Seagate 7200.12: any issues?

[pointertovoid]

Hello everybody!

In a quest for a fast (but silent) Hdd for my OS, I concluded that Seagate's ST3500418AS - 500GB on a single platter, 7200.12 series - is faster (as of June 2009) than their counterparts at my beloved Hitachi and Samsung, which have "only" 332GB per platter and perform less well on small files according to Atto.

But then, I have bad feelings about Seagate, whose 7200.11 series was botched.

So has anyone experience (failures, incompatibilities, bad firmware releases, bad batches, other worries...) with that disk or that series?

Thanks!

[pointertovoid]

Meanwhile I've received a pair of these 500GB Seagate 7200.12 aka ST3500418AS. Both run without surprise on my Ich10r, both have been approved by the full test of Seatools. Nice.

The model has 500GB per platter and rotates at 7200rpm (beware many competitors don't), giving a huge throughput of 134MB/s at contiguous read. Sizes that give this maximum throughput are 250GB (1 head), 500GB (1 platter), 750GB (3 heads) and 1TB (2 platters). The 250GB and 500GB are more silent and start more quickly; I suppose their arm is faster as well, though the specs are identical.

Seagate had issued a ST3500410AS and few weeks later the ST3500418AS. They are nearly identical, and some users even tell their disk with a ST3500418AS tag report as ST3500410AS in the Smart. The ST3500410AS is said to be a "low-halogen" product. There seems to be as well a small speed improvement in the ST3500418AS' arm speed: on Hd Tune's benchmark for access time, you see a cloud of points within a band whose thickness is one platter rotation period. The ST3500410AS had - from curves I found on the Net - quite a bit points over this band, corresponding to some seek attempts that took more time than most ones did, needing one platter rotation more. The ST3500418AS shows nearly none of these out-of-band points, neither on the Net nor in my measurements. According to Seagate's datasheet, the ST3500418AS make a bit more noise.

These disks are very silent. Nothing to do with the 8GB 5400rpm with ball bearings I had before from Seagate - the age of a disk design is more important for noise than the brand. Both the spindle and the arm are more silent than the J8080 = Hds721680plat80 and Hds721616plat80 I still use, which are already totally acceptable and better than the Sp0802n I enjoyed before. Well done!

Random access time is 2ms less good than for my J8080 = Hds721680plat80. Atto's performance is better nevertheless, including at small chunks. I didn't find how to set the AAM on this disk. Seatools has no setting for it, HdTune 3.50 shows one and allows the user to play with it, which even lits the Led for disk access, and this setting is memorized and given back by the disk, but it has no effect on speed nor noise. I will try with other means, but did someone ever achieve a difference? If not, I'll consider that the AAM is a functionless feature on the 7200.12.

Here are Atto's results, equally good on my Ich10r and on my Jmb36x, with the JMicron driver and the Infinst but without any Ahci not Stor driver, for 1 and 4 requests in the queue:

In the absence of the Infinst, results are minimally less good, except at 0.5kB where they jump to 13..16MB/s.

Such figures at Atto may be the best among any 7200rpm drive, but didn't give me the short boot time I hoped, probably because of the mobo.

[barteklabedzki]

Hi I have new series seagate 7200.12 st3500418as fw:cc33

It hang's on boot. In bios 0GB

from hdd terminal

Rst 0x10M
(H) SATA Reset
SSPSaveSettings

SSPRestoreSettings

No Phy: Staggered spin bypass
(H) SATA Reset
SSPSaveSettings

SSPRestoreSettings

Send Status: COMRESET seen
 ABORT!
SenseCode = 03310000
ReadyStatusFlags = 0002A1A5

 ABORT!
SenseCode = 03310000
ReadyStatusFlags = 0002A1A5

 ABORT!
SenseCode = 03310000
ReadyStatusFlags = 0002A1A5

Edited August 15, 2009 by barteklabedzki

[barteklabedzki]

I resolved this problem

Edited August 15, 2009 by barteklabedzki

[puntoMX]

Nice to read that, but you could help some people out by writing how you solved it .

Welcome to the forum by the way.

[fisherman10]

hey guys.....upgraded frm the 7200.11 version after successfully reviving it.

Now i'm on the newer 7200.12 version.

S/N : 5VM0SV16

Model: ST3500418AS

Firmware: CC34

The problem now is, it is able to be detected in BIOS. I'm using this as a secondary drive, so i can boot my OS. The only problem is, when i open My computer, it hangs and i can see that the hdd light is busy. Tried on external casing, same problem. "My Computer" hangs until i pull out the ext casing then only it'll recover.

Tried on Linux. Same problem, still cant open the partition.

I hope i can get some help from here. I have all the tools that is required to solve the problem encountered by 7200.11 series as i have done it before. Just wondering can i use the same way but just with different codes?

I really appreciate your help. I have really important, personal, financial, company and family data. Pleaasssseeeeeee help me. :blushing:

Thanks a lot.

Edited December 10, 2009 by dencorso

[jaclaz]

AFAIK, and mind you I could be competely and utterly wrong , the 7200.11 is a "family" of drives. THe 7200.12 is ANOTHER "family" of (newer) drives.

It seems like you managed to load the WRONG firmware on your 7200.11 device.

Latest firmware for 7200.11 should be SD3B:

http://www.msfn.org/board/solution-seagate...-page-2009.html

jaclaz

Edited October 8, 2009 by jaclaz

[fisherman10]

hey there.....

i think u got me wrong......

actually, i USED to have the 7200.11 drives. I had the same BSY problem as the rest of the world and i hav manage to fix it.

now, i bought more seagate drives which are from the 7200.12 family. and that's where all the problem's coming from. I havent do anything to this new 7200.12 drive yet as i do not know whether i can use the same way as 7200.11.

[jaclaz]

I see

I read "upgraded" as "upgraded", instead of "threw away the old hard disk I revived and bought a new one, that is giving me problems as well"

It is very possible that the problem can be solved the same way, though I doubt that Seagate didn't correct the faulty testing procedure in factory.

I mean, it is possible that both symptoms and cure are the same, though I doubt that the illness is the same.

There is similar (but different) report here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/7200-12-bsy-t137055.html

left undetailed.

jaclaz

[pointertovoid]

Hi! Sorry not to have the answer you hope.

I just want to testify that my ST3500418AS - that is, exactly the same reference - works properly on my Ga-ep45-ud3r (P45 ich10r) with Bios F4 to F11, varied drivers and modes.

Did you already try another port, other cables, another host (from another chipset and computer for instance)?

And more important: what do Seatools tell?

http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools

[Lago Chungará]

Hi everybody.Greetings from Turkey...

First of all i am sorry about my bad english.İ hope i can explain my problem to you.

İ have a very bad problem.

My harddisk has gone like 7200.11 series.

İ cant see it in bios anymore.

i tried Gradius2 tutorial about how-to fix 0 LBA and BSY errors in forums.

But i cant successed.

i plug my harddisk with DKU-5 cable and opened hyperterminal on xp.

but i saw a error like this, below the photo;

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/1668/failgb.jpg

i tried from the start of the tutorial about 20-25 times but same error appeared on screen.

can u help me please?

i dont want the hdd.i want photos.my family album in it.

its very important for me.

Por favor...

Help me

Harddisk information;

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 (ST3500418AS)

500 Gbytes

Firmware CC34

the disk is not affected by seagate but the result is same as the trouble with 7200.11 series.

Thanks for everything, sorry about my english again...

Goodbye

[pointertovoid]

Well, I just hope we make the same mistakes in English...

I tested my own pair of St3500418as with Seagate's tool

http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools

choose between floppy and Cd, download, burn, boot the Pc on it, test.

This is the most reliable test for a Seagate disk. Work on other brands as well.

Fingers crossed!

[Lago Chungará]

i appreciate your interest.

Avant tout Merci beaucoup for your reply

i downloaded seatools, and burn it a cd, started pc with it.

program worked but didnt recognise the hard drive.

it says no hard drive installed.

the solution is one step ahead i think, but whats wrong?

Please help me

Edited November 17, 2009 by Lago Chungará

[dencorso]

I've merged all scattered threads I was able to find about 7200.12 in the present consolidated thread. It seems they also have a problem, much like the 7200.11, but the reports are still very few. Maybe the problem is less common, maybe there's still just a few people using them. However, I feel we should keep alert to it. Did any of you all find other reports about it elsewhere?

[puntoMX]

For the last 6 months this is all we got on the 7200.12 drives, that not much so to say, so it would be safe to say that the current 7200.12 have no similar problems to the 7200.11.

Just my 0.02 .