4TB Seagate Skyhawk ST4000VX007

[voy13k]

Perhaps it's going to bite me, but I've decided to give 2 of those a go in RAID 1, in TS-251+, 4.3.3.0188. They are on the compatibility list, and have 24/7 spec, optimised for surveillance. I won't be hiding that the price (~80AUD cheaper EACH than WD reds) was a big factor. My hope being that it's only because Seagate is haunted by some past errors, not because the current drives are actually rubbish.

Well, after configuring simple RAID1 in QNAP, before I could really do anything else, I got red LED and a warning of bad blocks detected on one drive. Removed both drives and ran them through seagate's diagnostic tool (seatools for windows), connected to windows via USB3 caddy. Both drives gave me failures in Short Drive Self Test and Long Generic. What's odd, the tool gave me blank "Test Code" after every failed test. It was supposed to give me a real code usable for RMA. Ooops.

So yeah. My first impressions not too good. But it's early days, seems too early to draw any conclusions, yet.

For the next step I'm planning to connect them internally to SATA on a PC, and test them with "seatools for dos" - a bottable CD/USB version of the diag tool. This should tell us something about USB caddy as a factor. But the fact that QNAP flagged one drive immediately suggests the problem is rather real.

My working theory at this stage is that the drives were damaged in shipping. But I'd like to run as much diagnostics as I can myself, before I send of the warranty claim, to avoid situation where they come back saying - "no problems found, here is the shipping bill". I'd like to ask the community for ideas, from your own experience, of how else to test, what to look at, at this stage? I'm not scared of linux, if that offers any useful tools. I'm trying google of course, but it gets hard to tell what's real and what's rubbish out there ... the community here seems much more reliable.

Cheers and Regards

[elvisimprsntr]

I have the same drive installed in a 453A and have no issues, but not in RAID1 config. I now have 6 Seagate NAS drives in two QNAPs and a Seagate NVR drive and haven't had a problem with any of them.

All my Seagate drives were each in a individual sealed Seagate brown box, in a sealed ESD bag, with molded plastic caps to suspend the drive in each box. How were your drives packaged? If the drives were not packaged the same, who knows what you got. I would check the label on the drives and reported volume size which can be used to determine counterfeit drives. You can also type the serial number into Seagate web site to confirm the drive.

http://thydzik.com/is-your-hard-disk-dr ... feit-fake/

http://www.ukantipiracy.co.uk/computer/ ... tehdd.html

If you have a Linux machine, install the smartmontools package. You can use smartctl command to interrogate the drive and initiate the drive self tests.

[voy13k]

Thanks for that!

Sealed brown boxes - check.
Sealed ESD bags - check.
Plastic moldings - nope, brown box cutout "suspenders" instead.
I've checked one serial number on seagate website, it came back as "on warranty till 2020", sizes seemed to match. Will check the other one later.
The boxes were sealed with a tape from "ingram micro", which seagate website lists as an RMA contact around here.

[elvisimprsntr]

Ingram Micro seal tape? So did someone sell you drives which were returned by someone else for the same reason?

[voy13k]

Hmm, one of those online shops with a bricks and mortar showroom. They were supposed to be brand new. You might be onto something.

EDIT: I've just checked Power On Hours using SeaTools - less than 24, so they look brand new.

[seagate_surfer]

Hi, looks like we are a bit late to the party on this one. There's just a lot of variables here with regards to the drive reporting bad sectors which could be causing the problem, and we don't want to send you on a wild goose chase, so, barring the issue being already resolved, we recommend getting in touch directly with technical support here so that you can get this taken care of in the most efficient manner possible.

Seagate Customer Support can be reached here. We hope this works out!

[Johnno72]

Ingram Micro seal tape? So did someone sell you drives which were returned by someone else for the same reason?

This would be correct as the item was drop-shipped from Ingram Micro, like my QNAP it was drop-shipped from Dicker Data and sealed with Dicker Data tape when I purchased it from retailer in Melbourne. Drop-shipping saves on warehousing and financial investment having stock sitting on shelves, handling etc. but can become confusing to those that don't know for warranties, complaints etc.

This is also where problems begin in getting replacement, warranties etc. I needed RA details from: QNAP (got this within 24 hours), retailer and Dicker Data for one warranty claim and I had to chase these down from everyone myself. The distributor wouldn't help, the retailer is just well, lazy, it would appear they didn't know what to do next. I had to Live Support chat four times and phone twice to get things moving and to get the RA information I required.

[voy13k]

After running more tests and deep formats one of the drives seems to have a clean bill of health, and is happily spinning in the QNAP, temporarily paired with a different size and different manufacturer HDD in RAID1, all working nicely.

The second drive ended up with ~2000 reallocated blocks.

This is also where problems begin in getting replacement, warranties etc. I needed RA details from: QNAP (got this within 24 hours), retailer and Dicker Data for one warranty claim and I had to chase these down from everyone myself. The distributor wouldn't help, the retailer is just well, lazy, it would appear they didn't know what to do next. I had to Live Support chat four times and phone twice to get things moving and to get the RA information I required.

I took some screenshots with SMART data, sent an email back to the retailer. They took a couple of weeks time, but in the end I received the RA details, and waiting for the replacement drive now.