Zenskas

@Poolcarpet The flash drive with the most important data will be at school most of the time. Seagate drive will be in my cupboard. WD drive will be in the comp But I hear the WD green drives are very efficient, reliable, and almost as fast as my old seagate. Im gonna get one of the 640gb ones. Even more storage that the old one

Do NOT backup anything onto flash media. It's the most volatile of all storage methods. Unless its a micro drive. If I have my photos backed up to the WD, seagate and flash what is the chance I will loose something??? I have used usb memory sticks for years and chucked them around alot and have never lost anything. Oh yeah and I don't want to use the seagate as my main drive because then I would have to reinstall everything...

Well here is what my mum agreed I can do: buy a WD green power 500 or 640gb drive and use it as the main HDD and use the replacement seagate as a backup drive as my mobo has esata. Works for me and my mum is willing to pay just so it will all go ok. I will also from now on backup family photos to my new 16gb kingston usb stick.

Great but once you have removed the bsy stuff will the HDD work as normal?

What do you mean?? Oh lol I just got it haha my new years res is 1440x900

I think the best solution for this is seagate calling back the drives or giving out firmware updates so it does not happen in the first place. But noooooo that wouldn't be as good as just RMAing every drive that dies would it seagate?

Lol sounds good Trouble is I don't have any cash to spend on another HDD unless I get a refund then I can buy a Samsung or WD.

Try taking out the CMOS battery on the board for a few minutes and put it back in then try again. Make sure all your heatsinks are on properly too.

Yeah just look at the tread I created and all the new members signing up to post in it...perpendicular HDD's can't be that good hey. But it seems HDD makers are using the technology so it must do something.

Since I am getting a replacement drive if it has SD15 firmware would it be possible to update it before it dies?

Thanks fatlip thats great progress!!! So if this works would I be able to buy these parts in Australia? Just at any good electronics store? And do I need a serial port on my PC?

Wow I have dragged a lot of new members over here to MSFN hopefully you guys will stay here even after the HDD problem as it's a great forum with quite a few smart people. So the BSY problem can be fixed then? But it does not fix the problem still? The data recovery companies are charging enough money for their services that you could go out and buy ten drives! (does that sentence make sense??? ) Anyway now we can try to find a solution. EDIT: Man I wish that AlanM mod on seagate would shut up... this is what he posted in a thread on the seagate forum: Just for the record, no relevant technical information has been deleted (*yeah right*) or edited out of that thread(*lol*). We are trying to keep the forum interaction professional (*say what?*) and on-topic(*yeah so go and delete posts that are to do with the problem why don't you*), as stated in our Rules & Guidelines(*it does not say mods can delete links to MSFN in the rules*). There is no need to look at any cached version of it (though feel free to do so(*oh I will*)), as the only major action we've undertaken is to close the thread (*and edit posts for no reason*)for the reasons stated in the final post.(*what, the reason was some BS like "ooh everyone is off-topic"*)

Nice job if he comes here maybe we can get some answers. Trouble is, I'm afraid that when I get my replacement drive it will have the same problems and I will have to send it back again. I emailed "PC MEAL" (the people I bought the drive from) and asked for a refund instead but I think it is already in the mail to me so if fatlip can find a fix I can use it on the replacement if it had SD15 firmware.

Yeah i PM'd fatlip

Yes I am just going to get a replacement but alot of people on the seagate forum lost their backups as well like when they had a raid configuration. Other people used the drive as a storage drive and lost all of it. Others had only had the drive for less than a month (like me) and did not have backing up on their mind straight away. Plus the drives fail without any warning at all so it can be hard. I will only use my replacement drive it it has firmware different to sd15. I know the drive is a good drive and is really fast but seagate is doing nothing about atm. And their were people working on the problem but the thread was closed. Just goes to show how much seagate care. EDIT: If the moral of the story is true then everyone would have to spend double on storage because thay would have twice the amount of data (back ups). I had a back up of everything but I'm still just as angry at seagate for their ignorance to this problem. A simple firmware update is all I ask for.

Yay now hopefully someone can help us. I hope fatlip turns up...

Hey seahate! Let me guess...rimask??? EDIT: New name for seagate!!! $eahate!

Yes it can be fixed with a firmware upgrade however $eagate (hey their new name) could not be bothered making new firmware for these drives available. I am directing others from the $eagate forums to come to this thread as it wont be shut down...I hope Lol.

EDIT: Wooah, so this thread got a lot of attention over the years! Hopefully it was a good starting point for those that figured out how to fix the issues. To this day I have not bought another Seagate drive, not really due to this issue but I generally find WD and Samsung drives are slightly better value and I have not had one die on me yet which is a start! Well guys I know MSFN will not take this thread down like Seagate so kindly did on their own forums so here goes. This thread was created by a user on the Seagate forums and the first post read like this: Good day. I've been using Seagate hard drives for 8 years.And that's why when, being in Beijing (Olympycs'08) and feeling a lack of space for photos, i've purchased a ST3500320AS. It was working ok as a reserve-hdd for 2.5 months, when, suddenly, did not appear in the morning after the PC started... The problem is: -the motor is started (the power is ok) -not detected by bios -not detected by winxp -after winxp boot from an other drive - the PC is very slow for 5-7 minutes (maybe detecting the drive) - and then works fine - the hdd is not detected by any win' programm Searching the internet i've found that: -it should be (probably) the firmware problem called "CC" (SA-problem - LED:000000CC FAddr:0024A051) -about 20-30% of 7200.11 have such problems(not detecting or "0gb space":smileywink: -seagate knows about this problem -such drives are still selling all-around-the-world So' i have some questions: 1)can it be fixed at home (by myself) - wia firmware update or something else 2)can i restore some data 3)as the drive was purchased in China and i live in Belarus - can i hope for some kind of warranty? ps Sorry for posting this message in the forum - i cant create a question case at seagate's site - it writes that there is a "missed xml" or smth like this. END So the URL for this thread is here: http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/messag...;thread.id=3283 A member called Fatlip was making extremely good progress on the problem and had almost solved it when it was shut down. Hardly anyone on the thread had yet heard back from Seagate about the problem including myself. So I would like this thread to continue on from the other one as here we won't have moderators editing and deleting posts. Read the Seagate thread in full (yes I know its 19 pages) and you will get what I mean. Hopefully someone here can get help somehow for the large amount of people affected by this terrible firmware problem.

Yeah probably. If you can try using the PC with a different card and seeing if the problems continue that would help a lot.

So it might not be a heat issue then...try taking it out and checking it over to see if everything looks normal (e.g no bulging capacitors, heatsink is on properly etc) then put it back in the mobo.

No that should be fine.

Yep it could just be your power supply. Is your PSU fan working? Is there a lot of dust in your PC? Try re-connecting the power cables to the motherboard. Tell us how it goes.

No, no, no like crahak said just because the CPU in your laptop beats your old P4 doesn't mean AMD processors are faster than Intel. It is just that your laptop CPU is a lot newer and has more advanced technology. The L2 cache on your AMD is 512KB (same as the Intel). The AMD FSB speed is 800Mhz (same as the Intel). Your AMD CPU supports technologies like MMX, Enhanced 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, AMD64, PowerNow!, and NX Bit. Your Intel CPU only supports MMX, SSE, SSE2, and Hyper-Threading (which does not help performance much, if at all). Also your AMD uses just 25W of power while the P4 used up to 69.7W. Oh yeah and the AMD is 90nm compared against 130nm on the P4 (90nm is smaller and newer than 130nm so the CPU can run even cooler and uses less power even if it was at the same clock speed) And the laptop will slow down a bit in the future, as it gets as old as the P4 was when it died, because of the junk that computers collect to slow your system down. The graphics in your laptop are better too which can help with things like playing games, watching movies, and the general quality of what is displayed on the screen. Compare your CPU to mine, an Intel Core 2 Duo E7300, with 2.66Ghz clock speed, 3MB L2 cache, 1066Mhz FSB, 45nm, and technologies like MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology, Intel 64, XD bit, and iAMT2 all while using under 65W usually under 55W. So keep your options open. In fact currently Intel CPUs are the fastest(core i7) and the best all rounders (core 2 duo e7/8xxx series). Anyway, an upgrade to 2GB of RAM will be welcomed by your laptop and should keep it going strong later on down the track when it is fully loaded with all the stuff you put on it.

Hey, try putting another graphics card in the PC (preferably a GF9800 card) and then fire up the games and see if it crashes. Use the latest 180.48 drivers from the nvidia website. You could always reformat and reinstall windows if it comes to that. A lot of people do this once even twice a year as computers get loaded with all kinds of junk unless you tweak your PC to the max and it is super stable and secure. EDIT: Check out this topic on the forums ATM http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=127855 The video card problem was fixed with a reformat. I would reformat the hard drive every time I upgraded the motherboard, boot-hard drive (of course), and the graphics card. Ram, CPU, extra hard drives, optical drive, power supply and small add-in cards do not need a reformat to work properly most of the time.