Hi all,
Recently needed to upgrade the external drive, so went for a Seagate 14TB. A new issue since this drive; in every video there will be a random moment where for a count of say 6-7 seconds the audio stutters badly, then returns to normal. the stuttering is a kind of rhythm where you can count the 6-7 reliably every time then it stops.
Before I try the pain of customer support for the drive, or just replace it, can anyone comment on a similar experience they may have had?
In a way I hope it would be a Vero4K setting issue, but it never did this with the old drive.
I have also thought of a large capacity SSD drive, but they don’t seem to be available in large enough capacities. IMHO that expense shouldn’t be necessary anyway.
Thanks.
How are you powering the drive?
using a separate mains socket
Just came off Seagate support chat - couldn’t take it any more, lol
So, what did you get when you spoke to seagate support?
If the hdd is failing, you should be able to hear it spinning up/ clicking
How’s the drive formatted?
There’s no real HDD sound just light flashing (as it almost always does) and the on screen stutter
usual asking about everything else other than the actual issue
Well to avoid looking at the wrong issue here does this also happen if you play the file directly from the Vero emmc or a USB stick?
I would plug this drive into a PC and using the manufactures tools I would run a long self test. This would do two things for you. The first is provide some assurance that there isn’t something exceptionally wrong with the drive. The test isn’t full proof, but if it fails that then you know the drive really is bad. The other thing it does is with modern spinning rust the platters are not scanned/tested at the factory but rather the first time or two they are read and/or written to. When this happens the drive will run across sections of the drive it decides to map around which may also require moving other adjacent data which will involve pauses in external data transfer while this happens. If the drive is SMR these pauses will be even longer.
I’m assuming the exact drive you have is the Seagate 14TB Expansion Desktop Hard Drive.
Did you acquire this from a local Costco?
I ask because they just recently got these and they sell them for $150 which is a great deal and Costco has a great return policy as well.
The first thing you should do is make sure you have back up copies of everything you have on the 14TB drive.
Then do as @darwindesign suggests and test the drive.
Seagate has their own tool to do this for free called SeaTools which you can get here: SeaTools | Support Seagate US
Of course there are other tools out there but if the drive fails the tool the manufacturer provides then that’s all you need to know to make the decision to return it.
And if you got it from Costco then that will be an easy and smooth process.
Moving forward, I highly recommend testing every drive you purchase before putting it into use.
Especially with drives being the sizes they are these days.
Backing up 14TB can be a major chore!
After opening your new drive, run a SMART short and a SMART long test at bare minimum.
Some people do full destructive write surface tests but that would likely take two days, if not longer, to perform on a 14TB drive and that’s just overkill in my opinion.
If you get a new drive and it fails a SMART short or long test right out the box then you just saved yourself a lot of time and headache by knowing right away and returning it.
EDIT: Added more clarified for my “full surface test” statement.
1 Like
FYI a SMART long DST is a full surface scan. And yes, they take days on these larger drives. When you kick that off before use it also has the benefit of getting the surface defect map out of the way so you get less pauses initially when you put it into use. Additionally letting it run a full scan essentially stress tests it and gets you past most of that initial failure curve.
You’re correct, I worded it poorly.
When I said “full surface tests” I meant like a “badblocks -wvsb 4096 /dev/sda” test and then reading SMART afterwards which has been an increasingly common practice these days.
2 Likes