[nn8l]

Well, after doing some reading here I ordered the Antec MX-1 case and the Seagate-Barracuda 1TB Internal Serial ATA Hard Drive-ST310005N1A1AS-RK for my HR21. I put the drive in the case and booted the system up and everything looked good. I let it run for a few days recording stuff along the way. I read of some people having reformatting problems after a reboot, so I decided to try it myself. As my luck would have it everything was gone after the reboot. I removed the drive from the case and sure enough the jumper was set to 1.5Gbps. I removed the jumper and put the drive back in the case and hooked it up to the HR21. I recorded a couple of shows and rebooted. Everything looked good. No reformatting, recordings still there. That was Monday if I remember correctly. I did a couple more reboots just to make sure everything was good before the fall season starts. Well, tonight I came home and the picture was a bit jittery, so I decided to reboot the receiver. You guessed it, all of my recordings are gone.

Did I make the wrong choice in drives? Should I order a WD and just use the Seagate for another backup drive on my pc or could it possibly be a bad case?

 

[rmplatt]

Well, after doing some reading here I ordered the Antec MX-1 case and the Seagate-Barracuda 1TB Internal Serial ATA Hard Drive-ST310005N1A1AS-RK for my HR21. I put the drive in the case and booted the system up and everything looked good. I let it run for a few days recording stuff along the way. I read of some people having reformatting problems after a reboot, so I decided to try it myself. As my luck would have it everything was gone after the reboot. I removed the drive from the case and sure enough the jumper was set to 1.5Gbps. I removed the jumper and put the drive back in the case and hooked it up to the HR21. I recorded a couple of shows and rebooted. Everything looked good. No reformatting, recordings still there. That was Monday if I remember correctly. I did a couple more reboots just to make sure everything was good before the fall season starts. Well, tonight I came home and the picture was a bit jittery, so I decided to reboot the receiver. You guessed it, all of my recordings are gone.

Did I make the wrong choice in drives? Should I order a WD and just use the Seagate for another backup drive on my pc or could it possibly be a bad case?

yes

you are now the 4th person with the same config as I have. I assume that your dvr model is hr21-100. I say this because those are the ones that seem to dislike this particular seagate drive. I have a 1TB also, and think I'm going to have to swap out the drive for a different brand. Probably the WD (If and when I find a good deal) I got the seagate for $109 on a price mistake from Dell.

I ordered a new esata cable, and am going to try that first. I'm also going to try orienting the drive vertically. Seagate says those drives are made to be stable when used that way. I can't imagine it will make a difference, but right now, I'm grasping at straws.

 

[nn8l]

You and me both. I ordered the HR21, Antec case, and drive with what I was hoping was plenty of time to make sure all is well before the fall season. I think my wife has been pretty good about me reformatting her shows so far, but I'm not sure how long my luck will hold out. With football season coming I'm a little concerned about me too. I think I'm going to order a WD tomorrow.

 

[K4SMX]

FWIW, someone in another eSATA thread mentioned that there were some bad MX-1's out there recently. (I've got another new one that just came from the Frye's sale which I haven't checked out yet, so I hope that's not the case!) This is entirely "third stool down" rumor at this point, and I'm not sure how that could really be, since IIRC, the drive connects directly through the case with no intervening firmware/hardware like the FAP's.....

 

[t_h]

I saw something a few weeks ago about a rash of seagate drives built in one particular country that had some serious quality control problems...

Yep, its the ST31000340AS made in thailand. I've seen a few things that say there was a QA problem, and some other users reporting that the units were shipped with the wrong firmware. The bad firmware had to be patched by getting the code and a key from seagate and then attaching the drive to a desktop machines sata connection to reflash it.

Firmware SD04 from Singapore is supposed to be good. SD15 from Thailand isnt.

See newegg reviews, check all the 1-2-3 star comments.

Very unusual for seagate to have a problem like this. Their QA and quality are usually among the best.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148274

 

[Umbra_Vipera]

Yep, its the ST31000340AS made in thailand. I've seen a few things that say there was a QA problem, and some other users reporting that the units were shipped with the wrong firmware. The bad firmware had to be patched by getting the code and a key from seagate and then attaching the drive to a desktop machines sata connection to reflash it.

Firmware SD04 from Singapore is supposed to be good. SD15 from Thailand isnt.

BINGO! THANK YOU t_h!
That is exactly what I have. SD15 firmware and all! I guess I'll be calling Seagate.

UPDATE:
Well...I tried the online chat for support through Seagate and came up with nothing. They have to troubleshoot first before releasing the firmware. I'll be going home and running the diagnostics on the drive myself first and see what happens later tonight. I'm guessing if the drive passes the diagnostics they won't do anything about it.

 

[t_h]

Yeah, a lot of the people who reported the problem said that seagate made them jump through hoops before they'd give them the firmware.

If they wont do anything about it, tell them you want them to exchange it since it doesnt work for you.

If they wont do that unless the drive fails diagnostics, slap it on the table 10-12 times until it does.

 

[Umbra_Vipera]

Yeah, a lot of the people who reported the problem said that seagate made them jump through hoops before they'd give them the firmware.

If they wont do anything about it, tell them you want them to exchange it since it doesnt work for you.

If they wont do that unless the drive fails diagnostics, slap it on the table 10-12 times until it does.

Yea...their gonna make me jump through hoops alright...but I don't mind too much. It's just a PITA that if it's a documented issue, it shouldn't be that big of deal.

 

[t_h]

Well, I see a bunch of people with flaky and failing drives that say that the firmware solved the problem...I havent seen anything from seagate documenting it as a known issue. And I guess we probably wont. Manufacturers love to pretend that problems dont exist because then customers might want the product exchanged even if its not exhibiting problems.

 

[Umbra_Vipera]

What I meant by documented was that their help system is tracking this issue.

 

[rmplatt]

yes

you are now the 4th person with the same config as I have. I assume that your dvr model is hr21-100. I say this because those are the ones that seem to dislike this particular seagate drive. I have a 1TB also, and think I'm going to have to swap out the drive for a different brand. Probably the WD (If and when I find a good deal) I got the seagate for $109 on a price mistake from Dell.

I ordered a new esata cable, and am going to try that first. I'm also going to try orienting the drive vertically. Seagate says those drives are made to be stable when used that way. I can't imagine it will make a difference, but right now, I'm grasping at straws.

Okay, this seems too stupid to be true, but I didn't get past my first step. All I did was swap out the eSATA cable with one of higher quality, and the problems seem to have disappeared.

I can disconnect it and re connect it without the DVR reformatting and forcing me to lose my recordings, and all the freezing seems to have gone away, no choppy playback. I did have one instance of the US Open freezing, but it hasn't happened since. A far cry from the freezing multiple times per hour. And it may have been at the source for all I know.

The only other thing I did was to orient the drive vertically. I read on seagates web site that this drive has some kind of feature that makes it stable in vertical orientation. I highly doubt this made any difference whatsoever, but it's the only other thing I did, so I'm not changing it.

Good luck to the others who have been having problems with the MX-1 with the seagate drive in it.

 

[rmplatt]

Okay, this seems too stupid to be true, but I didn't get past my first step. All I did was swap out the eSATA cable with one of higher quality, and the problems seem to have disappeared.

I can disconnect it and re connect it without the DVR reformatting and forcing me to lose my recordings, and all the freezing seems to have gone away, no choppy playback. I did have one instance of the US Open freezing, but it hasn't happened since. A far cry from the freezing multiple times per hour. And it may have been at the source for all I know.

The only other thing I did was to orient the drive vertically. I read on seagates web site that this drive has some kind of feature that makes it stable in vertical orientation. I highly doubt this made any difference whatsoever, but it's the only other thing I did, so I'm not changing it.

Good luck to the others who have been having problems with the MX-1 with the seagate drive in it.

okay, well it worked for a day... and now it's barely working again. The cable doesn't seem to have done the trick after all. Will keep trying out different options.

 

[Starchy77]

okay, well it worked for a day... and now it's barely working again. The cable doesn't seem to have done the trick after all. Will keep trying out different options.

Too bad you already did this, I was going to try to save you some $! I have been using the esata cable that came with the MX-1 case for a little over a month now with no issues at all.... I highly doubt it is a cable problem if you are using the one supplied by Antec.