Mac pro problem with Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001-1er166

[doobydoooby]

Hi all,

I own a mac pro 3.1 running OS X 10.11.3 with 4 drive bays and already am using a Seagate ST3000DM001-1CH166 in one of the bays without any problems at all. Last week i bought two new drives which are basically the same drive and 3tb capacity but they have a slightly different part number : the two new ones i bought have pn: ST3000DM001- 1ER166-501.

These two drives are not playing well at all in the mac pro. The problem isnt helped because in 10.11 disk utility has been so badly dumbed down but on one drive i am unable to unmount, format to either hfs+ or fat and then mount at all, disk utility fails, and the other I can format to hfs+ but the drive is incredibly slow and seems unstable. The computer will not open quickly with it installed as if it is having great difficulty to be read and hangs on startup for a few seconds as finder tries to work out what is going on. Write speeds on that drive are in the order of 1 minute for 100mb of files, very slow indeed.

I am guessing that there may be a problem with the firmware of the newer drives being incompatible with the mac since it is so hard for me to mount and format the drives, and since the other similar drive works fine. Has anyone had a similar experience or have any good ideas?

All contributions gratefully received!

 

[pastrychef]

Return the drive. Sounds like the drive is DOA.

 

[AidenShaw]

Hi all,

I own a mac pro 3.1 running OS X 10.11.3 with 4 drive bays and already am using a Seagate ST3000DM001-1CH166 in one of the bays without any problems at all. Last week i bought two new drives which are basically the same drive and 3tb capacity but they have a slightly different part number : the two new ones i bought have pn: ST3000DM001- 1ER166-501.

These two drives are not playing well at all in the mac pro. The problem isnt helped because in 10.11 disk utility has been so badly dumbed down but on one drive i am unable to unmount, format to either hfs+ or fat and then mount at all, disk utility fails, and the other I can format to hfs+ but the drive is incredibly slow and seems unstable. The computer will not open quickly with it installed as if it is having great difficulty to be read and hangs on startup for a few seconds as finder tries to work out what is going on. Write speeds on that drive are in the order of 1 minute for 100mb of files, very slow indeed.

I am guessing that there may be a problem with the firmware of the newer drives being incompatible with the mac since it is so hard for me to mount and format the drives, and since the other similar drive works fine. Has anyone had a similar experience or have any good ideas?

All contributions gratefully received!

Boot from a Linux LiveCD or Hiren's BootCD and check the drive from a completely different environment.

 

[haralds]

Hi all,

I own a mac pro 3.1 running OS X 10.11.3 with 4 drive bays and already am using a Seagate ST3000DM001-1CH166 in one of the bays without any problems at all. Last week i bought two new drives which are basically the same drive and 3tb capacity but they have a slightly different part number : the two new ones i bought have pn: ST3000DM001- 1ER166-501.

These two drives are not playing well at all in the mac pro. The problem isnt helped because in 10.11 disk utility has been so badly dumbed down but on one drive i am unable to unmount, format to either hfs+ or fat and then mount at all, disk utility fails, and the other I can format to hfs+ but the drive is incredibly slow and seems unstable. The computer will not open quickly with it installed as if it is having great difficulty to be read and hangs on startup for a few seconds as finder tries to work out what is going on. Write speeds on that drive are in the order of 1 minute for 100mb of files, very slow indeed.

I am guessing that there may be a problem with the firmware of the newer drives being incompatible with the mac since it is so hard for me to mount and format the drives, and since the other similar drive works fine. Has anyone had a similar experience or have any good ideas?

All contributions gratefully received!

I have had terrible luck with Seagate and banned permanent use of their drive on my system. After getting replacements I power them up on a dock for backups and then let them rest.

On my 8 Macs in the house, almost all have had some sort of Seagate failure. The Pros all have multiple drives. My main Mac Pro has 3 4TB and on 6TB (now all WD) plus 4 SSD on an internal bracket for an additional 3TB of system drives (El Cap, Windows 10 and 7, and one for VMWare volumes.) With this many drives I expect and occasional failure. But the ones failing without relationship to age and use are ALL Seagate.

I had a 4TB SSHD as my SSD system mirror (with overflow content linked via symbolic links) that died without any warning. I replaced it with a WD 6TB NAS drive. Same with my iTunes Media volume that occasionally "disappeared" without warning until reboot. I use a double backup strategy of TimeMachine and weekly CarbonCopy. The whole thing is just a time consuming PITA...

You can use System Report>Storage to check the SMART status.

 

[AidenShaw]

I have had terrible luck with Seagate and banned permanent use of their drive on my system.

That's funny, because I've banned WD from my house and office.

Every drive maker has occasional lemons (and sometimes even good drives have production runs with issues - most are superb, but the 3TB drives from the Malaysian factory between Feb and Apr of 2014 are crap).

If you base your opinions on a small sample of drives, and your sample includes some lemons, you'll come up with a different perception from people looking at a larger population. (And don't quote the BackBlaze report - they run drives under loads that the manufacturer says that the drives are not designed to run. ...and they did get a lot of a particular (and long out of production) Seagate 3TB drive that was citrus-flavored.)

 

[drasl]

The 3TB Seagate seems to be a very troubled drive to say the least

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/222267-seagate-faces-lawsuit-over-3tb-hard-drive-failure-rates

 

[haralds]

That's funny, because I've banned WD from my house and office.

Every drive maker has occasional lemons (and sometimes even good drives have production runs with issues - most are superb, but the 3TB drives from the Malaysian factory between Feb and Apr of 2014 are crap).

If you base your opinions on a small sample of drives, and your sample includes some lemons, you'll come up with a different perception from people looking at a larger population. (And don't quote the BackBlaze report - they run drives under loads that the manufacturer says that the drives are not designed to run. ...and they did get a lot of a particular (and long out of production) Seagate 3TB drive that was citrus-flavored.)

BackBlze reports.

Correct. I read the BackBlase reports. It depends on the model. But my sample size of some 40 drives over that last 5 years had a lot of Seagate failures.

 

[AidenShaw]

The 3TB Seagate seems to be a very troubled drive to say the least

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/222267-seagate-faces-lawsuit-over-3tb-hard-drive-failure-rates

Yes, the ST3000DM001 3TB drives from four years ago had a lot of issues, particularly when Backblaze took desktop drives and ran them in datacenter servers.

This has no relevance to today's Seagate STBD3000100 3TB drives, especially if they are used in the desktops that they are designed for.

By the way, one service that Backblaze offers is to send you your data on a USB drive - just in case recovering hundreds of GB over your dialup modem would be an issue.

Yep. On a Seagate drive.

BackBlze reports.

Correct. I read the BackBlase reports. It depends on the model. But my sample size of some 40 drives over that last 5 years had a lot of Seagate failures.

I have servers with more than 40 Seagates per server, and no failures. (All enterprise Savvio SAS drives, not desktop SATA drives.)

If you go back five years - a good chance that you might have some of the ST3000DM001 lemons in your sample. (I had six of those, and Seagate replaced them with six ST3000DM003 drives that have been fine.)