Seagate ST31500341AS 1.5TB

These drives will probably be fine--this issue/workaround reminds me of the problems with the WD1000FYPS Enterprise 1TB greenpower drives [and the cheaper WD10EACS drives, too]. People were freaked out about those, too, and their problem(s). I run 4 of these WD1000FYPS drives now in my NV+ no problem, I just disabled disk spindown and no issue--actually they use like 1/2 the energy so no spindown is no big deal and is probably more reliable.

NOT TO WORRY--Likewise, these 1.5 TB drives appear to be just fine as long as you disable journaling and write cache [wouldn't hurt to get a UPS, ya know]. Hopefully these 1.5TB drives spindown ok...

I'll get some of those drives once they go below $120 or so...probably as the 2 TB ones come out!

Anyone dare try these 1.5TB beasts in another NAS, like the Thecus N4100+?(my other NAS) I wish I could try...

I and many others have been experiencing serious problems with these drives including:

* dropping out of RAID configurations for no apparent reason
* being ejected from a RAID configuration due to read / write errors
* freezing for up to 30 seconds

These problems have been reported on Linux, Vista, XP, and OS X and appear to be related to how the drives flush their write cache. In many cases, the drives work fine for days or weeks before problems appear. In my case, I bought five of these for my Qnap TS-509 Pro and they worked great for about two weeks under various read / write loads. Since then, I've had all three of the problems mentioned above on different drives and they are growing progressively worse. The latest problem was three of the five drives disappearing from the RAID5 volume while I was attempting to copy the files to a different NAS.

A work-around that has been successful for some is to disable the disk write cache. Other than the obvious performance penalty and reduced lifespan this causes, some systems do not provide a means of disabling disk write cache (such as the Qnap).

References to these problems can be found on many forum threads:

Qnap: http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=142&t=8826
Netgear: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=20435&start=60&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
Synology: http://www.synology.com/enu/forum/viewt ... 26&p=47101
AVSForum: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1080005
macrumors: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=571843
Ubuntu: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=933053
Slashdot: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.p ... d=25458241
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B0 ... ewpoints=1

The most informative thread may be found on Seagate's own support forum, where it appears Seagate is blaming everyone but themselves for the problem:

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/mes ... ing&page=1

Can someone help me out here? I purchased 4 of these the day they went on the HCL. I had 2 come with a bunch of bad sectors, sent them back, now I'm rocking with 4 pristine 1.5t's. However, I've had a problem with the ReadyNAS (NV) crashing intermittently ever since I upgraded to these drives. It becomes completely unresponsive, even to the front button, and I am forced to unplug it to get it working again. At that point, it does a FS check, resyncs after several hours, and then works fine again. It was happening with the old drives, and is still happening with the new ones. Everything I've read so far states the drives lock up for 30 seconds if streaming, but this is crashing the unit altogether. Is this a related problem?

I've downloaded all logs (just let me know where to send them if you need them) and when the current sync is done I've re-downloaded and will reinstall the firmware. Is there anything I can do or will I just have to live with intermittent crashes until these are back on the HCL?

Subscribing to this thread... I would like to know when these drives are safe to use with the ReadyNAS NV. I have one already (not installed), and I'm eyeing buying 3 more to upgrade to 4x 1.5TB.

They keep dropping in price. I just saw them for $150 shipped! That's $0.10 / GB!

Just curious where you saw them for $150 shipped? That is a good price for sure, but then maybe the price is dropping because of all the problems... lol.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDe ... e=10009089

They were $179-$20 instant here this morning.

chirpa wrote:
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10009089 They were $179-$20 instant here this morning.

thats insane.. the same drives cost 179€ over here.. thats more like 200-210$.

maybe the drives sold in europe are wrapped in gold or something :)

spudz72 wrote:
Just curious where you saw them for $150 shipped? That is a good price for sure, but then maybe the price is dropping because of all the problems... lol.

Either that, or with the failing economy people are scaling back large electronics purchases? Who knows?

I saw the deal here, but it was short lived @150. It is still available at $165, but goharddrive seems shady...
http://bensbargains.net/deal/82675/

beisser wrote:
chirpa wrote: http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10009089 They were $179-$20 instant here this morning. thats insane.. the same drives cost 179€ over here.. thats more like 200-210$. maybe the drives sold in europe are wrapped in gold or something :)

I found that drive a lilbit cheaper :wink:

Googling today i found that some users are now reporting that seagate has put a firmware SD37 on these drives.
Just sent them an email asking if this is true, guess they will deny everything :)