windows 7 64bit / Vista 64 bit HD backup advice

kwhy · 05 Jul 2009

ok. I'm having bad luck lately with Seagate products and Vista 64 and Windows 7 64.

Anyone recommend both a good gaming HD (250-500gb sata) that is semi quiet and fast (see below)?

I also need a seperate external backup HD (1-2TB) that works WELL with Windows 7 64 and Vista 64? I don't care to use or need any special backup software bundled with the HD.

** my issues **

I've been having issues with the Freeagent Desk 1TB usb external drive I picked up. It seems to lock up, overheat, and not be recognized by Vista 64 after 1-2 day. I read some people were having overheating problems and disabling the light (actually taking it apart) fixed the problem. This external drive sits on a Vista 64 computer that runs all the time, but is only accessed maybe every 1-2 days to backup about 20 gigs of data.

The current workaround is that I have to unplug and plug it back in every few days for Vista to see it. This is the only external drive I have that has issues with this.

To replace the above I picked up a Western Digitial My Book 2TB (haven't opened it), but now I'm reading about a lot of iissues with Windows 7 64....unknown if its ok with Vista 64. Now I'm thinking about taking that drive back because I'll probably be updating that Vista 64 to Windows 7 64 eventually (or I need to be able to switch the drive back and forth)

On the gaming HDs. I have had 2 bad experiences with Seagates Barracuda 7200.11 drives (which I wouldn't be suprised if the Freeagent Disk is the same drive). One died after about 3 months minimal use and the other one I'm having an issue with right now sounds like a jet airplane engine.

I also have 2 older Seagate 7200.10 drives that have given me NO problems which I might revert back to, but they seem to be a little slower.

Any recommendations?

DJG · 05 Jul 2009

Interesting. I have a whole bunch of the series 11 - 500GB, 750GB and 1.5TB, and other than replacing the firmware on some of the 750GB units haven't had any problems. What kind of temperature are they running at, if you can tell?

I use removable bays for my HDs and have no external active storage. I back up the data and system images to internal RAID 10 array very often keeping the last 3-4 images, and copy via script latest images to a simple HD volume that I rotate via hot-swap now & then - Win 7 supports hot-swapped drives excellently (is that a word?). It verges on paranoia ...

Edit: due to onset of senility I forgot I did get one 1TB drive replaced under warranty because of random errors - using the Seagate DOS utility it failed the short test. Had a replacement within a week, paying for the shipping cost to them.

kwhy · 07 Jul 2009

I must be the only one running into glitches with Win7 and faulty hardware...

I'm not sure on the temp on those drives. The one making noise I flipped and now at least it is quiet, but I'm getting HD corruption problems (logs show problems being able to write to HD).

So I've had it with fooling with this drive.

Zidane24 · 07 Jul 2009

kwhy said:

I must be the only one running into glitches with Win7 and faulty hardware...

I'm not sure on the temp on those drives. The one making noise I flipped and now at least it is quiet, but I'm getting HD corruption problems (logs show problems being able to write to HD).

So I've had it with fooling with this drive.

Could be not the drives but the Chipset drivers that handle your USB ports and such...they may not be for Windows 7 yet (seems like they would be for Windows Vista but you know how that goes....)

DJG · 07 Jul 2009

kwhy said:

I must be the only one running into glitches with Win7 and faulty hardware...

I'm not sure on the temp on those drives. The one making noise I flipped and now at least it is quiet, but I'm getting HD corruption problems (logs show problems being able to write to HD).

So I've had it with fooling with this drive.

You know they're probably under warranty - run the Seagate quick test on them and hopefully they'll fail. You can then for the cost of one-way shipping get a replacement. They're pretty good about that, and they're quick. I've had one replaced.