been good, but now I've had to dole out upwards of $20 in shipping and static bags to get them to replace their broken drives. I'm calling them today and asking for an upgrade to the ST905003N3A1AS.
Click to expand...

Bummer! The only one I got failed while zeroing the drive and so I returned it and the vendor was out of stock so I got something else. I would ask them to email a prepaid shipping label.
 
brother just installed a ST905003N3A1AS a few days ago. loves it. no issues (yet). so it will be interesting to see what happens. he claims maybe a slight vibration and maybe increased heat just a tad. I say SSD all the way but I understand it is not practical yet.
 
I just swapped this out on my pre-unibody Macbook Pro (2.4GHz with 4GB of RAM) and it's dead silent (no sound or vibration at all). Time will tell on heat or lifespan, but so far, it's all good. :) Nice and fast.

Here's my benchmarks on a fresh install of Snow Leopard (nothing else installed):

http://pastebin.com/f3e429db5
 
I just installed one, and its fine so far. Im not sure how much battery I have lost but I dont think its extremely noticeable.

What amount of battery time loss have you guys experienced?
 
I'm using this drive in my mid 09 13" MBP, and so far no problems.

BUT, i cant get the SMS working. I've been searching the web and haven't been able to find any clear answer. I have the model without G protection, and my sms is enabled. But my drive never parks. If i tilt the machine fast, actually the drive sounds very unpleasant.

Is it impossible to get this working?
 
Ordered this drive last week for my 15" unibody. Whipped out the 250Gb 5400, installed the 500Gb and waited nearly two hrs staring at "27mins left..." on the OSX installer. It took about 45mins to go from 28mins to 27mins. The logs show verification issues on writing files.

Initially when I installed the drive Disk Util gave an error on formatting and it failed. I had to format it whilst it was in a USB dock to get it working, it then successfully formatted internally prior to trying to install OSX.

Since my unibody has the corner of ali border peeling away from the top left of the display (anti-glare) and the SuperDrive isn't really that super being able to only muster a max 4x burn on branded industry standard DVDR's I'm wondering if it's the HDD at fault or the Mac?
 
Well after about 3 weeks my 7200.4 500gb bricked on me. It wqs used for backup files which i had on the Drobo anyway so no loss of data but I'm a little pissed. So here is what happens all of a sudden as you use the drive it slows down a bunch and you will hear a beep or two. Than after some waiting I just restarted and took a long time than a circle with a line threw it and a couple more beeps in the beginning happened than my SSD drive booted the system but the seagate was not on the desktop. Interesting it seemed like it was still spinning when I put my ear down to listen. Anyway this is the second time I lost a seagate both a 3.5 and now a laptop. Sorry but 2 strikes is enough for me. Ran over to Fry's electronics picked up a Hitachi 7200 500gb and it is very very quiet and is working a charm .
 
Mine has been rock solid since day one, the only reason I'm considering it is because I think my fiance's hard drive in her MacBook Pro is going even though SMART Reporter states it is verified. It keeps getting invalid volume count, I've repaired it once before, but it keeps happening. So my idea is to take my 500GB 7200.4 out of my MacBook and drop it into her MacBook Pro and then I pop in the new Momentus XT in mine.
 
Still going strong

winterquilt said:
I concur, I think the 7200RPM was the issue for its failure, I too opted for the 1 of Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500GB Sata 8MB Cache 2.5 Inch Internal -- note the "Blue" version is 5400RPM while the "Black" is 7200RPM.

I have no issues and don't feel that I will with this one, but sure have a better backup system in place now. One that will have me up and running quicker than the 10 day turn around from before.
Click to expand...

Just so you know, I still have no issues with it. Looking on the WD website I see a 1TB version now selling for £120.50 (£40 off!) so I'm going for that. 1TB will be a good interim before I can go SSD.. I read now close to 1GB read/write speeds with OCR!
 
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