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Warmish? Seagate Expansion 5TB ext hdd 150 @ newegg

You forgot the $20 promo code. (expires 11:59pm PT on 1/8/2015)

EMCAKAV23
 
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Really tempted by this but the one year warranty. Newegg reviews seem pretty positive otherwise, and clean install-none of the junk Western Digital installs/requires, especially WD's phantom CD drive.
 
I've been looking at them because externals are much cheaper than internals, but reviews like these scare me:

"Because of the terrible overall performance and consistency of data transfers in the external enclosure, I decided to pull the drive out and use it internally.

Obviously, as others have stated, that does not work. This drive has a crippled CC41 firmware that has an APM value of 64 (250 or higher is ideal for performance) causing constant head parking and spindown, both wearing out the drive. Since it has a 1 year warranty, I think this, in addition to the non-existent cooling of the enclosure, is obviously intentional on Seagate's part.

The firmware is also apparently crippled to not run AHCI in an again obvious attempt to prevent people from getting the "cheaper" external USB drives that carry a weak warranty, in order to push them toward more expensive internal retail drives."

Does anybody know if this is still true for Seagate?
 
Not sure, I've bought 4 of their 3TB externals in the last couple years and immediately pulled them out and used them internally with no issues.

They are running CC96 and CC49
 
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fleshconsumed said:
I've been looking at them because externals are much cheaper than internals, but reviews like these scare me:

"Because of the terrible overall performance and consistency of data transfers in the external enclosure, I decided to pull the drive out and use it internally.

Obviously, as others have stated, that does not work. This drive has a crippled CC41 firmware that has an APM value of 64 (250 or higher is ideal for performance) causing constant head parking and spindown, both wearing out the drive. Since it has a 1 year warranty, I think this, in addition to the non-existent cooling of the enclosure, is obviously intentional on Seagate's part.

The firmware is also apparently crippled to not run AHCI in an again obvious attempt to prevent people from getting the "cheaper" external USB drives that carry a weak warranty, in order to push them toward more expensive internal retail drives."

Does anybody know if this is still true for Seagate?
Click to expand...

I actually wrote that review (Timmmay) and there are threads here on AT about it. I got in legal trouble with Seagate and they sent me a cease and desist citing the digital millennium copyright act when I started detailing on various forums ways to bypass/modify the firmware AHCI restrictions that prevent "shucking" into a PC.

So yes, all 1GB/platter external drives, as far as I know, are un-shuckable.

You can thank BackBlaze for having a HUGE role in turning the hard drive industry upside-down on external storage design. During the hard disk crisis of 2011 (Thailand) they broke all sorts of laws and store policies on purchasing, bulk buying, and so on (we're talking thousands of drives they bought at bottom dollar, wiping out inventories nationwide during a consumer supply crisis) that the hard disk industry responded two ways: Seagate modified their firmware to only receive IDE commands and "detect' when it isn't attached to the exact USB-SATA bridge chip they use on their external enclosures, and WD, who went a step further and actually uses a DIFFERENT PCB on their external drives.

Anyway, long story short, the 5TB drives are a great price for the space, and the enclosure is ok, but the PSU makes a buzzing noise when the drive is in standby (it stops spinning after idle for a few minutes) and obviously you can't "shuck" them.
 
ImpulsE69 said:
Not sure, I've bought 4 of their 3TB externals in the last couple years and immediately pulled them out and used them internally with no issues.

They are running CC96 and CC49
Click to expand...

I believe 4TB and less drives are "safe", or at least they were when I bought mine about a year ago. I've only seen reports about 5 and 6TB externals that are crippled. The 4TB and less green DM drives still park heads like crazy, but at least they still support AHCI and they do not spin down when used internally.



Samus said:
I actually wrote that review (Timmmay) and there are threads here on AT about it. I got in legal trouble with Seagate and they sent me a cease and desist citing the digital millennium copyright act when I started detailing on various forums ways to bypass/modify the firmware AHCI restrictions that prevent "shucking" into a PC.
Click to expand...

Wow, using DMCA to shut you up is effed up... Like everybody else my primary interest is shucking these drives to use internally. I'd hate to pay extra for "true" internal version.
 
fleshconsumed said:
I've been looking at them because externals are much cheaper than internals, but reviews like these scare me:

"Because of the terrible overall performance and consistency of data transfers in the external enclosure, I decided to pull the drive out and use it internally.

Obviously, as others have stated, that does not work. This drive has a crippled CC41 firmware that has an APM value of 64 (250 or higher is ideal for performance) causing constant head parking and spindown, both wearing out the drive. Since it has a 1 year warranty, I think this, in addition to the non-existent cooling of the enclosure, is obviously intentional on Seagate's part.

The firmware is also apparently crippled to not run AHCI in an again obvious attempt to prevent people from getting the "cheaper" external USB drives that carry a weak warranty, in order to push them toward more expensive internal retail drives."

Does anybody know if this is still true for Seagate?
Click to expand...


Just received this drive today mine has the CC44 firmware. Pulled it and installed it. No problems whatsoever. Read/write speeds are fine.
 
In regards to this deal. Newegg bumped their price up $10..
Currently $159 & the promo code listed above is expired. BUT
They do have a 15% off promo code currently
RMNEXSV15 Expires 1/15
Grand Total: $135.99
Amazon has price matched them.

Does anyone have a link to a legit review of this Drive? Model # STBV5000100
 
I was thinking about getting one to store all my media content music,movie's,family pics and video, and some XBone games. But 5 TB'S wow just wow?? Gotta wonder how long these things last and I bet heat comes into play here with the platters being so big. Although I do have a 2TB external drive and in a years time I have only managed to fill up about 600GB's and its still live and kicking "knock on wood".I dont know how anyone could fill up an entire 5TB that just seems mind boggling to me.
Anyways any of you guys actually get one?? How are they working for you and how is the search and transfer times??
 
truckerCLOCK said:
Just received this drive today mine has the CC44 firmware. Pulled it and installed it. No problems whatsoever. Read/write speeds are fine.
Click to expand...

Are you saying you received a 5TB external with CC44 firmware, not CC41 firmware?

That's interesting. Because CC44 is a 3Gbps (SATA2) firmware that's literally been around since the 1TB (333GB/platter) drives. I can't wrap my head around Seagate tweaking this firmware for 1TB/platter drives and keeping the same version like GM revised ignition switches without changing the model number...

truckerCLOCK, for the sake of not spreading false information, I want it to be clear to the forum members that it is impossible you have a 5TB drive running CC44.

You must be talking about a 3TB\4TB external drive. Any drive running CC44/CC45 can be shucked (the firmware isn't crippled) and hope that you get the CC45 because it has less aggressive APM and a 6Gbps controller. These are all 800GB/platter drives labeled Barracuda XT. CC44 drives you install internally should have "HDparm" pass it a command value of 250 or higher to prevent the drive from parking itself to death.
 
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Samus said:
Are you saying you received a 5TB external with CC44 firmware, not CC41 firmware?

That's interesting. Because CC44 is a 3Gbps (SATA2) firmware that's literally been around since the 1TB (333GB/platter) drives. I can't wrap my head around Seagate tweaking this firmware for 1TB/platter drives and keeping the same version like GM revised ignition switches without changing the model number...

truckerCLOCK, for the sake of not spreading false information, I want it to be clear to the forum members that it is impossible you have a 5TB drive running CC44.

You must be talking about a 3TB\4TB external drive. Any drive running CC44/CC45 can be shucked (the firmware isn't crippled) and hope that you get the CC45 because it has less aggressive APM and a 6Gbps controller. These are all 800GB/platter drives labeled Barracuda XT. CC44 drives you install internally should have "HDparm" pass it a command value of 250 or higher to prevent the drive from parking itself to death.
Click to expand...


Here is a screen shot and yes I have my HDparm values set to 255 in UNRAID.

e23abf67-e094-4ef7-b514-a2f944a53333_zpsb6ba5f10.png




better check your info about the CC44 firmware being SATA 3Gbs as my info shows it being 6.0Gbs

1411cbf9-cbbe-4bfa-8557-b5248e9a2214_zpsfc19fdfd.png
 
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Decent deal.

These were $140 during Christmas (Newegg, Amazon, and TigerDirect). Tiger Direct had the $20 Visa promo so the price for one was $120. And if you used a Discover card, you got another 10% off (5% for Q4 plus 5% for ShopDiscover) for a net price of $108.
 
Interesting, thanks for the info. How long ago did you purchase that drive and was it a "Backup Plus" or "Expansion" model? Are you in the United States?

You have an anomaly of a drive. It's fascinating to me that Seagate has chosen to resurrect the CC44 firmware in the DM000 drives when this firmware was last seen shipped in 2012, and isn't even listed as a possible firmware for 1TB/platter drives.

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/223651en

Although after reviewing your screen shots, I have done some research and do in fact see ST5000DM000 drives in the wild. This firmware is shuck-able, so anybody getting a drive with this firmware is good to go.

As I said, I still can't wrap my head around Seagate using a firmware from the Barracuda 7200.13 SATA2 generation drive in the 7200.15, but your screen shots prove otherwise.

This is a 5900RPM firmware, so it's possible, but the sector map had to be revised for the 1TB platters since this is a carryover from the 600GB/platter generation. Seagate may eventually ship a ST5000DX000 (5TB) or ST6000DX000 (6TB) 7200RPM drives with the CC46 firmware in the Expansion USB product (which often goes on sale for around half the price of the internal equivalent.) These drives have been seen in the Backup Plus product in other markets. The problem is the Backup Plus line doesn't go on sale as aggressively as the Expansion line (which has seen drives selling for half the price of the internal models)

You can flash the CC46 firmware to the CC41 drives, but providing that information got me in legal trouble. The only difference between these firmware is to enable/disable different features within the drive. Seagate only manufactures two physical 1TB/platter drives, one has a 5980RPM motor, one has a 7200RPM motor. Cache, power management and performance metrics are all controlled by the firmware.
 
Samus,
Thanks for the detail post. .... so... for the less technically inclined... based on these findings, do you still suggest I buy 1 or 2 of these drives?....? TruckerCLOCK, did yours come CC44 firmware as well...?
 
Without knowing where truckerCLOCK is located and where and when he ordered the drive from, I have no honest way of telling you if the model you'll get has a CC44 firmware or not. But I can tell you everybody ordering the 5TB drive from Newegg over the past 4-5 months has been getting unshuckable CC41 drives.

If he ordered it on Newegg recently and is in the US market, I don't see why you doing the same would get you an older drive. CC41 firmware has such aggressive head parking that it's possible Seagate "had" to revise the drive with a different firmware because they had RMA's piling up. I was able to get a 5TB CC41 drive to load/unload 10,000 cycles in less than a week. These drives are only reliable for 250,000 or so head parks. Although some manufactures say their drives are good for 500,000+ that is just totally unreasonable wear to the loading ramp and will definitely result in bad sectors in that region.

Basically APM kills drives. You don't want it. It creates noise, wears out the drive, and causing access delays.

My advice to truckerCLOCK is if you have a CC44 firmware, and you plan to run that drive in a "server" doing server stuff (torrent/file hosting) you're going to want to configure HDparm to run at startup to send APM 255 commands to the bus channel your drive is connected too. I'm sure you've got thousands of load/unloads already if it's doing heavy IO.

Use CrystalDiskInfo to check the load/unload count (make sure you change the RAW value's from HEX to DEC so it displays a linear number)
 
So, being that I had an Amazon gift card, I ordered one that route, and it is has the firmware listed as CC43 and the same model number as listed in truckerCLOCK's pic. Is CC43 shuckable or am I looking for another option for use in a htpc?
 
TonyG, since this whole topic resurfaced (the last research I did on it was in October, and my initial reports were in June-July) it appears there are a few different 5TB firmware models floating around in the Seagate Expansion USB enclosure.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=34052.0

Everyone purchasing since December has received a CC43/CC44 drive. I don't have any data on CC43, but if it's the same firmware as the 1TB drives that came with it, the APM value is 192 whereas CC44's APM value is 128. Both are aggressive, though. If you plan to use the drive internally, consider running HDparm, especially if you can audibly hear the drive parking every once in awhile.

I'm surprised to see Seagate harvesting their old firmware like this. It's hard to tell if they're whoring the firmware revision numbers or the firmware itself (more than likely the former) because bastardizing the version number is a lot easier than needlessly modifying half-decade old firmware to work with newer technology. This is really sloppy.
 
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