[mythtv-users] Seagate confirms problems with 1.5TB Barracuda drives

[Carl Fongheiser]

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 11:22 AM, Yan Seiner <yan at seiner.com> wrote:
> Anyone know if this extends to the 1TB drives?  I'm seeing very, very slow
> response times if I hit my RAID5 system hard.  As in, the computer will
> freeze, sometimes for as long as 15 to 20 seconds, with nothing in the
> logs, and with top showing (when it updates) idle in the 40% to 60%
> percent.
>

I suspect it might.  I have one of these 1TB drives in my Mac, and I
can't say it's performing well.  It seems to get stuck sometimes, too.

> Also, how do I check the firmware version on these drives?

It's normally printed during the boot process, as the system is
scanning for drives.  For example:

ata4.00: ATA-8: WDC WD5000AACS-00ZUB0, 01.01B01, max UDMA/133

In this case, the firmware version is "01.01B01".

If you can't find that in a log file somewhere, smartctl from the
smartmontools package can display the firmware version, assuming it
will work in your configuration.

Carl Fongheiser