Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

i5 iMac 1tb quiet but SMART utility shows it failing! Anybody else tried this?

R

Roy43

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 18, 2009
19
0
My drive is the Seagate ST31000528ASQ 1TB. It has made little noise. I only hear it at startup and it is not loud, more than acceptable. Thought I was a lucky one! NOW, having said that, I looked for a drive utility. I downloaded the trial version of Smartutility from: http://www.volitans-software.com/index.php
I run a test and it shows my HD failing!
Best I can tell is that the temp on line 190 has ran high as it is redlined 58C with a threshold of 45. As I write, it shows current temp of 43C. Under type heading there are lines marked pre-fail on spin up time, reallocated sector count, seek error rate, spin retry count. All others under type are tagged old age. Believe this also shows this hd has 25 hours on it, I have not ran it that long. Looking for comparisons folks. Could heat be causing our problems??? I have been a life long WD user with zero failures. I dropped one one time on a concrete floor and it still worked after than with just a couple bad sectors, my fault. First computers at work years ago had Seagate drives, they did not last.

I have i5 4850 27". All is working, but now I am miffed about my first Mac!
Has anyone else tried this utility and if so, how about results? I suppose I will pack it up and call for shipping papers dang it!.

Any input appreciated.
 
Roy43 said:
My drive is the Seagate ST31000528ASQ 1TB. It has made little noise. I only hear it at startup and it is not loud, more than acceptable. Thought I was a lucky one! NOW, having said that, I looked for a drive utility. I downloaded the trial version of Smartutility from: http://www.volitans-software.com/index.php
I run a test and it shows my HD failing!
Best I can tell is that the temp on line 190 has ran high as it is redlined 58C with a threshold of 45. As I write, it shows current temp of 43C. Under type heading there are lines marked pre-fail on spin up time, reallocated sector count, seek error rate, spin retry count. All others under type are tagged old age. Believe this also shows this hd has 25 hours on it, I have not ran it that long. Looking for comparisons folks. Could heat be causing our problems??? I have been a life long WD user with zero failures. I dropped one one time on a concrete floor and it still worked after than with just a couple bad sectors, my fault. First computers at work years ago had Seagate drives, they did not last.

I have i5 4850 27". All is working, but now I am miffed about my first Mac!
Has anyone else tried this utility and if so, how about results? I suppose I will pack it up and call for shipping papers dang it!.

Any input appreciated.
Click to expand...

I had my first 27" 2.8 QC i7 after 5 days begin to hunt, slow down and had lots of beach balls. I opened Disk Utility and my HD was in RED with a note that drive could not be repaired, back up the system and call Apple. The S.M.A.R.T. on the bottom indicated Failing in RED.

I called Apple and they said the drive was bad and I needed a replacement but they said they would send me a new machine. Ordered 11/19 and expect it next week sometime. They wanted my unit for the engineers to take a look at.

Looks like you will be tracking flights from Shanghai. Support for the return has been excellent. Melissa is my rep and has followed up and kept me informed by email and phone.
 
More than likely, that app was just trying to scare you into purchasing it. Seagate has always been better than WD. WD is always the first to reach new capacities and first to fail worse than ever before.
 
Same here!

My 21.5 arrived today (loooooove it), and I just downloaded the software and got the same result on my hdd - fail. I find it hard to believe that there is really any merit here. I hope not! Can others try and report your findings here?
 
This utility has just failed by Seagate 1TB Drive.....it might be grumble and groan and drive me up the wall but I can't imagine it's failing.
 
SnowLeopard2008 said:
More than likely, that app was just trying to scare you into purchasing it. Seagate has always been better than WD. WD is always the first to reach new capacities and first to fail worse than ever before.
Click to expand...

Actually no, Seagate has far worse reliability and makes an inferior product. Western Digital makes the top drives out there.

How quickly you forget the firmware issues with failing Seagate Barracudas, the Seagate issues in the MacBook Pros, and the bad batch of Seagate drives in the new iMacs. EVERY single HD failure we have had come into our store has a Seagate in it.
 
NevadaJack said:
Have you tried the Apple Disk Utility?
Click to expand...

Just tried it but there dont seem to be much to it. It sez it is OK. Guess it dont care how hot it got inside this nearly ventless case. SATA drives need to be cooled. I mounted a fan on the one in my PC, of course it is a 10K rpm drive where as this one is 7.2k and probably a low end drive to boot.
 
It sounds like that third party utility does not properly interpret the SMART statistics from that model drive, or that model computer. If Disk Utility does not list the drive in big bright red as "FAILING," don't panic.

As to which brands of drives tend to fail, that's every drive:
—IBM/Hitachi's Deskstar ("Deathstar") line of hard drives.
—Seagate: the first and third MacBooks had Seagate Momentus hard drives. Every one of them will fail catastrophically to the point that a data recovery firm can't get your files back.
—Western Digital: some say that WD stands for "Worst Drive." Some WDs in certain iMacs tend to fail "prematurely" with the same pattern.

Every drive will fail. Back up your stuff. Buy two of the cheapest hard drive and back up with the second one, rather than one relatively expensive drive.
 
NevadaJack said:
I had my first 27" 2.8 QC i7 after 5 days begin to hunt, slow down and had lots of beach balls. I opened Disk Utility and my HD was in RED with a note that drive could not be repaired, back up the system and call Apple. The S.M.A.R.T. on the bottom indicated Failing in RED.

I called Apple and they said the drive was bad and I needed a replacement but they said they would send me a new machine. Ordered 11/19 and expect it next week sometime. They wanted my unit for the engineers to take a look at.

Looks like you will be tracking flights from Shanghai. Support for the return has been excellent. Melissa is my rep and has followed up and kept me informed by email and phone.
Click to expand...

If a computer dies within 10 days of purchase, it's status automatically becomes Dead on Arrival and Apple is required to (or they want to themselves, technicians cost a lot of money) send you a new computer instead of fixing the current one. :)

And that's why I run all the tests I can immidiately after the computer is delivered, just to check that everything is allright before I start using it.
 
Roy43 said:
My drive is the Seagate ST31000528ASQ 1TB. It has made little noise. I only hear it at startup and it is not loud, more than acceptable. Thought I was a lucky one! NOW, having said that, I looked for a drive utility. I downloaded the trial version of Smartutility from: http://www.volitans-software.com/index.php
I run a test and it shows my HD failing!
Best I can tell is that the temp on line 190 has ran high as it is redlined 58C with a threshold of 45. As I write, it shows current temp of 43C. Under type heading there are lines marked pre-fail on spin up time, reallocated sector count, seek error rate, spin retry count. All others under type are tagged old age. Believe this also shows this hd has 25 hours on it, I have not ran it that long. Looking for comparisons folks. Could heat be causing our problems??? I have been a life long WD user with zero failures. I dropped one one time on a concrete floor and it still worked after than with just a couple bad sectors, my fault. First computers at work years ago had Seagate drives, they did not last.

I have i5 4850 27". All is working, but now I am miffed about my first Mac!
Has anyone else tried this utility and if so, how about results? I suppose I will pack it up and call for shipping papers dang it!.

Any input appreciated.
Click to expand...
Update, as of today my iMac is still running well. HD is as quiet as most any i have owned. Still shows same results with the test program. I am sure it has to do with the high heat which is below the max allowed in specs. I am just going to go with what I have unless something gives me trouble. Thankfully I did not have the broke glass or screen problems as many others did. It did flicker a time or two when it was first cranked up, but now since. Still would like to know what others got as a result of this test. Maybe they all give the same results.
i just read where Seagate drives dont support the 190, so I suppose we should ignore it. Seagate has a utility pgm for their drives, but not for a Mac! Dumb, still prefer WD drives.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back