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Seagate Momentus XT Disaster

Not really looking for solutions here, just trying to warn people to stay away from this Seagate drive. It has been an unmitigated nightmare for me. And a very strange one. I cloned the drive and booted up on it externally with NO problems at all. Many times. The drive simply works when mounted externally. Once installed inside my MacBook Pro, all **** breaks loose. The computer will not stay stable for more than 5 mins. Crash after crash after crash. Complete disaster. Pull the drive and mount my old internal drive (99% full), and it runs no problem. Mount the Seagate Momentus externally again, no problem. I can run for hours. Put it back into the laptop? Crash city.

What a waste of time and money.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 8 gigs of RAM, 15: Matte screen

Posted on Apr 6, 2012 7:07 AM

275 replies

Csound1

Level 9

59,973 points

Apr 15, 2014 9:24 AM in response to timgp

timgp wrote:

(Just for clarity, I'm not saying that swapping the cable doesn't/won't work; I just don't understand HOW it works)

The simple answer is that I have no idea, clearly the cable can handle a 3Gb/s connection, but who knows how it has degraded or been damaged over the years. There are too many anecdotal or otherwise tales of success (after failure) acheived by replacing the cable.

So it is a common suggestion in these cases.

timgp

Level 1

4 points

Apr 19, 2014 6:35 AM in response to Csound1

Final note from me. I fitted the new cable and everything is working perfectly

I still can't explain it from a technical standpoint, but a new cable definitely worked for me.

Csound1

Level 9

59,973 points

Apr 19, 2014 6:41 AM in response to timgp

Sometimes it's best to just accept it without knowing why, in this case it's what I would do. 🙂

LowLuster

Level 6

12,105 points

Apr 19, 2014 6:47 AM in response to timgp

Then you have NO Technical knowledge. You were trying to Pump large amounts of Data all at once through a cable that could only handle smaller amounts of data spaced out over a longer period of time. What is so hard to understand. That is like trying to pump 10 gallons of water a minute through a 1/4" pipe. Not going to happen.

But in the end changing the cable fixed the problem. Just like was point out to you many times and expressed in so many other posts to this thread.

timgp wrote:

Final note from me. I fitted the new cable and everything is working perfectly

I still can't explain it from a technical standpoint, but a new cable definitely worked for me.

Malvoe1

Level 1

8 points

Dec 14, 2014 8:29 PM in response to LowLuster

So I am looking to upgrade my HD and just finished reading through a fair bit of this thread. I have a mid 2009 15" MBP (5,4). I am planning on upgrading to a Seagate 1TB 7200 HDD. I am still running firmware version 1.49. I have two questions:

1) Should I go ahead and preemptively replace my hard drive cable while I have the laptop open?

2) Should I upgrade to firmware version 1.7? If not, should I stick with what I have or is it possible to find version 1.6?

Many thanks!

Seagate Momentus XT Disaster