Seagate Momentus 7200.4 thread

The 3.5" Seagate 7200.11 also have problems in the firmware and suffer the same symptom.

 

Just got one today that I've been waiting for since Feb 5th from NowDirect. Firmware 0002SDM1.

 

thanks a lot + rep.

seems like there has been a firmware upgrade since mine is rev: 0001.


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This is what legitreviews.com says about the firmware upgrade:

"The Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB hard drive was shipped to LR and tested using firmware 0002SDM1, which is said to be much better than the older firmware versions that shipped with the 7200.4 drives in March/April 2009."

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/967/9/


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Maybe that explains the mediocre performance in earlier reviews. On Tomshardware performance seems to be ok.

 

interesting developments.

 

Its nice to know there is a harddrive manufacturer out there to make more money for the wooo factor than for the reliability one.

Seagate already filled out my form for sticking with Hitachi and I have good reason to stay there

Good luck with your new revision drives, we will have to see if there is any difference in real life performance

K-TRON

 

now the real question is if there's a way for all of us with the 0001SDM1 firmware to upgrade to the newer ones. My drive has run fine, but I'm all for updating to get better performance and stability.

 

How to tell which firmware version we have?

 

i also receive many email about the stock is available already..

 

I have a 120GB Vertex and this Seagate, what test do you want me to run (like if I were to transfer a large file, how do in know how long it takes other than using a stopwatch). I will be glad to run some tests for you all.

 

Bad news...

I have contacted w/ Seagate support for the new firmware (rev 0002) to update my old firmware (rev 0001) and this is their reply:

"Thank you for sending your Seagate E-mail inquiry.

Laptop hard drives were not at all affected by the recent firmware issue, and we have no updates available for your drive. If you are having problems with your hard drive, then I recommend testing it with Seatools (link below) and if it fails the Short and Long test, then I recommend replacing the drive under warranty.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools/

If you have any additional questions, please let me know."

Looks like they are not willing to share the new firmware...

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Using a stopwatch is the way to do it. Some applications will tell you how fast it goes, like 7zip or Avira. But if you only have the Vertex to compare it to, there's not much point to do it. We already know the Vertex will be faster.

There's one thing that might be interesting though: Duplicate a 4.97GB folder with mixed media files (audio, documents, images, and video) and time that by hand. Repeat it three times and take the average. I have some data we can compare it to. (of course it has to be the same folder for both the Vertex and 7200.4). Would be interesting if you could do that.

 

Or not willing to admit there's a problem...
That gives me a place to start, anyway. Thanks for posting, ramgen. Much appreciated.

 

They did that with Barracuda 7200.11 also. Seagate made firmware update for the drive, but only for new drive. They didn't release it to public and refused to update HDD that has been sold to customer. If your HDD died, THEN they will replace your HDD with the new HDD (and new firmware).

This policy makes me wonder... I think the remedy for the problem is not as simple as firmware update. I think they change something on hardware level, but want to cover it up.

 

pretty damn shady.

 

I thought that might be the case. My drive has been running fine except for a hiccup a couple months back. All of a sudden playing video files in either windows media player or vlc they would skip horribly. They would play along for a few seconds and then skip and resume playing and then skip. It was annoying the heck out of me. the weird thing was that with Media Player Classic Home Cinema the videos played fine. I thought it was something wrong with vista, but then I realized it only did this on the 7200.4. I have a WD Scorpio WD3200BEVT 320GB as well as an external WD 250gb drive that videos played fine on. I finally ran Check Disk in windows which found some errors and fixed them. Ever since then my drive has been running fine, but it still doesn't pass some of the seatools tests. I have my fingers crossed...

 

hope you have your stuff backed up.

 

well, not all of my stuff is on the 7200.4. I have things stored on 2 other drives as well.

 

I ran all the tests today, and everything passed. But I still have the "hiccups" mentioned. My stuff is backed up and it's time to try something else. Maybe I should have gone with WD after all.

 

I think it will be best to get rid of these first generation Seagates (i.e. sell it as used hdd for $70-$80) and purchase the Hitachi or WD when they hit the market. This is my current plan...

I don't want to wait for the time when this drive fails...


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No no, the idea is I would be able to get transfer times for specific sized files between the 2 drives . . . we all know the Vertex can send and receive much faster than the Seagate, so we will know the maximum speed the Seagate can transfer. I also have 2-320GB 7200RPM drives (Seagaate) in eSATA enclosures if you want to know info about that setup. Anyway, just let me know what size file and if anyone is interested in this information.

 

So is this one consider faster and more efficient than the WD Scorpio Black

 

I already told you..

I'm interested in mixed file size, a folderof mixed media files (audio, documents, images, and video), let's say about 300 files, exactly 4.97 GB all together.

That way we can compare it to the numbers here. A direct comparison may not be accurate, but it would be interesting to see the ratio between the Vertex performance and 7200.4 on one hand, and the Vertex to the Fujitsu Laptopmag reviewed on the other hand.

I'm not interested in the maximum speed the Seagate can transfer. If you copy many files together everything will weigh in, read & write throughput, I/O and acces time.

That's uncertain. Tomshardware have benchmarked it, but only synthetic benchmarks. In acces time and I/O WD comes out faster, in throughput Seagate comes out faster.

According to Laptopmag "the fastest mechanical drive we’ve ever tested is the 7,200-rpm Fujitsu MHZ2320BJ (320GB)." Don't know if they had the 7200.4 yet.

 

I'm with you, ramgen. Or go back a step to 320GB 7200 RPM. Anyway, I don't want to wait for disaster either.

What about Fujitsu? Any thoughts?

 

Is there a 2nd generation out?
These discs have been out-of-stock in all stores I use (major online stores) but now they appeared in a pretty big batch at one of the biggest retailers.
Is it a new version or have they just gotten a stock of 1st gen discs?

I ordered one since ive been waiting on the 500gb seagate, but now it seems it would be a bad idea to pick it up and actually use it? Should I just resend it to them without opening it and get a WD instead?
Advice?

 

if I were you, I'd cancel my order and either buy Hitachi/WD 500GB or wait for Hitachi/WD new model.

 

I have never used Fujitsu before. I had Hitachi experience for 3 years and WD experience for 1 year and they were both fine. I didn't see many complaints in the forums about those two brands either.

Seagate's policy of not releasing the updated firmware makes me quite suspicious of what is going on there. Plus they had almost 4 months of gap between their first and the second generations of 7200.4 series. This makes me think that they had hardware fixes...

I now started to think that I am with a time bomb...


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hey all, what did I miss over the past 20 pages or so, lol ?

did new firmwere become available or something ?

 

Yeah, the second batch hit the market with an updated firmware (0002) and legitreviews.com claims that the drive is much better now.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/967/9/

I've contacted Seagate support to get the new firmware but they rejected me (which makes me think that they did some hardware changes in the mean time).

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Is it possible to flash the new firmware on an older drive?

 

If the hdd generations change, then it is impossible since firmwares are mostly hardware specific. For example you cannot use the firmware of 7200.3 series on a 7200.2 series HDD.

However here is a different story. These drives still belong to the same class: 7200.4. If there were no hardware modifications between the old and the new batch, the updated firmware should work just fine. I don't think that was the case here. The second batch of 7200.4 drives have probably undergone some hardware optimizations too...


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Ok ran the test like the link you provided Phil, 3 transfer and averaged it all. 4.97GB of mixed files (Video, photos, music and docs):

Transfer from the Seagate 7200rpm 500GB to the Vertex - 1:24.69
Transfer from the Vertex to the Seagate 7200rpm 500GB - 58.03
Transfer from Seagate 7200rpm 320GB to Seagate 7200rpm 500GB via eSATA - 1:20.50
Transfer from Seagate 7200rpm 500GB to Seagate 7200rpm 320GB via eSATA - 1:07.46
Transfer from Vertex to Seagate 7200rpm 320GB via eSATA - 1:19.91
Transfer from Seagate 7200rpm 320GB to Vertex via eSATA - 1:17.03

The 320 is in an enclosure with eSATA
500 is in the computer
Vertex is in the computer

Hope this will be useful in some way. As I figured, the Vertex is being held up by the transfer rates of the other drives. I havent flashed the Vertex yet so it can improve performance also, but when start up programs it is almost instantaneous, startup is about 8 seconds from off to fully booted. Wish I had the money for another SSD to see what transfer rates between them are!

 

Great work, but I meant it slightly different.

I meant: Copy the folder from the Seagate 7200.4, and paste it to the Seagate 7200.4 in a different folder. This way it will duplicate the folder on the same drive. This way the result will reflect acces time, read and write throughput and I/O for one drive. Like the green bars in the table of Laptopmag (see attachment).

And then the same thing for the Vertex.

 

Back in 2000-2001, IBM had a very high failure rate with Travelstar and Deskstar series. They release a DIY firmware update to public.

So, yeah, you can flash new firmware to older HDD, but it depends on 2 things:
1. The old drive has identical hardware with the new drive, thus they can share the same firmware.
2. The vendor release the firmware update to public.

 

Incidentally, I bought one from Overclockers.co.uk this week, and it is the 0002 version.

 

You're one lucky SOB lol

 

Seagate 7200.3 200GB
Seagate 7200.4 500GB Firmware 0002SDM1


Folder Copy (4.69GB, ~13000files, file size mixed)
7200.3 3min 17sec
7200.4 3min 01sec

Folder 7-zip compression (4.69GB, ~13000files, file size mixed)
7200.3 5min 41sec
7200.4 5min 38sec

HD Tune

Minimum
7200.3 39.5MB/sec
7200.4 40.2MB/sec

Maximum
7200.3 80.4 MB/sec
7200.4 101.3 MB/sec

Average
7200.3 63.0 MB/sec
7200.4 78.5 MB/sec

Access Time
7200.3 16.8 ms
7200.4 17.7 ms

Burst Rate
7200.3 59.4 MB/sec
7200.4 58.8 MB/sec

CPU Usage
7200.3 11.5%
7200.4 13.6%

 

Interesting stuff Crazyswede.

Is that a Seagate 7200.2? I don't think a 200GB 7200.3 exists.

 

Should be 7200.3. Average 7200.2 200GB is 5X MB/Sec.

 

True but according to Seagate.com it does not exist.
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/laptops/momentus/momentus_7200.3/

 

Just opened up my laptop again to have a look....

Seagate

Momentus 7200.3 200GB

Capacity: 200GB
7200RPM
Firmware: DE14

Date: 09153

ST9200423ASG


Might just be a Dell exclusive version?

 

or perhaps typo in the label?

 

It's the 7200.3 but with more cowbell.

 

yes, you have a Dell Momentus, with Dell firmware. OEM, Dell.

 

So is are the new 7200.4 500GB drives gonna give the Scorpio Black 320s a run for their money real-world speed wise?

i'd like a 500 GB as my 2nd drive, but i need real-world speed (audio/video production) more then capacity.

 

You need a 512GB SDD.......

...affording it is another matter

I need a 256GB one... but still expensive. I would like to have 2x 256GB in RAID... but in the nearer future I will probably have my 500GB and a 128GB SDD. I really need a fast drive for my work

 

Hey guys, I am considering buying a seagate 7200.4 500GB as a second hard drive to put in my optical bay and was wondering what your general impression of it was. Ive read the last 15 or so pages but dont have the time to go through the other 120... A general summary of the conclusions youve made about the drive would be very much appreciated. Is it worth buying or should I look elsewhere?

 

There's some uncertainty as to how fast it really is. It does well in synthetic benchmarks that's for sure.

At the moment WD5000BEVT and Hitachi 5K500.b offer more value for money. Especially if you're not going to use it as your primary drive.

Can you perform the test while copy-pasting it onto the same drive?

 

I am doing that now, sorry for the delay, working in Iraq and we just got real busy for a bit