Seagate Momentus XT users should read this...

All,
I've been fighting with my G73 over the last couple of days because after loading up Starcraft 2 I had a ridiculous amount of audio stuttering when playing cinematics or even just listening to the background music.

This stuttering basically would replay the same sound like 3 times over and would happen every few seconds...

After completely reformatting the drive and reinstalling Windows/drivers/apps, I fired up SC2 and experienced the exact same issue. I am meticulous about my OS installs, and am using the latest drivers for literally everything.

Well, it turns out that after updating my Momentus XT drive to the latest SD28 firmware, the entire drive turned into a piece of garbage. I tried to flash back to SD25 (which I initially had no issues with), but the normal flash application does not allow you to flash prior firmware versions.

The Seagate SD26 firmware (which supposedly solves some data issues with SD25 firmware) can be downloaded here:
MomentusXT-ALL-SD26.AAB900C030.iso

And I followed the manual flash info provided in this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/556879-g73jw-spindown-problem.html

Using this process specifically:
"I just updated my drives last night on my G73SW. I assume the procedure is the same for the JW. Let me get the CD (you need to burn the ISO and run a command) to verify what I ran.

EDIT: Can't read the disk image listing in DOS without booting it which I am too lazy to do. Anyways, the gist of it is when you get to the selection menu, hit ctrl+c to exit out.

Then type:
Code:
dir
It should list a bunch of files. One will have the extension LOD, probably starting with an A. Find the name of that file and note it, then type in the following command:
Code:
FDL487A -m Anak -f A******.LOD -i ST95005620AS -s -x -b -v -a 20
Replace the red bit with the filename you identified. "

 

This has been known for over a year now I believe and it's been posted already and it's in the sticky thread...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...blems-useful-threads-read-before-posting.html

Maybe you should try reading that sometime before creating a new thread.

 

A known issue for over a year now? Come on man, I'm not some noob retard, and I don't need to be spoken to in a condescending manner when I've helped people and was only trying to offer help based on my experience.

The Seagate SD28 firmware is the ABSOLUTE LATEST firmware available for the Momentus XT series of drives. It was released a month and a half ago at the very most (Sept 19 by what I'm finding).

WHY would you point me to a list of common problems and useful threads when this firmware is a month old? This is a new issue CAUSED by the NEWEST firmware provided by Seagate. My solution is to REVERT to an old firmware that doesn't have the issue.

You would EXPECT that Seagate would not release a new firmware that caused issues and fixed none, but that's apparently exactly what they've done.

Well, I'm done ranting, but I don't exactly appreciate the tone of your post. If YOU took 2 seconds to actually look at MY post history, you'd see that I've only ever tried to help people and provide detailed discussion around issues I've seen and resolutions I've found.

*EDIT*
Yep, just as I suspected, you did not even bother reading the thread from the reference post YOU yourself linked to me. It was referencing MUCH older firmwares, and nowhere in that thread is the newest (SD28) firmware EVER MENTIONED! My post was to identify issues CAUSED by SD28. Since reverting, not only games, but total OVERALL performance has improved tremendously.

 

I had some wierdness after installing SD28 too. I installed the latest Intel SATA drivers, Intel Rapid Storage Manager, and Intel MEI which solved the problem. The actual fix was the latest SATA drivers for the HM55 chipset but I updated everything to the latest from Chastity's driver guide. No problems now.

I am still on SD28 and haven't had anymore trouble. I have the G73JH not the G73SW and my Momentus XT was a retail drive that I installed myself so it may not be exactly like your OEM drive(s).

 

Jody,
I have the G73JH also, and bought a Momentus XT as an upgrade, so I think we have a similar setup. I too installed the latest chipset, SATA drivers, but did not bother with the Intel MEI driver because it shouldn't be related.

I wasn't particularly having TROUBLE per se with SD28, but performance was much worse than what I had with SD25. SD25 though apparently has some rare data loss causing issue with extremely large files, so SD26 is the best from what I've been reading.

As I said, I've installed completely from scratch and updated all of my drivers. SC2 ran like crap, so I connected the dots and realized that everything ran fine prior to my SD28 firmware upgrade. I've also noticed a lot better performance from Windows applications since downgrading my firmware.

If you don't have issues, great, but it was the source of a lot of issues for me. I've also found some people having similar issues:

SD28 Available!! - Page 4 - Seagate Community Forums

"Re: SD28 Available!!
Options
10-24-2011 07:06 AM


sd28 is toooooooo slooooooooooooooowwwwwwww compared to sd25.I have to downgrade asap

 

Well if I notice any problems the first thing I will do is downgrade. Knowledge is power so it's good to know this could cause problems. I moved my Steam directory to a 750GB secondary drive but all of my directly installed games are still on the Momentus XT. I haven't noticed any problems with them but I've mostly been playing Diablo and Diablo II lately so nothing that would thrash the drive much. I'll keep an eye on mine too. Mine is booting quickly which is the only real gain I got from using a hybrid drive. Once it's booted into windows its just as slow as any other 7200 RPM drive I've ever had.

 

Thanks for the tip Madnj.
Actually im on the sd26 firmware and I don't noticed any slowdown or problem, drives are fast as they should be.
I wasn't having problems with the sd25 stock firmware beside some noise, sd26 seems to have fixed that.
Thanks again I'll stay away from it.

 

OK, I'm back after doing battle again with my Momentus XT drive.

Here's the info I was able to gather and I want to share regarding the state of firmwares for the Momentus XT drive:

SD25 and earlier firmware ALL had data corruption problems, which, because of the fact that these drives are hybrid drives can cause corruption of disk areas in the SSD flash memory AND on the platters. The issues CAUSED by the corruption can rear its head in many different ways, but lag spikes when reading and many other issues have been reported.

SD26 firmware basically turns the Momentus XT drive into a plain ol' platter drive and does not actually USE the SSD area of the drive. This was tested by a user on the thread I will link below.

SD28 firmware is the newest firmware and resolves the corruption issues AND uses the SSD section of the disk. The BIG issue however is that corruption on the drive BEFORE SD28 will remain in the SSD memory and on the disk post flashing and even reformatting does not fix the problem.

I had to actually via HD Tune, perform a full zero fill drive erase on my Momentus XT to wipe clean the SSD section of the drive as well as clean out any resident corruption on the platters.

After re-wiping my drive (0 format), I re-flashed to SD28 and did a fresh install of Windows, driver updates, Office, etc, and then installed/updated SC2 and am not having the aforementioned problems.

This issue was a pain to identify and troubleshoot, but I hope my pain can help some others out there. I also want to make people aware of the pre SD26 firmware corruption issues with the earlier firmwares.

The best "fix" is to 0-fill the drive (wipe it) with HD Tune Pro or another disk wiping utility, flash to SD28 firmware (or SD26 if you don't care about using the SSD in the XT which basically makes the drive a plain jane 7200 RPM platter drive), and then run a fresh install of Windows. Disk cloning is not recommended because it can bring back any previous corruption.

The thread where this issue is discussed is here, as well as a screenshot from HDTune that shows what S.M.A.R.T. status/health looks like after months of running on one of the corruption causing Momentus XT firmwares.

Unfortunately, 0-formatting the drive is really the only way to get rid of the corruption (full windows formats won't clear the SSD section).

Re: Momentus XT 1-2 second lag/freeze - Page 3 - Seagate Community Forums

**EDIT***

Apparently I spoke too soon... The game stuttering is back with a vengeance even after the 0-wiping of the drive and full fresh reinstall of OS. SC2 is my test game for this issue, but it's truly horrendous. Looks like I'm going to have to rollback to the SD26 firmware which although I won't have effective use of my SSD portion of the drive at least does not have the corruption issue present in SD25 and earlier firmwares.

I'll continue to update if/when I have things to add, but for now, I'd probably steer clear of the SD28 firmware if you run into this issue. The SD26 firmware and force flash process is detailed above.

 

I had to downgrade to SD26 today. My computer started thrashing the hard drive when I booted up this morning. It even had a BSOD on Disk Read Failure. Dropped back to SD26 and all seems right with the world again.

 

It sure sounds like these drives are a lot of trouble. I wonder if they're planning a new generation of them with some refinements.

 

I've upgraded my drives to sd28 yesterday using Dos and reinstalled a fresh os on it, also I've formatted both drives.
So far everything seems working in order.
Note that my drives where sd25 by factory and I've always updated them using Dos instead of windows, dunno if that helps.

 

Kingpinzero, do you have Starcraft 2 by chance to test with drive firmware SD28? My issues caused by SD28 firmware were stuttering Audio in the singleplayer campaign (not necessarily the intro cinematic), but during cinematics, and campaign gameplay. Basically when loading new data from the drive, every few seconds the audio would start skipping and looping the same sound before catching up to itself.

This would happen sometimes in cinematics, but also while playing and it was unbearable. I tried it multiple times after fresh formats and windows installs, and it was reproducible for me using SD28 firmware.

SD26 firmware did not have the problem for me, but SD26 firmware apparently makes the Momentus XT drive basically just a spindle drive without the SSD cacheing (IE worthless).

I actually spent some time reading further into the disk corruption issues reported with SD25, and apparently those issues stem from tests run using the Linux Kernel and Mac OS (which probably shares the same underlying kernel). The issues were not reproducible on Windows or BSD OS installs.

Seeing that the issue does not directly apply to Windows based systems, and based on my personal experiences with SD25 (it's performed best and fastest for me), I've reverted back to SD25 with a force flash.

My reboot times with firmware SD26 was around 85 seconds, with SD28 was around 76 seconds, and my reboot time with SD25 is a screaming fast 57 seconds.

This is a HUGE performance boost with SD25 as opposed to SD28 (or SD26), and to me made it blatantly obvious that reverting was the right thing to do. SD28 "felt" slow. It worked fine for me using Windows and most apps, but it just did not feel snappy. I also had issues loading Youtube videos that I thought were related to Youtube, but might have been caused by the drive and firmware SD28. Basically the video would start loading and then it would start buffering and would take a long time to fully load even short videos.

I'm not sure if that was specifically an SD28 issue, but Starcraft 2 was the reproducible evidence that I needed to tell me that SD28 has issues.

I'd love to hear an update if you can get Starcraft 2 loaded up.

I use a VBscript to test my reboot times, and it basically runs from Windows and performs a shutdown into a reboot and calculates the delta. SD25 has been by far the quickest drive firmware.

Code:

Option Explicit
On Error Resume Next
Dim Wsh, Time1, Time2, Result, PathFile, MsgResult, MsgA, AppName, KeyA, KeyB, TimeDiff
MsgA = "Please close all running applications and click on OK."
KeyA = "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\RestartTime\"
KeyB = "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\RestartTime"
AppName = "ReBoot-Time"
Set Wsh = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
PathFile = """" & WScript.ScriptFullName & """"
Result = wsh.RegRead(KeyA & "Times")
if Result = "" then
MsgResult = Msgbox (MsgA, vbOKCancel, AppName)
If MsgResult = vbcancel then WScript.Quit
Wsh.RegWrite KeyA & "Times", left(Time,8), "REG_SZ"
Wsh.RegWrite KeyB, PathFile, "REG_SZ"
Wsh.Run "cmd /c Shutdown -r -t 00", false, 0 
else
Wsh.RegDelete KeyA & "Times"
Wsh.RegDelete KeyA
Wsh.RegDelete KeyB
TimeDiff = DateDiff("s",Result,left(Time,8))
MsgBox "Your computer reboots in " & TimeDiff & " seconds", VbInformation, AppName
end if
wscript.Quit

 

BTW, instead of zeroing the drive, you guys might want to try a secure erase instead. It lets the drive do an internal wipe as specified by the manufacturer instead of just writing zeroes through the interface. It is definitely more thorough and the drive might treat the flash differently when doing a secure erase. You don't really want to write zeroes to SSD-like drives.

Look up HDDErase (for DOS) or use the Linux method. HDDErase probably requires you to set the controller to IDE mode instead of ACHI. One quirk is that you may need to reconfigure the drive's capacity afterwards (you can do this with various tools like Hitachi Feature Tool). A HDD that I once SE'ed decided it was then an 8GB drive and needed this configuration reprogrammed. SE wipes out more than just the user areas and this is why it's more secure if you care about security.

 

Seagate WAS such a great harddrive maker in the past, the firmware of mine is 0003sdm1 on my G53JW, haven't had too many problems about it however it's a matter of luck but neither Seagate nor ASUS must have left us the arm of luck. It's just a scandal / shame.

 

It turns out that I don't have a Momentus XT problem at all. My G73JH will no longer run two hard drives. It doesn't matter if one of them is the Momentus XT or not. I have three drives and any combination of them causes it to fail. Sometimes it won't boot and sometimes it boots and runs for an hour and then crashes. I've got an RMA number now. I'm going to have to return it to Asus. Again.

It will run all day long with one hard drive but not with two. I don't think SD25, SD26, or SD28 had anything to do with it in my case.

 

I have a G74SX , i think my drivers are SD28 cause i uprade them a few weeks ago.

I'll try single player campain if you want.

 

Ok, another update...

Due to some End to End errors in the S.M.A.R.T. reporting on my Momentus XT drive, I returned the bad drive to the store where I got it and got a replacement no questions asked.

I think ultimately my major issues were related to a bad drive, as this one is working well with SD28. I think whatever issues I had were due to errors or damage to the SSD portion of the drive because SD26 did not appear to have any issues other than being considerably slower.

I believe SD26 firmware basically was rushed out and not widely released because it does not appear to use the SSD portion of the disk (if you do multiple read tests with SD25 or SD28, the second run is always MUCH faster whereas SD26 runs much like any other 7200 RPM drive).

In any case, I hope my problems were related to the drive and that this one will give me a few good years of heavy use. I doubt it the way I use my systems, but here's to hoping!

 

Oh well that's a good news.
As I said my drives where fine from sd25 to 26 and to 28, didn't noticed a slowdown or a degrade in performance.
I know that alot of people's are getting corrupted files but I didn't had any (knock on wood) yet.
Besides I've been reading around that flashing under windows may cause problems, I've always used Dos method thought.

 

It doesn't flash under windows, but instead forces windows to shutdown, and restart the computer, and launch the seagate utility under DOS upon reboot. I was previously on SD25, and updated to SD28, and have no issues. From what I read, SD26 was only released to OEM due to issues in the firmware, yet fixing the data corruption issues.

As for my upgrade process, I have always used the windows tool as I am lazy, and my Momentus XT Was a retail box purchase from a store last Xmas. The drive has seen 3 different OS installs, but only one on SD28.