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khrusher
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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 7:44 am |
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Joined: Tue Apr 13, 2004 6:51 pm
Posts: 890
Location:
Groton, MA
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elgordo123
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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 4:20 pm |
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Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2004 2:54 pm
Posts: 392
Location:
Beaumont, CA
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_________________ ASUS A7N266 Micro-ATX Motherboard
Athlon 2200 processor
512K Kingston PC2100 Memory
MicroAtx Case
2 PVR250's w/remote
eVGA e-GeForce mx4000 (64 Ram with Tv/Out (Svideo))
Lite-on DVD cd-rw combo
120 GB Western Digital
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mihanson
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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 5:41 pm |
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Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2005 3:50 pm
Posts: 1013
Location:
Los Angeles
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If you're thinking of buying this drive... Buyer beware. There is well documented problems with these drives locking up for ~30 seconds at a time when streaming video/audio off of them. Google search for "Seagate freeze" Take a look at the newegg user reviews, too. Seagate has claimed to fix this problem with a new firmware version (see also the newegg product tour), but IMO, buying this drive is a gamble. Just know what you're getting into.
_________________ Mike
My Hardware Profile
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paulsid
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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 7:14 pm |
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Joined: Thu Apr 03, 2008 11:42 pm
Posts: 114
Location:
Calgary, Canada
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Just bought one of these for roughly the same price - $160CDN at my local dealer during a "Boxing Week" sale. Was the best value per GB for sure! In the process of upgrading to R5.5 now before I put it to full-time work.
Unfortunately I did not know about the freezing - thanks mihanson. (Hey DYN your post comes back at the top of the very Google search you mentioned?) Sadly Seagate's handling of this appears to be rather horrible... why can't companies learn it is always far better to suck it up and admit problems rather than to try to hide them?!
That being said there have been no reports I can find of freezing in newer firmware. Luckily I have the latest AFAICT, but if will definitely report back here if I run into problems to warn others! For anyone who still wants to buy, I would say make sure you can physically inspect the drive(s) first to verify the firmware - that'd rule out mail-order. And as always keep backups of anything irreplacable like photos and home movies...
P.S. The Tom's Hardware review is here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Sea ... ,2032.html
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graysky
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 6:46 am |
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Joined: Wed Dec 10, 2003 8:31 pm
Posts: 1996
Location:
/dev/null
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As I understand it, Seagate has recently switched to a newer internal setup for their drives. The major differences being the number of platters and heads have shrunk. I thought I read a review on anandtech, 3dguru, th.com or somewhere (can't find it now) stating that these freeze problems have been resloved in the 'newer' version.
I looked on newegg, but only found it in the 1 gig version: ST31000333AS. This is in contrast to the older "340" drive which has a 4 platter/8 head setup. The newer "333" is a 3 platter/6 head drive.
In addition to the geometry change, the "333" drives are faster.
_________________ Retired KM user (R4 - R6.04); friend to LH users.
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mihanson
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 8:21 am |
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Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2005 3:50 pm
Posts: 1013
Location:
Los Angeles
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graysky wrote: As I understand it, Seagate has recently switched to a newer internal setup for their drives. The major differences being the number of platters and heads have shrunk. I thought I read a review on anandtech, 3dguru, th.com or somewhere (can't find it now) stating that these freeze problems have been resloved in the 'newer' version. I looked on newegg, but only found it in the 1 gig version: ST31000333AS. This is in contrast to the older "340" drive which has a 4 platter/8 head setup. The newer "333" is a 3 platter/6 head drive. In addition to the geometry change, the "333" drives are faster.
Yes, that's for the 1TB drives. We're talking 1.5TB though. The 1.5TB use 4 of the higher density platters to achive the 1.5TB capacity.
_________________ Mike
My Hardware Profile
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graysky
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 10:34 am |
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Joined: Wed Dec 10, 2003 8:31 pm
Posts: 1996
Location:
/dev/null
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mihanson wrote: Yes, that's for the 1TB drives. We're talking 1.5TB though. The 1.5TB use 4 of the higher density platters to achive the 1.5TB capacity.
Hmm.. I thought the 333 platform was a standard for the newer 12 gen drives (>1.5 TB) but I could be mistaken. Wish I could find that article.
_________________ Retired KM user (R4 - R6.04); friend to LH users.
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