Seagate 7200.10 - different motors for same product? (7200.10 owners plz read)

[RPGWiZaRD]

I've been very dissatisfied with this Seagate 7200.10 320GB SATAII about the noise level which seems to remind me of some old 10-20GB drives far from usual Seagate noise level standards. Operation noise is about par with Maxtor DiamondMax 9 but of course it doesn't support AAM either so you can't do anything about the noise. However I searched around the net and found this thread pretty interesting as many others seems to agree with the drives being very noisy while others think they are very silent. In pretty much middle of the thread you'll find a post by a 4x320GB 7200.10 owner that compared his drives if there would be a difference among them, one of them turned out to be a lot more noisy, had a faint high pitch whine during idle and operation noise was also remarkably louder, aprox ~60% by his subjective opinion. Now he also took a pic of the drive motors:

silent motor

non-silent motor

I've got the "non-silent motor" myself and I think it's very loud, I'm thinking of returning or selling it (depends how nice the online store where I bought it from is). Simply cuz I don't like a very loud HDD that also produces audible "clicking" operation noise from simple tasks such as downloading or uploading files from it and sometimes also at idle. What's gotten into Seagate these days, hiding a factory somewhere in Singapore producing budget 7200.10 not following the exact specs for this product, I wouldn't be suprised. I also sent a complain to Seagate support about it, will be interesting to hear what they've got to say.

If you have got a Seagate 7200.10 I'd be happy if you could give some feedback about it and perhaps fill in info about it like this for example:

Product code: ST3320620AS
Manufactured in: Singapore
Firmware: 3.AAE
Date Code: (sorry I forgot to check this) should be a 4-digit code
Motor: Non-silent

[RPGWiZaRD]

And here's even more pictures, appearently there's at least 3 different versions of same product:

http://hardwarelogic.com/articles/re...HDD_bottom.jpg - This is the best one that is actually very silent.

http://img.ferra.ru/pubimages/90521.jpg - this is the version I have which is very loud

http://www.garbage.at/7200.10_pcb.jpg - here's one with smaller PCB!

WTF, for me this is something very intolerable. Shame on you Seagate, all 7200.10 should be produced as the only good version out of these 3.

If this continues I'll never pick a Seagate drive again, I so don't wish they bought my fav manufacturer Maxtor tho. Ordered a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB SATAII and hopefully it still follows the old standard Maxtor design and AAM should be still possible to change right? I mean they can't just drop the AAM support for a product line that at least has had this feature from start, can they?

I've heard so many good things about Seagate through the years but are all Seagate supporters finding this OK or what? Plz share some opinions. You shouldn't need to hunt the only good version there is of the product, you should know what you get BEFORE you make the purchase which you don't in this case and only 1 version of a product should with same product code should be allowed. It's one thing if they offer a 8MB and 16MB version for example, but having different parts in the drives is so wrong. As it seems right now I lost 30€ thanks to Seagate, it's not much but still something but I'm more pissed about the useless time spent with it.

[ziddey]

That's interesting. This is probably unlikely but it's possible the wd re2 drives are similar. My 500gb wd re2 is more noisy than any drive I've purchased in the past 4 years by far. Yet, most reviews said the drive was very quiet. Still, I guess drive noise wasn't a concern when they designed the re2 since it's intended target wasn't our homes.

[epion2985]

Seems like bad luck. I have noticed this on all brands and all drives. Some people get very quiet drives some get very loud. Manufacturing defects probably. Just return it and get another one until you get a quiet one.

[RPGWiZaRD]

Already sold it as I can't return a used product. (sold it for 95,30€ incl shipping cost, paid 114€ incl shipping cost so didn't lost that much money altho I really need a new drive right now and I don't wanna move stuff over and over all the time.

Picked up a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 SATAII 300GB, I really got to know I should stick what has worked for me. Only reason I would try another brand is the overall bad comments about Maxtor but for me they seem to work best.

Now I'm just a bit worried I get the same Seagate crap in the Maxtor as Seagate owns Maxtor but I don't think it has done anything to DM10 series yet but DM11 and 20 and 21 and 17 or whatever lol is all pure Seagate budget stuff now so this is prolly the last HDD I'll buy from Maxtor. I think it's somewhat obvious tho for me as the first WD drive I bought started having extra high pitched noise audible during idle and it wasn't a constant whine but it was a variation in the noise so that was disturbing altho it was very faint but still audible so I did sell it and the new owner hasn't mind it. Then I decided to try this new Seagate...

I've got 5 Maxtor drives (actually 6 cuz I sold one Maxtor DM9 200GB once) and all of them have worked perfectly fine, no extra noise has appeared on any of them, no bad sectors, decent performance, dead silent on idle, superb AAM adjustment, no crashes, cool operating temp, no probs at all. Even my DiamondMax 9 160GB from beginning of 2002 still works perfectly fine (used that drive as gaming HDD for a while ago) and no probs with SMART values either. Power on hours count has perhaps the worst value as it's getting somewhat old, as I usually run the comp for almost 24/7, I rarely shut down. So for me Maxtor has shown good durable and relaiability signs or am I just lucky but I think it's REALLY bad luck if all 6 Maxtor drives have worked great and the 1st drives I try from the 2 biggest manufacturers are borked. I may add the SMART values weren't that great on both the WD and Seagate drive either, especially the Seagate drive in the beginning had one of the "unknown" attributes down with like 30 in the beginning for example but went upwards after some hours of idle. Also had like -10 on something else. The WD drive hadn't that bad SMART values but it wasn't that great either. My Maxtors haven't had any serious SMART value variations tho, it's usually one step down at a time and then it may often go up again after a little while and sometimes it stays at the lower value of course.

This is exactly the opposite I usually hear of Maxtor drives so to me it's really weird.

[fhpchris]

Im blind and cant see the difference between the first two...

My four are not loud, but I dont understand why your trying to buy fast drives and have them be silent?

[Magnj]

I have one of these and I can't hear it over my case fans

[RPGWiZaRD]

It was the best capacity/price combo and I wanted to try a Seagate as they are supposed to be silent which they are if you get the correct version but I didn't know there was different versions of the 7200.10 drives depending where it was manufacturered until afterwards I started doing some more search. I really couldn't expect same product to have different parts in it. Noise may vary from sample to sample somewhat in all drives but NOT this much as it can be between these Seagate ones with different motors.

The operation noise was as loud as Maxtor DiamondMax 9 with AAM disabled which can make your desk or floor shake in worst case :p but the noise is more high pitched and I thought the tone was worse. Other than that it had audible clicking noise sometimes at idle and always when uploading or downloading of the drive which is a common task for me and I don't like to try sleep like 2m away from the comp with it clicking, clicking, clicking like every 2-3 secs and neither when I browse internet like forums and stuff, then the drives has to be dead silent as I get distracted by such noise. I can get used to constant noise like the noise of fans (I already have 9x case fans :p) but not clicking or noises that isn't constant. Maxtors are known for the relatively silent idle spindle motors and it's not too uncommon for other brands to have audible "clicking" noise during idle but I'm used to Maxtor which are dead silent as long as you don't move files from a drive to another, copy or install stuff, load maps in games etc or unless you don't adjust the AAM, if you do they can become silent all the time whit not that much loss in performance but the tone is good so I don't adjust it, only if I used an old DM9 as gaming or OS drive but DM10 is more silent and I don't think it needs to be adjusted.

[cadaveca]

I have two of these seagates, both have differnt motors and PCB's, as well as controllers, and both are loud, but quieter than a 7200.7...although not by much!

[epion2985]

Already sold it as I can't return a used product. (sold it for 95,30€ incl shipping cost, paid 114€ incl shipping cost so didn't lost that much money altho I really need a new drive right now and I don't wanna move stuff over and over all the time.

Picked up a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 SATAII 300GB, I really got to know I should stick what has worked for me. Only reason I would try another brand is the overall bad comments about Maxtor but for me they seem to work best.

Now I'm just a bit worried I get the same Seagate crap in the Maxtor as Seagate owns Maxtor but I don't think it has done anything to DM10 series yet but DM11 and 20 and 21 and 17 or whatever lol is all pure Seagate budget stuff now so this is prolly the last HDD I'll buy from Maxtor. I think it's somewhat obvious tho for me as the first WD drive I bought started having extra high pitched noise audible during idle and it wasn't a constant whine but it was a variation in the noise so that was disturbing altho it was very faint but still audible so I did sell it and the new owner hasn't mind it. Then I decided to try this new Seagate...

I've got 5 Maxtor drives (actually 6 cuz I sold one Maxtor DM9 200GB once) and all of them have worked perfectly fine, no extra noise has appeared on any of them, no bad sectors, decent performance, dead silent on idle, superb AAM adjustment, no crashes, cool operating temp, no probs at all. Even my DiamondMax 9 160GB from beginning of 2002 still works perfectly fine (used that drive as gaming HDD for a while ago) and no probs with SMART values either. Power on hours count has perhaps the worst value as it's getting somewhat old, as I usually run the comp for almost 24/7, I rarely shut down. So for me Maxtor has shown good durable and relaiability signs or am I just lucky but I think it's REALLY bad luck if all 6 Maxtor drives have worked great and the 1st drives I try from the 2 biggest manufacturers are borked. I may add the SMART values weren't that great on both the WD and Seagate drive either, especially the Seagate drive in the beginning had one of the "unknown" attributes down with like 30 in the beginning for example but went upwards after some hours of idle. Also had like -10 on something else. The WD drive hadn't that bad SMART values but it wasn't that great either. My Maxtors haven't had any serious SMART value variations tho, it's usually one step down at a time and then it may often go up again after a little while and sometimes it stays at the lower value of course.

This is exactly the opposite I usually hear of Maxtor drives so to me it's really weird.

Sure you can return used products, how would you know if its working until you try and use it. Unless you buy from a very strange place they should take it back.

As for maxtors I will put a big pole up my rear end before I use maxtor garbage again...

[Teratism]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148140 The AS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148139 The A

From reports it seems that the A is the silent type and the AS is the non silent
I think there is a Third type with a T involved. I forget.

[J-Mag]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148140 The AS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148139 The A

From reports it seems that the A is the silent type and the AS is the non silent
I think there is a Third type with a T involved. I forget.

A and AS are obviously referring to ATA or SATA respectively. Are you saying that the SATA drives are loud and the ATA drives are not?

[Teratism]

From a lot of reviews on newegg and others it looks to be that way. Maybe bringing up the question to seagate reps may give you a clearer answer.

[RPGWiZaRD]

Already posted email to Seagate a while ago and of course as expected I would get no comment on what I actually wanted to know.

Should reply and ask again same question again and post links to the different pictures. I think this is pretty serious issue, they are fooling people (even a lawsuit could be possible cuz of this issue I think). So far I don't know of any other brand that I can for sure find similiar pics or proof that shows they use different parts for the same products. All products of the same model should have same parts, simple as that otherwise it's not the same product! People shouldn't need to pay same price for a drive that is remarkably louder than their friends'. Worst case scenario would be in case these "louder" parts (who knows maybe even less durable too) are much cheaper to produce, which would give Seagate a small profit bonus on the expense of fooling some people instead. It's not really great marketing which I hope Seagate doesn't get away with.

epion2985> The problem is that all the drives with the non-silent spindle motor are loud, it's not a defect drive but Seagate using worse parts in some of them and these are the loud ones.

[amrgb]

The problem is that Seagate, due to patents, cannot use AAM (they could pay the royalties, but seems that they are not interested).

But this does not mean that they do not have the ability to control the seek noise. They just can't sell drives with the ability to change it.

Basically what they do is to set different setting in the factory. Indeed it seems that ATA drives are generally quieter than their SATA counterparts. Obviously, there are exceptions.

Why don't they ship all drives with the quiet setting? It makes the seek slower (that's why I always set AAM for performance).

But the heterogeneity of Seagate products do not end here. Some 320GB drives are 400 or 500GB (can't remember, but probably both) with the inner part of the platter area disabled. Since the 400 or 500 (can't remember) drives have higher platter density the 320 based have faster sequential read/write. Moreover, since the slowest part of the platter is disabled, this increases seek times, since the heads have to cover less area.

My advice: make sure you feel lucky when you buy a Seagate

[uOpt]

Sure you can return used products, how would you know if its working until you try and use it. Unless you buy from a very strange place they should take it back.

As for maxtors I will put a big pole up my rear end before I use maxtor garbage again...

If he's in Germany his return offers are quite a bit different from what we here can RMA to newegg for 15% off.

Agreed on Maxtor.

[CPLB]

My Seagate 320GB 7200.10 SATA has a very loud and annoying motor. It's not the noise you hear when the drive is seeking, it's just a loud, constant humming noise from the motor. If I flip the drive upside down the noise goes down a bit but it still drives me crazy.

I've also got two 160GB Seagate 7200.7 SATA drives and they are completely silent, even my 150GB Raptor is quieter than the 7200.10. I contacted Seagate and they said they'll take it back.

Here is the product info:

Product code: ST3320620AS
Manufactured in: Singapore
Firmware: 3.AAE
Date Code: 07142
Motor: Xtremely Non-Silent

[epion2985]

epion2985> The problem is that all the drives with the non-silent spindle motor are loud, it's not a defect drive but Seagate using worse parts in some of them and these are the loud ones.

Thant's no news. Dell has been putting good panels in their monitors for good reviews then swapping for worser once later on to save money. They do this crap all the time. And they have the lawyers and engineers that find loop holes to make it hard to fight.

If he's in Germany his return offers are quite a bit different from what we here can RMA to newegg for 15% off.

Agreed on Maxtor.

15% ? I RMA for free, if the item is defective they used to RMA for free. Is this new or something?

I guess Germany sucks. Glad my family didn't settle down there while we lived there back in my youth.

[Bergo]

the 15% would be a restocking fee if you return a hard drive that would likely pass a full read test of seatools or something. RMA is always free, unless the company is shady as hell.
I have two of the Seagate 320gb SATA II HDD's in question in my server, both are excellent drives and barely audible, but they are the "good" version that you've posted pictures of.
I work for a smaller retailer here in Canada as a technician and all of the 320gb Seagate drives that I've seen pass through here (a couple hundred in the last couple months, all OEM drives) have all been the same version that I have purchased. I think I've gone through about 4 or five of them now, but my hardware turnover is pretty high. I've never had trouble with any that I've purchased, and of the maybe 500 or so we've sold, I've RMA'd probably 10-15 drives. (which to me seems pretty low, because I would guess that some of those were user error)

IMHO, Seagate is still my favorite HDD manufacturer, but in my main box I do use WD Raptors, just for the 10k RPM goodness

[pissboy]

I honestly wouldn't have picked up on the noise issue if you didn't mention it. I have a few of the "noisy" drives with large PCB, and a few of the "quiet" ones with smaller PCB, all 7200.10 500GB. The noisy ones are all made in china and were purchased at newegg this week and last week. The quiet ones are made in singapore and were all purchased in the past week from zipzoomfly. They'll all be in a fileserver tucked away, so I shouldn't hear a thing.

Hopefully this helps out some US residents who want some of these drives.

[mr_knowitall15]

so thats good, its not just me... I can hear this thing accessing the HDD from accross the room when it accesses the drive for saving torrents or virus scanning, something like that that it does when im not using it. It is scary that it is clearly louder than my fans, which arent super load, but it is a steady whirr sound thats pretty audible.

[uOpt]

15% ? I RMA for free, if the item is defective they used to RMA for free. Is this new or something?

I guess Germany sucks. Glad my family didn't settle down there while we lived there back in my youth.

If you want to return it because of a too loud motor you'll have to pay 15% to Newegg, unless you want to spend quite a bit of time on the phone. It's not a defect.

Germany generally doesn't give you any return right at any restocking fee after you opened the shrinkwrap, unless it is defective.

Germany doesn't suck, though, just for starters they have much better warranty laws. So Germany is better if you get broken stuff, U.S. is better if you just don't like what you got.

[$ilver]

And here's even more pictures, appearently there's at least 3 different versions of same product:

http://hardwarelogic.com/articles/re...HDD_bottom.jpg - This is the best one that is actually very silent.

http://img.ferra.ru/pubimages/90521.jpg - this is the version I have which is very loud

http://www.garbage.at/7200.10_pcb.jpg - here's one with smaller PCB!

WTF, for me this is something very intolerable. Shame on you Seagate, all 7200.10 should be produced as the only good version out of these 3.

If this continues I'll never pick a Seagate drive again, I so don't wish they bought my fav manufacturer Maxtor tho. Ordered a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB SATAII and hopefully it still follows the old standard Maxtor design and AAM should be still possible to change right? I mean they can't just drop the AAM support for a product line that at least has had this feature from start, can they?

I've heard so many good things about Seagate through the years but are all Seagate supporters finding this OK or what? Plz share some opinions. You shouldn't need to hunt the only good version there is of the product, you should know what you get BEFORE you make the purchase which you don't in this case and only 1 version of a product should with same product code should be allowed. It's one thing if they offer a 8MB and 16MB version for example, but having different parts in the drives is so wrong. As it seems right now I lost 30€ thanks to Seagate, it's not much but still something but I'm more pissed about the useless time spent with it.

i got the first version and mine is loud too ...

[RPGWiZaRD]

Seems like Seagate might have dropped the production of DiamondMax 10 as I've waited for a week now for my Maxtor DiamondMax 10 and they haven't got any in stock yet (according to the site they were in stock when I ordered but later on it was changed, damn site) so I sent an email where I explained I want to switch it for a WD3200KS, ie SE 320GB SATAII 16MB which are supposed to be VERY silent (slightly more silent than the silent 7200.10 version) and unlike Seagate WD doesn't use different parts in their drives so every drive pretty much should have almost same noise level.

I looked at this one before too, what was stopping me from buying it as I used to have SATA-150 320GB 8MB cache WD SE part which got a noisy spindle motor after about a half year's usage (a constant various high pitched noise whine). However after some search it seems the WD3200JB and WD3200KS aren't exactly same and the WD3200KS appears to be even more silent and I already thought WD3200JB was quite silent as long as it didn't have the extra noise. I just hope I have better luck this time. Today the HDD market looks rather bad for silent-HDD enthusiasts, looks like WD3200KS might be the only somewhat reliable choise right now. Samsung is good too but should improve access time somewhat still before I'd really consider one.

[ripken204]

so where are you guys getting these "loud" hdds from? and where can i get the quieter one? or is it just a luck type of thing from newegg?
any1 get it from tigerdirect? 80$ there