I've been checking around and some people have claimed Seatools is not
compatible with NTFS. Sounds surprising but I am beginning to think
this might be a possibility.

MD5SUM: f971b113c404e85ae1fe314b6a3c9ab4 c:\SEATOOLD_EN.ISO

Can someone use this tool and scan some of their hard drives with NTFS?
If I'm right, it should report file structure errors.

The online version did not report errors on one of my drives, while the
..iso version did.

On 24 Mar 2006 04:15:24 -0800, "AN O'Nymous"
<a_n_onymous80@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Yeah I posted that here about errors I was having. I was having all
kinds of problems with RAID 0 and my nforce4 ultra which is RMAd right
now and hopefully winging its way back to me any day now.

I kept changing things and checking things and thinking I got them OK
then I used Seagate tools and getting File Structure errors on various
hard disks which drove me nuts. I kept reformatting etc until I gave
up and emailed them and they said dont use it with NTFS that it was
written for the old WIN.

JohnS@Smith.com wrote:
Thanks. Now I don't know what to think about my new Seagate 300GB hard
disk. It started squeaking/beeping, became very slow and Windows
reported being unable to read from the boot sector. Putting it in the
freezer cured the problems, after a reformat there are only file
structure errors (with the Seatool iso, not the online scan).

Should I RMA the drive anyway? If I do, and the freezing "fixed" the
drive, they will find no errors, post it back to me and waste my effort.

On 24 Mar 2006 11:52:28 -0800, "AN O'Nymous"
<a_n_onymous80@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

If a HD squealed and beeped and I had to put it in the freezer, I
definitely would have sent it back.

The only thing that would prevent from doing it is if I suspected
something else caused it.

One thing --- Seagates have a 5 year warranty so you can send it back
anytime of you want to risk keeping it and have no cirtical data on it
..

Seagates have had boosters saying they were the best HDs but there
were strings of devastating reviews at Amazon talking about how their
400-500 and I think some 300 gig external HDs all crashed and burned
catastrophically after using them a short while. There seemed to be
some problem with the external cases or drives. This touched off some
rumors that the new series werent as good. They were mostly large
drives though 400-500 i think the sizes were. Not as many 300s I
think. Theyve probably fixed it by now or you would see universal
bashing of seagates by now.

Another thing --- I had a WD brand new 200 gig that started clicking
and freezing and crashing and wouldnt boot up. I had to try 3-4 times
to boot up. Those are classic signs of HD failure. I was ready to pack
it up but later had even more problems and traced it back to a bad
stick of memory that was corrupting WIN etc After I swapped that stick
out for a new one Kingston sent me and I low level formatted the WD
havent had any problems since then which was about 6-7 months ago.

After that unfortunately Ive had other problems which I blamed on a
Seagate etc but it tuned out to be my motherboard which is why I RMAd
it and had all kinds of weird problems . That was the reason I used
seagate tools. My nforce4 chip I think was overheating I think and
corrupting data etc .

Im using my nforce3 system now and have no problems until I get my
RMAd board back hopefully any day now.

You arent using a nforce4 board are you?

Hi John,

JohnS@Smith.com wrote:

Yup, I'm hoping the full sector scan will turn up some errors too, so
at least I have a valid current reason for returning it.

Yes, Kony and I have been thinking along the lines of a dodgy PSU or
overheating motherboard.

Yeah, I thought about that. The thing is that if there is something
wrong with it, and I take my time in "finding it again", I would:
1) Not want to put any important data on the drive in the meantime
(sort of like buying half a hard disk),
2) Might lose some non-essential data (a pain, mostly);
3) Take time out of testing the replacement drive. If this drive conks
out in 4 years time, I've only got 1 year to test the replacement.


Hmm, interesting! One would have thought a physical problem like HD
sounds would not be related to bad parts elsewhere on the computer.

No. Abit NF7 is an nforce2 one.

Thanks for your input.