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    Seagate firmware (momentus)

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by dashboardy101, Jan 13, 2007.

  1. dashboardy101

    dashboardy101 Notebook Geek

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    I have a Seagate momentus 5400.2 notebook (st98823as) with the new S96J notebook I just bought. It runs quite well, but I have just one problem. Running HD-Tune 2.52 I clicked on the info tab. The firmware version was 3.03 (with firmware upgradeable). What bothered me (only a little) was the fact that it said:
    Supported: UDMA Mode 6 (Ultra ATA/133)
    Active: UDMA Mode 5 (Ultra ATA/100)

    Which basically means it's not running as a SATA hard drive; it is running with transfer rate of a PATA. a quick google search showed that there is at least a 3.06 firmware version (with same model number) and that for those people it was UDMA Mode 6 that was active. It is not a big deal but I searched for firmware upgrades from seagate and coudln't find anything.

    I am running bios 1104 on my S96J and I am curious if it is possible to somehow enable UDMA Mode 6. I can't through bios. Anybody else have this problem?
     
    dashboardy101, Jan 13, 2007
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  2. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    If it is any consolation, HD Tune says, for my Samsung HM160JI (160GB SATA) in Samsung NP-X60plus computer:

    Supported: UDMA Mode 7 (Ultra ATA/512)
    Active: UDMA Mode 5 (Ultra ATA/100)

    The HDD chart results at Toms Hardware http://tomshardware.co.uk/storage/charts25.html show higher maximum transfer rates (measured using h2benchw) than I have ever seen using HD Tune. So the problem could lie with either HD Tune or the cardware at the computer end of the interface.

    Comfort yourself that the extra speed which you may not be getting will only apply for such data that your computer wants which is already sitting in the HDD cache. Anything else will have to be read off the disc, where the transfer rate is between 20 and 40 MB/s depending on the data position on the disc.

    John
     
    John Ratsey, Jan 14, 2007
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