# Should I RMA my HDD again?



## XmutanoX (Jan 23, 2020)

Recently i had problems with one of my HDD being extremely slow and yellow warning on Crystal Disk, after that I switched my windows and boot drive to another HDD (ST2000DM008) which I only used for games and steam, but when i started using it for Windows i noticed A LOT of stuttering doing the almost everything, especially when installing something or sending files to it. I ran some tests on HD tune and got these results which I interpreted as a bad HDD and sent it to RMA. 



http://imgur.com/a/92aDsbY


After almost a month, I got a new HDD from RMA and been using for the last 2 weeks, but since it arrived i've been feeling the HDD has the same problems from the old one (even thought they sent the same HDD but the serial number is different) and a lot of stuttering/freezing programs happening, especially when installing a game or transfering files, also when i try to install ANY game from steam it keeps going to 0 mb/s and disk usage drops like hell (this never happened until this new HDD




So i got to test this new HDD and for my suprise the results seem pretty similar to the old HDD I sent to RMA and even some speeds look WORST than the old one, so can anyone actually help me looking at these results and actually telling me if the HDD has a problem or not before I open RMA again? Because if I need to use warranty again for something they already sent me I need to be absolute sure to fight for a decent HDD to be sent to me this time. These are the new results 



http://imgur.com/a/1PtKcGp


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## FreedomEclipse (Jan 23, 2020)

@seagate_surfer


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## XmutanoX (Jan 23, 2020)

This is the test using a new cable and another SATA port and still the same results, I will try next to change the sata power cable but i don't think the results will change. Also I like to remember that the steam problem is just one of the problems i'm having, I also get a LOT of stuttering/freezing when the HDD is doing some installations or transfering and also when gaming. Also it's pretty weird that by the end of the test the speed just goes UP and try to estabilize even with the sudden drops  



http://imgur.com/a/LPFzG3D


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## spectatorx (Jan 23, 2020)

By specification hdd is a decent piece of hardware but... this is seagate, i do not trust them at all. Once i purchased new seagate drive and it failed three weeks later. RMA without hesitation. This drive shouldn't have symptoms which you describe it has.


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## PerfectWave (Jan 23, 2020)

The best tool to use if it is a Seagate drive is Seatools. ^^


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## Ferrum Master (Jan 23, 2020)

My five cents? The head overheats... It is not meant for such torture test.


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## phill (Jan 23, 2020)

Is the drive being actively cooled, fan in front of it etc?  Is the model of drive a Barracuda drive?


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## XmutanoX (Jan 23, 2020)

PerfectWave said:


> The best tool to use if it is a Seagate drive is Seatools. ^^



The seagate tools doesn't have any read/write visual test, it just says PASS or FAIL which doesn't help at all in this condition, last time i used for the HDD i RMA'd and it passed everything besides the FIX ALL which made me ask for a new, despite all previous tests also presenting a problem with the last HDD, now the new one is showing the exact same results


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## claylomax (Jan 23, 2020)

What's the temps on the drive while testing? You didn't mention... or I missed it.


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## XmutanoX (Jan 23, 2020)

phill said:


> Is the drive being actively cooled, fan in front of it etc?  Is the model of drive a Barracuda drive?



The only fan directly at it is the front case fan, but the temperature is reasonable I think, right now is showing 38 C which is after the stress test, during the test it gets to 45 C AT MOST which is well under the 55 C limit for HDDs



claylomax said:


> What's the temps on the drive while testing? You didn't mention... or I missed it.


You can see the temperatures on the tests, it's on the right of the model of the drive and next to a bunch of buttons


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## claylomax (Jan 23, 2020)

XmutanoX said:


> The only fan directly at it is the front case fan, but the temperature is reasonable I think, right now is showing 38 C which is after the stress test, during the test it gets to 45 C AT MOST which is well under the 55 C limit for HDDs
> 
> 
> You can see the temperatures on the tests, it's on the right of the model of the drive and next to a bunch of buttons



41-43c seem a bit high to me. 
I have the 4TB version and is at 30c.


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## XmutanoX (Jan 23, 2020)

Apparently I discovered from another forum that a lot of those HDDs of 2TB or higher from Seagate are SMR and they don't put this information ANYWHERE, and SMR HDDs tend to behave exactly like mine is doing now. I'm trying to find a way to actually check if mine is SMR or not and hope that seagate would try to solve my problem with this one or else i'm a lot of trouble since this is my only HDD and i need it for Windows and games right now :/



claylomax said:


> 41-43c seem a bit high to me.
> I have the 4TB version and is at 30c.


Even at 50 C it shouldn't be happening any problems, especially for a new HDD from RMA, apparently the problem can be this SMR thing which the problem now is finding a way to test if it really is that, maybe if it is I can demand an explanation and solution from Seagate


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## phill (Jan 23, 2020)

XmutanoX said:


> The only fan directly at it is the front case fan, but the temperature is reasonable I think, right now is showing 38 C which is after the stress test, during the test it gets to 45 C AT MOST which is well under the 55 C limit for HDDs
> 
> 
> You can see the temperatures on the tests, it's on the right of the model of the drive and next to a bunch of buttons


If I'm honest it's still a  little high, I aim to keep drives around the 25C to 30C mark even under use.  My Synology server is about that most of the time but they are only 5400 RPM.  I wouldn't hope that 7200 RPM drives are going to increase the temps that much if the air flow around the drives is good


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## XmutanoX (Jan 23, 2020)

So i borrowed another HDD for testing, the model is ST1000DM003, installed windows and everything for running it normally, my first test was downloading from steam and guess what: no drop problems on download




so i ran the HD tune on both HDs both using their respective windows installation and these are the results:



http://imgur.com/a/dECdDQE


So basically, using windows on the HDD being benchmarked causes a bunch of drops which everyone knows it, but the problem on the ST2000DM008 persists even when windows is on another HDD, the speed keeps going up and down for almost the WHOLE test, with a HUGE spike to the top in the middle and for no reason at the end it just goes up and "estabilizes", is this enough to open RMA again or should i just give up because this model is just bad?


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## ChristTheGreat (Jan 24, 2020)

don't this 2TB model (DM008) use SMR? instead of PMR like the ST1000DM003 ?









						Hard Drive Buying Tips: Figuring Out What Hard Drive You Should Buy
					

If you have “buy a hard drive” on your shopping list, here is a checklist based on your needs of everything you need to know to make the right purchase.




					www.backblaze.com
				






> PMR: Perpendicular Magnetic RecordingThis is the technology inside of most hard drives. With PMR data is written to and read from circular tracks on a spinning platter.
> 
> SMR: Shingled Magnetic RecordingThis type of drive overlaps recording tracks to store data at a lower cost than PMR technology. The downside occurs when data is deleted and that space is reused. If existing data overlaps the space you want to reuse, this can mean delays in writing the new data. These drives are great for archive storage (write once, read many) use cases, but if your files turn over with some regularity, stick with PMR drives.
> 
> ...



IMO, don't use an HDD for OS, just buy an SSD for the OS..


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## XmutanoX (Jan 24, 2020)

the problem is having also a HDD for games, since idk if SMR HDDS are also bad for having games installed on them or i can just keep it as a games HDD while having a SSD for OS and have no problems at all, can someone


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## AsRock (Jan 24, 2020)

claylomax said:


> 41-43c seem a bit high to me.
> I have the 4TB version and is at 30c.



Yeah but the UK isn't all that hot to begin with, in fact a HDD to cool can make problems too.

The program i like using, their is a trail version to( some options disable after amount of days, also tell your min\max temps and such too.





						Hard Disk Sentinel - HDD health and temperature monitoring
					

Monitoring hard disk health and temperature. Test and repair HDD problems, predict disk failure.




					www.hdsentinel.com
				





RMA it again.


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## newtekie1 (Jan 24, 2020)

ChristTheGreat said:


> don't this 2TB model (DM008) use SMR? instead of PMR like the ST1000DM003 ?



I don't think Seagate used SMR on any of their Barracuda drives, at least not the small 2TB ones.  The SMR drives were used on their archive drives.  Either way, SMR wouldn't give read issues, only write issues.  And they start out fast, then get really slow after the PMR cache is used up.  His results are the opposite.


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## ChristTheGreat (Jan 24, 2020)

newtekie1 said:


> I don't think Seagate used SMR on any of their Barracuda drives, at least not the small 2TB ones.  The SMR drives were used on their archive drives.  Either way, SMR wouldn't give read issues, only write issues.  And they start out fast, then get really slow after the PMR cache is used up.  His results are the opposite.



I saw that a 256mb cache version is a good sign. Maybe i am wrong but if multiple same drive have the same behavior, than a 1tb older model, thats why i suspect. I have a customer who has a 3tb dm003 or 005, no issue at all with os on this drive


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## XmutanoX (Jan 24, 2020)

So anyway, should i or should i not RMA this 2TB HDD? it clearly has a read problem even without an OS on it


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## spectatorx (Jan 24, 2020)

RMA it asap. Drive is faulty so that's your only way to go with it. Well, ok, there is other way, buy new drive and send this one on RMA but i imagine you don't want to do this.


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## DrakeFrst (Jan 24, 2020)

It definitely seems like throttling to me but if you're saying that temps are ok - just RMA it, way easier than trying to figure out what's wrong with it. either corrupt,bad sectors, too used and needs a defragmentation or whatever, too much to figure out.


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## newtekie1 (Jan 24, 2020)

ChristTheGreat said:


> I saw that a 256mb cache version is a good sign. Maybe i am wrong but if multiple same drive have the same behavior, than a 1tb older model, thats why i suspect. I have a customer who has a 3tb dm003 or 005, no issue at all with os on this drive



SMR drives only really show that they are SMR during writes.  Read tests won't really be able to determine if the drive is SMR.

This is a 5TB SMR next to a 4TB PRM drive.  Note now you really can't tell the difference from an HDTune benchmark.




Also know that these are both 5900RPM drives, hence the lower read speeds and higher access times.  

Also, I know if you search for the model number of the 5TB drive it will come up as a Barracuda drive, it is not actually a Barracuda drive.  Seagate simply labels it a "Desktop Drive", retails have tacked the Barracuda name onto it. But what has actually happened is these are drives that are supposed to be used in external enclosures.  People have shucked the drives from the enclosures(or intercepted shipments before they even went into external drives) and are selling the bare drives and calling them Barracuda drives.



XmutanoX said:


> So anyway, should i or should i not RMA this 2TB HDD? it clearly has a read problem even without an OS on it



Yes, I would.






This graph, where you are testing the drive without Windows running from the drive is very wrong looking.  There is something very strange going on with this drive. You should have a steady slope downward, like what I posted above.  But it looks like for some reason at the ~1500GB mark, the drive just shoots up and starts reading instanely fast.  Also, there are a lot of access times that are near 0, which should only happen with an SSD.  In fact, at the ~1500GB mark, it seems like this drive just start to read exactly like an SSD does, but that shouldn't happen unless there is some kind of SSD cache happening.

I'd also be insterested in seeing an error scan of the drive too, as well as a speed map once the error scan is finished.

But either way, I think an RMA is in order, because something ain't right with that drive.


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## XmutanoX (Jan 24, 2020)

When i have the time I will try to do an error scan on it to check if something comes up, i did a quick one but it came clean so i'm gonna try the long scan this time, also what's a speed map?

Ok i made error scans on both HDs, they both had no errors and these are their speed maps:

1TB HD (the borrowed one)





2TB HD (faulty one)



I also noticed that this 2TB HD is the only one that gets beyond 40C everytime it's on stress for some reason


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## newtekie1 (Jan 26, 2020)

Yeah, somethings not write with that drive, and heck the 1TB drive is even on its way out.  But that 2TB is definitely screwed up.  It almost looks like the head is getting stuck at a certain point.

RMA it.


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## XmutanoX (Jan 26, 2020)

The 1TB drive is very old and we knew it wasn't very good for some time now, but it's incredible how a "new" drive already have problems reading some blocks and a bunch of slow reading parts


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## seagate_surfer (Jan 28, 2020)

Sorry I am late to the party. Go ahead and RMA the drive and keep me posted. If anything arises, PM me and we will see what we can do.


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## XmutanoX (Jan 28, 2020)

I contacted Seagate here on my country and they agreed to send a new HD, also they said mine was apparently refurbished and the one they will send now is new.


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## FreedomEclipse (Jan 28, 2020)

It's normal for manufacturers to send out refurbed units when you RMA one. Everyone does it. Unless you rma'd directly with your retailer of course then it's a case of swappigg the defective unit with one in their warehouse


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## XmutanoX (Jan 28, 2020)

I know that, but for some reason they thought it was something to add to the email lol, but anyways they will not charge me to send the defective HD again and send a new one, now all i need is to wait for the new HD to arrive and test it again. I also checked on their website that they have a policy to send first, so i asked if they could do that so i can transfer all my files from one to another since i don't have another HD hanging around since the other was borrowed ):


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## FreedomEclipse (Jan 28, 2020)

Sometimes certain companies are willing to do advance shipping (send you out a replacement before you send the faulty one out) to save downtime but the thing with that is you gotta leave your bank details with them for safety reasons.


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## XmutanoX (Feb 5, 2020)

So the new HDD came up today and apparrently good news, seems like the new HDD is working as intended (please tell me if something is off because i'm not an expert on this), and yes both HDDS, the original and the first sent from RMA, are acting weird, i made new tests for the old HDD and the new one and compared results, any feedback is appreciated:

Old HD





New HD


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## repman244 (Feb 5, 2020)

Looks ok to me.


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## XmutanoX (Feb 6, 2020)

So basically ending this thread i think, this is the speedmap from the new HD, i hope it seems alright

Old HD




New HD


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## spectatorx (Feb 6, 2020)

This yellow zone at end of disk looks suspicious to me. Out of curiosity i did a quick scan on two out of my three hdds and didn't see anything like this on any of them, especially on that 2TB one that i have. Anyway i would send this screenshot to seagate to see their response.


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## XmutanoX (Feb 6, 2020)

i thought the speed slowing down at the end was the supposed behavior to expect, am i wrong?

this is not the actual scan, it's the speed map after you do the full scan but it doesn't show when you do the quick one

so after all the tests i went and installed windows on the HDD, got to install some programs and especially steam and guess what: steam random drops to 0mb/s on steam AGAIN, also A LOT OF STUTTER doing basic stuff like browsing or watching a video while installing or even after installing something, went to do a new benchmark on the HDD and this is the result




what the actual fuck is wrong with these HDDS seagate keeps sending me?????

I even tried to do a speed map again but it was taking forever and that's the reason why


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## spectatorx (Feb 6, 2020)

XmutanoX said:


> i thought the speed slowing down at the end was the supposed behavior to expect, am i wrong?
> 
> this is not the actual scan, it's the speed map after you do the full scan but it doesn't show when you do the quick one
> 
> ...


I would send them these screenshots and ask politely: "wtf is this? this second drive you sent me.". But... maybe a problem isn't hdd but a chipset and its sata controller? Ask someone if you could plug this drive to their computer and check that drive in other computer, with different chipset.

From personal experience once i ordered parts for my friend, when i built pc off of them everything was surprisingly slow. After three days of analysis i came up to conclusion sata controller in south bridge on brand new motherboard was broken, cause of slow performance. When we replaced motherboard with new unit which came few days later everything was running fast and smooth.


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## XmutanoX (Feb 6, 2020)

spectatorx said:


> I would send them these screenshots and ask politely: "wtf is this? this second drive you sent me.". But... maybe a problem isn't hdd but a chipset and its sata controller? Ask someone if you could plug this drive to their computer and check that drive in other computer, with different chipset.
> 
> From personal experience once i ordered parts for my friend, when i built pc off of them everything was surprisingly slow. After three days of analysis i came up to conclusion sata controller in south bridge on brand new motherboard was broken, cause of slow performance. When we replaced motherboard with new unit which came few days later everything was running fast and smooth.



so, i don't think the problem is with the sata ports or chipset drivers since i'm using a 1TB HDD that's also from seagate (i sent tests from this HDD aswell to compare), it works fine, even being old and having some slightly problems with speed due to old age, can the chipset cause problems with 1 especific model and work fine with all others?

this is the speed map for the new HDD, no damaged blocks tho


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## spectatorx (Feb 6, 2020)

RMA it again instantly. There is no excuse to this. All of these blocks should be green, not yellow, not red, just green and none other colors. This is not even funny anymore.


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## XmutanoX (Feb 6, 2020)

I'm tired of RMA, sincerely i will just ask for another model (if that is even possible) or my money back because it's getting frustrating enough. Does @seagate_surfer has anything to add to this thread after all this?



spectatorx said:


> RMA it again instantly. There is no excuse to this. All of these blocks should be green, not yellow, not red, just green and none other colors. This is not even funny anymore.


btw remember this is the speedmap and not damaged blocks, so they are "just" slow reading blocks of space


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## newtekie1 (Feb 7, 2020)

XmutanoX said:


> i thought the speed slowing down at the end was the supposed behavior to expect, am i wrong?



You are not wrong. The speed map should start out green and can gradually turn yellow or maybe even orange depending on how slow the drive gets.  Just like when you do a speed test and it starts off fast and gets slower as it goes, this is how hard drives work.



XmutanoX said:


> btw remember this is the speedmap and not damaged blocks, so they are "just" slow reading blocks of space



That can happen if you are running Windows from the drive while you are running the error scan.  The speed map will show slow sections whenever Windows is doing something with the drive in the background.  However, it's usually not that bad.  And that takes me to my next point.

From what I gather from this PDF, this drive uses TGMR.  I can't really find a lot of solid information on TGMR, some say it can be SMR or PMR but there's nothing solid on that.  What it does seem like is that it is slow, especially when writing to the drive.  And it seems people are are complaining that the drives get really slow when anything is being written to the drive.  And that kind of makes sense, because when the drive is busy writing, the head can't do any read operations.  What I've found people saying is that they really aren't suited to run an OS off of(and honestly, I'd argue no one should be running an OS off a HDD these days anyway). The fact that Seagate named these drives Barracuda is really unfortunate, because they really shouldn't be marketed as desktop drives.  They tried to mask how slow the drive is by including a large 256MB cache, but that only helps so much, and isn't going to be able to cope with large writes like installing a game through Steam.

Honestly, you can either cut your losses and look into getting a different model drive, or you might just want to pick up a cheap 240GB SSD and install Windows and your programs to that. Decent 240GB SSDs are like $35 these days.  Then run Steam off the 2TB HDD along with using the 2TB for data storage.  Yeah, it will still be slow when installing a Steam game, but you probably don't do that often.  With the drive not being used by Windows in the background, it should perform well for loading games.


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## R-T-B (Feb 7, 2020)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Sometimes certain companies are willing to do advance shipping (send you out a replacement before you send the faulty one out) to save downtime but the thing with that is you gotta leave your bank details with them for safety reasons.



Seagate, at least in the USA, actually offers this on their RMA webform for free.  It is only charged if you fail to return the drive.


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## XmutanoX (Feb 7, 2020)

newtekie1 said:


> You are not wrong. The speed map should start out green and can gradually turn yellow or maybe even orange depending on how slow the drive gets.  Just like when you do a speed test and it starts off fast and gets slower as it goes, this is how hard drives work.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



So, i went back to the 1TB drive OS to do new tests, those tests are the ones I posted here, so even when i'm using windows on another drive the tests still are bad. Basically as soon as I installed the OS on the new drive it started to have problems, even when not using it as OS drive anymore, the slow read blocks are still there and it has those weird super fast access times, everything i have left to do is complain again to Seagate and try to get a different model OR my money back :/


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## newtekie1 (Feb 7, 2020)

XmutanoX said:


> So, i went back to the 1TB drive OS to do new tests, those tests are the ones I posted here, so even when i'm using windows on another drive the tests still are bad. Basically as soon as I installed the OS on the new drive it started to have problems, even when not using it as OS drive anymore, the slow read blocks are still there and it has those weird super fast access times, everything i have left to do is complain again to Seagate and try to get a different model OR my money back :/



I think the fast access times are just down to HDTune not really handling the larger cache properly. I'm guessing the cache is enough that the test fits in it.  HDTune hasn't really updated their benchmark in forever, so it just isn't good at testing these drives with huge caches.  I think it is also why you get a largely flat curve in the speed test, the huge cache is messing with the test.


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## spectatorx (Feb 7, 2020)

newtekie1 said:


> I think the fast access times are just down to HDTune not really handling the larger cache properly. I'm guessing the cache is enough that the test fits in it.  HDTune hasn't really updated their benchmark in forever, so it just isn't good at testing these drives with huge caches.  I think it is also why you get a largely flat curve in the speed test, the huge cache is messing with the test.


Would you recommend any alternative tool better suited for modern hdds?


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## XmutanoX (Feb 7, 2020)

newtekie1 said:


> I think the fast access times are just down to HDTune not really handling the larger cache properly. I'm guessing the cache is enough that the test fits in it.  HDTune hasn't really updated their benchmark in forever, so it just isn't good at testing these drives with huge caches.  I think it is also why you get a largely flat curve in the speed test, the huge cache is messing with the test.



Even the HD Tune Pro? I don't know any other good programs to do read benchmarks for HDs and i would appreciate if you know any other that could help me in this situation. I already sent an email to seagate explaining the situation, even telling them about the HD being SMR and demanding an answer about it, also requested a position about the refund or sending me another model that I can use to actually install an OS and games since i can't buy a SSD for now


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## seagate_surfer (Feb 7, 2020)

XmutanoX said:


> Even the HD Tune Pro? I don't know any other good programs to do read benchmarks for HDs and i would appreciate if you know any other that could help me in this situation. I already sent an email to seagate explaining the situation, even telling them about the HD being SMR and demanding an answer about it, also requested a position about the refund or sending me another model that I can use to actually install an OS and games since i can't buy a SSD for now



Just sent you a PM.


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