I purchased a new 200 gig seagate HD about 4 months ago, I just started to get a S.M.A.R.T. error message during the bios telling me to backup and replace the hard drive. I went into the bios and disabled smart. What should I do about this?

I'd backup and replace the drive.

SMART isn't exactly the most accurate of monitoring systems, but if it thinks there's something wrong with the drive I wouldn't be risking it. Try runningand see what it says there (assuming the drive is hda, or course).

Dave

Thanks for that info. It says hard drive failure immenent in 24 hours and it shows an error "spin_retry_error failing now"

Then this,

Error 1 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 1 hours (0 days + 1 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.

After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
and then some other error...

I knew I should have bought a WD, I will never buy another seagate. This sucks
Another thing, I just checked the seagate warranty page. They dont replace the drive with a new one, they give you a factory repaired used one. Great, I send them a defective drive and they are going to send me a used one?
That really sucks!

I had a seagate that went bad on me... just started throwing massive amounts of read and write errors... bad enough that my system was barely usable. I finally got as much of my data off it as I could. Although I couldn't get it all and didn't have a good backup plan at the time -- which has changed now for sure.

I went through the pain in the butt procedure to replace it and dealt with their 'anti-everything but MS' nonsense when trying to fill out the RMA. You'd better believe they got a nice email about how that process alone made me reconsider ever buying from them again.

And after all was said and done... they send me a drive which started throwing write timeout within a couple days of installation. Never again will I buy Seagate. I really need to buy a few drives in the upcoming days (come to think of it).

The warranty is in effect until 2011 but I dont really want another seagate, especially a used one

I am just going to buy a WD and leave this as a learning experience. Note to self, Do not buy a SEAGATE along with........

Viewsonic LCD tv`s(There is a 30 second delay until the remote works after turning on the TV)

LG electronics DVD players(horrible picture and skips, unlike my cheapie $79 JVC that was half the price and the led stays on when it is off, but goes off when you turn it on)

Kodak Easyshare digital cameras (Have to replace the batteries every 3 times I use it)

Radio Shack cordless phones (sometimes does not dial after inputting number)

Radio Shack answering machines (2 different models would not turn off)

VTech cordless phones 2.4 gightz (after 10 minutes of talking there is a loud scratching interference noise and connection is lost, happend so many times I would hang up and call back before it started)

This is very strange. You people here are all very angry at Seagate, while another place I go to on the internet is highly pro-seagate but anti-maxtor.

Myself, I have two Maxtors (one 80GB, and one 120GB). The smaller one I've had since July 2003, and the larger one since September 2005. I have not had any problems with them.

I was not pro or con seagate until I had this negative experience. It could be a lemon but non the less, Theyre return policy is horrible, replace a new drive with a used refubished one, that is crap.

I'm not really anti-Seagate... although their IDE drives are terrible. I think some of their drives are okay and I just got a lemon. The reason I won't buy again is because of their RMA process and the fact that they'll replace a dud drive with another dud drive and not care until it starts failing again and you're losing data.

Honestly to complete the RMA process I had to jump between two different computers (in two different rooms) half a dozen times because their process kept failing out because my machine was not what they wanted. Worst of all, when I later replaced all identifying information from the browser with lies, the process went just fine. They don't use anything which requires IE so they sure as heck shouldn't test for it and refuse to continue without it. And then I had to pay shipping for them to send me another dying drive. No thanks, I don't need the hassle.

You got a bad Seagate, sorry about your luck, it happens. I have several and have never had a problem. It seems to me ridiculous that you intend to eat the cost of the drive just out of spite. It's under warranty, get your new drive and use it elsewhere, even if you do get a WD...Seagate has a very good reputation as far as HDDs go, you just got a bad one, they don't offer 5 year warranties because they like throwing away their money, they do it because they build a great product that lasts for a while and they stand behind it. That said, WD is very good too.

Whatever, your money.

All manufacturers are the same you get refurbished drive with the remainder of the warranty for the original drive in effect. That said I was rather pissed myself when Western Digital replaced a less than two month dead drive with a refurbished one...

Hi all.

Bear in mind that the only time you'll ever hear from a consumer of a particular brand, is when a device has failed; so polling forums, and the Intarweb in gereral, will generally result in scare stories.

I use a combination of Seagate, Hitachi and Maxtor drives on my systems, and I've never seen any failures beyond what I would expect from several years of desktop computing. I would suggest (IBM deathstar drives excluded) that if you keep getting dodgy drives / devices, it's more likely to be rubbish shipping than drive construction/design which is at fault.

Just a thought...

Dave

The new Seagates can tolerate shocks of 350 Gs when off and an incredible 63 Gs while operating. Unless it was shipped via a plane that crashed... you just got a rare lemon.

I do prefer Maxtor's "no quibble" RMA policy though.

had many hard drives from lots of different manufacturer. I had an IBM it was great for about 2 years then one day it just stopped working no warning just bang no more worky.

I will never buy another maxtor hdd. In my experience they seems to break alot more so if you seem to be copying large amounts of data. i had 5 and everyone broke within a week.
although on the other hand i have another maxtor that use for testing purposes that is fine.

Never been anything but pleased with seagate or western digital, they are the only drives i buy now. i have an old western digital drive that is about 10 years old and it still going strong. The only WD drive i had that died was my fault it was in a caddy which i tripped the power cable and it fell of the worktop while it was transfering a lot of data even then it still managed to get all the data across all be it with a lot of worrying noises

Someone already mentioned that refurb replacements are really standard for this type of product. The only thing I would add is that I know often times companies will state this but you may well get a new unit. Depending on their repair yield from returned drives (not all make it through the process for various reasons) and the cost of building a new one, companies will often write down new product into their repair pool. This is especially common when products are either very new (haven't ramped up the repair process yet) or towards the end of life (when it is no longer worth keeping a repair process running).

Like another poster said its your money, but I personally wouldn't give up without giving them a chance. Also, I would say since the errors were picked up by BIOS any questions about OS, etc should be moot. I say, send it back and then just keep an eye on the new drive. It sounds like your mobo is already on the lookout for problems, so that is a good thing.

Hmm.. funny. I trust Seagate more than WD and Maxtor now. I've never liked WD, seen way too many failures. Maxtor was good up until a few years ago, never had any problems and then saw half of my pile of Maxtor's go bad all in what seemed in a 6 month period, never buy either again. Seagate has never failed me nor has Hitachie/Deskstar HDD's.