z70Va w/Seagate Hdd- Nonstop Access??

Has anyone with a Seagate Momentus 100gb 7200rpm hdd found that the blue disk access light on their Asus z70Va tends to stay solidly lit most of the time, even during periods of system inactivity?

Some more specifics:

My Seagate replaces a Hitachi Travelstar 100gb 7200rpm, which did not share the odd behavior. And note that my system is an exact mirror of the old system, since the Seagate was set up a week ago using an image file made from the (still fully functional) Hitachi.

The Seagate is unbelievably quiet and works great, EXCEPT that for some reason the blue drive activity indicator stays on solid at least 75% of the time, even when the machine is idle. In fact, its is lit significantly MORE than when the machine isn't in use This is completely different than the Hitachi, where the indicator was usually unlit during periods of inactivity. I called Seagate and they told me there is a known firmware issue that cause the led to glow when there isn't actually disk activity, and that this is completely harmless. They told me I could try a new one, which I did (exchanged by Dell, which is where I bought the drive on sale). But the new one does exactly the same thing. So I'm surprised that I can't find any mention of this issue on the net...I can't be the only person experiencing this or mentioning it??

The new Seagate drive (as well as the old one) passed both the Seagate advanced drive test and chkdsk /r.

Even if I can convince myself that disk-activity indicator glow is harmless, the indicator no longer serves its purpose, which was sometimes useful. E.g., with the Hitachi when the indicator stayed on constantly (as opposed to blinking or off) that was somtimes a clue that a program had run amok and should be terminated. Also, after running some pre-shutdown utilities, I liked to wait until the light goes out before powering down.

Any thoughts, advice? Is my concern justified or am I worrying about something that's merely an insignificant inconvenience given the drive seems great otherwise? Is there any way this can be hurting the pc?

Thanks.

 

Just put a sticker over that light.

 

As tempting as the sticker-over-the-light advice is, I decided to try contacting Seagate Tech Support again, this time by email instead of phone. The reply was a bit different...instead of saying this was a known but harmless firmware issue affecting some units of this model, I was told that what I bought from Dell would have been an OEM version. And that designing to Dell's specifications could cause the drive to operate differently in my pc than in a Dell.

Funny, the only reason I bought from Dell is that they had a special going on this drive when I checked one of those price-comparison sites. The specs shown on the Dell site said nothing about this being a Dell-only version.

I haven't run up against this kind of situation before. Does Seagate's answer pass the smell test? (BTW, I'm NOT trying to suggest that anyone was*intentionally* giving me mis-information.)

 

Sounds like BS. What would DELL do to HDDs anyways? They merely use the product within the bounds of what integrators are allowed to do with them. If Seagate didn't provide them with integration tools to modify them, they won't go out of their way to screw around with a part they don't specialize in (ex: Dell desktops have a Dell logo and Dell presets, but only because INTEL provides them with the bonafide tools to do that to the INTEL motherboards they use).

Also, different models of Dell were made by different ODMs (ex: ASUS made some models), so it's somewhat of a screwjob if they're saying that Dell hacked the firmware so that it would be incompatible with certain models of their own laptops. The last I checked, patches are typically made to make the device MORE compatible, NOT LESS compatible.

HOWEVER, the one thing I do know is that you won't be able to ask Seagate for support. Any time parts are bought through a major tier 1 (ex: Dell, HP, IBM, etc), chances are that they negotiate a better price by buying in volume and taking on the responsibility for the warranty and support. In other words, OEM in the true sense. To find out, take that serial number and enter it into the RMA on Seagate and see if they are providing you the standard 5-yr warranty. Chances are that it will say 'no warranty' with them on the manufacturer site, in which case you might want to talk to Dell...

 

Thanks for the reply, AlexF.

Last night I noticed that Dell is actually recommeded as a RETAIL outlet in the "where to buy" section of Seagate's own website. So I wrote back to Seagate and they sent an apology saying that they had misread my email and thought the drive was purchased as part of a Dell system. Interesting mistake, given that the first two sentences of my original support request were: "My PC is an Asus z70Va notebook. I purchased the Seagate drive to replace my previous main hdd, which was also 7200rpm 100gb ATA, but made by Hitachi."

Out of curiosity, I also tried the serial-number-check function you mentioned, and it came back saying that the drive was fully warranteed by Seagate.

But I'm still perplexed...I obviously can't be the only person who is experiencing the usually-solidly-lit-when-idle disk activity indicator with this drive...even though a similar-specs Hitachi had no such issue. This drive was a common offering with the z70Va and other custom-configured Asus models. Isn't anyone else noticing the same issue?????????????????????????????????????????????

 

Okay, so if it has a full warranty, then you should be talking to Seagate. But as a rule, avoid OEM from major tier 1. Also, retail box HDDs from places like Best Buy and Futureshop, since the retail box are usually 1-yr warranty vs. 3-yr warranty with reseller OEM (ie: small to mid-sized computer shops). Seagate gives 5-yr, so you're usually much better off.

AFAIK, Seagate does not have any fancy utility like Hitachi that lets you change the drive settings.

No changes made to the system? Did you reinstall or Ghost? Maybe you have File Indexing in Windows enabled? Or some sort of defrag like OODefrag or Diskeeper? No CD/DVD in the drive? Check Task Manager and verify if the system is using all RAM, maybe it's going to the swap file...

 

Well, I was in touch with Seagate tech support again, this time by email. They said this was an issue they had "seen" before in which everything is completely normal except that for some reason the disk activity light operates the opposite of the way it should. I.e., it's on when it should be off, and off when it should be on.

Well, it turns out that is clearly what's going on much of the time, although at other times the pattern is a little fuzzier, especially during certain very drive-intensive tasks. I even downloaded Diskmon, with its system tray based "light" to compare. When the system isn't very busy (i.e., nothing but occasional background writes) it's almost kind of funny watching the pc's activity light go off every time Diskmon's comes on, and vice versa. I was almost ready to just live with it until I wrote back to Seagate to ask a few followup questions, and they suggested a "solution": send the defective drive back to them for warranty replacement. Of course, when I asked if the replacement would be a brand new drive (since I only received this replacement from Dell a few days ago), they said it would be refurbished instead. They said if I wanted to try to get a brand new one from Seagate instead of refurbished I would have to take it up with the Warranty people. So I wrote them today. Haven't heard back yet, but based on an earlier conversation I had with them I highly doubt they'd agree to providing a new drive instead of refurbished. And since I don't want to chance getting yet ANOTHER defective one from Dell's batch, I imagine I'll be returning this for a refund soon...and getting a new Hitachi. Wish I had done that in the first place.

BTW, I *am* using an image taken from my old Hitachi on the Seagate. But today I tried imaging from the Seagate to an external drive, and then then temporarily reinstalling the old Hitachi and reading back the Seagate's image. Sure enough, when I do that the disk activity light once again behaves normally...until I put the Seagate back in.

None of the other issues you mentioned apply in my case, but thanks for taking time to give it some thought and post back! This really isn't worth any more of my time; I'm glad Dell is isn't giving me any argument about getting a full refund on the drive after sending me the also-defective replacement.