Are Seagate drives still problematic as external drive?

[smooth28la]

I have a spare 1.5 TB Seagate hard drive I'd like to use as an external hard drive storage for my 612 DVR. Does anyone know if Dish has fixed the sleep mode problem with Seagate drives?

By the way, Amazon currently has a WD 2 TB drive for $91.99 shipped after coupon of GXTPOFES

Amazon.com: Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD20EARS: Electronics@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51yl2DEVzkL.@@AMEPARAM@@51yl2DEVzkL

 

[David_Levin]

You should probably tell us what Seagate you're asking about? Internal/External/Freeagent? There are Many. I'm actually quite satisfied with the Free Agent Desk with the sleep mode disabled.

CAUTION: That Western Digital WD20EARS is an advanced format (4kb sectors) drive. I plugged one into my 722 (for fun) over the weekend. After 15 minutes it was still trying to format the thing (and I rebooted). I'm guessing the 722 (and 622) aren't aligning the sectors properly (making the drive VERY slow).

When I have more time, I'll try to let it finish. Then I can plug it back into the PC and see what's going on. Reminds me... I need to check the compatibility jumber when I get home. On an XP machine with a single partiton this is supposed to push the sectors back into alignment (the computer asks for sector 62 but the drive pushes it to sector 64 -> something like that). This could be messing things up.

 

[TV Junkie 12]

I have 4 Free Agents (got the 4th yesterday) with sleep mode disabled that I use with the 722 and I have been happy with them. The Maxtor drive I used for a while-not so much.

 

[KAB]

An internal Seagate in a separate enclosure will be just fine.

 

[smooth28la]

The 1.5 TB drive is Seagate Barracuda 7200 1.5 TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 32MB Cache 3.5 Inch Internal Hard Drive ST31500341AS-Bare Drive

I plan to put in one of those 'docking stations' so I can easily swap out drives of previous Dish archives/drives.

Do I need to reset the sleep mode in this configuration?

 

[Tony S]

As other have stated, they key is to disable sleep mode in the Seagate drive. But you have to be careful because sometimes you cannot disable sleep mode easily. For example: I had a Seagate drive in a Maxtor enclosure. The EHD exclosure/firmware made it impossible to run the Seagate utility that sets the drive into sleep mode.

I could have removed the drive from the external enclosure, installed it internally in my home computer, run the Seagate utility to disable sleep mode, and then put it back in the external enclosure... but that was way to much work for me. I just bought a WD instead.

 

[KAB]

The 1.5 TB drive is Seagate Barracuda 7200 1.5 TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 32MB Cache 3.5 Inch Internal Hard Drive ST31500341AS-Bare Drive

I plan to put in one of those 'docking stations' so I can easily swap out drives of previous Dish archives/drives.

Do I need to reset the sleep mode in this configuration?

To the best of my knowledge, a Seagate bare internal drive has no software to worry about. Only the pre-made Freeagents...plug and play EHD.

 

[Jim5506]

Bare Seagate drives are no problem at all.

I run 4 or 5 at various times in my HDD dock.