Seagate 1.5TB hard disk drive

[Kaku Ito]

In order to submit dpx files to the DI studios, some sections that I was rendering exceeded 1TB, so I ended up buying the 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda and tried to copy the files with 1.12TB total.

I went to sleep after I initiated the copying process, I came back to my studio 6 hours later, but still copying the last 100GB or so. SATA drives generally gets really slow upon end part of the drive, but this is significantly slow.
It's probably going around 8MB/sec with eSATA connection.

So, be warned that even you can get more storage space with very good price with 1.5TB drive, last part of this drive is not practical to use.

[Dan Hudgins]

So, be warned that even you can get more storage space with very good price with 1.5TB drive, last part of this drive is not practical to use.

Was the drive formatted NTFS?

You might try making a ZIP or RAR archive of the files you need to copy for the DI rather than copying frames, then the file just gets one directory entry, some disks slow down when you have more than 512 filenames in one folder.

I used my Divided filename type to overcome the disk slow down under both FAT and NTFS, in the current program a frame 500 file limit per folder is used so FreeDOS can run frames at 24/25/30fps without dropped frames, my program keeps making more folders automaticly as new frames are made. There may be a limit of 512 folders before the slow down, so you get 500x500 total files (500 folders with 500 files in each one).

If you group your files into many folders that might speed the copying as well. This is an issue for my DI system, since you need (or want) access to at least a 22 minute reel of frames at one time to do some of the tasks such as filmout. If the disk slows down too much it can degrade the quality of the filmout since the power line voltage ups and downs may show more, the film recorder needs quick loading of all the frames to run fast and well.

[Thom Steinhoff]

This one was pretty poorly reviewed, but mainly because of stuttering playback from the original firmware.

Most of the reviews said it was much better after a firmware update. Did you do a firmware update on it? Just a thought...

[Kaku Ito]

Hi Dan and Thom,

Dan, you guessed it, it is FAT since I had to submit the files to Nitris. Thank you very much for your TIPS!

Thom, I will try updating the firmware, but I hear they are picky about providing the firmware, is that true? I did try their firmware updater thing before though.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Performance will go to hell in a handbasket if it's formatted as FAT32. You will want it to be formatted as NTFS or HPFS to get proper performance out of any drive. It becomes especially obvious with larger darives, like 1TB or larger.

The seagate 1.5TB drives are actually pretty nice units and rather quick. They *MUST* have the latest firmware loaded on the drive or they will not work properly. Most drives being sold from dealers now were manufactured 2+ months ago and will not be shipped to you with this firmware update. Easy to download and install, most vendors are providing direct links to the firmware file and flash utility. Just be aware that you will need to boot into DOS on a system in order to provide the firmware update and the drive will need to be connected directly via [e]SATA and not via a SATA to USB2 or Firewire converter. So it can be a pain for Mac-only people to make use of these drives.

Not true about them being picky about firmware... They are picky about beta firmware, but this is an actual release and Seagate is wanting people to upgrade. It's available on their site, but not so easy to navigate to. Here's an easier place to get it -- from newegg. Click on the Product Tour tab and you will see a zip file to download and simple instructions.

[Kaku Ito]

Thanks all for lots of useful information.

I purchased this for quick fix.

[Dan Hudgins]

Performance will go to hell in a handbasket if it's formatted as FAT32. You will want it to be formatted as NTFS or HPFS to get proper performance out of any drive. It becomes especially obvious with larger darives, like 1TB or larger.

I have been working with FAT for quite some time, and think the issue is not quite as simple as saying that other systems are "better" or "worse" each has its own issues.

FAT drives should work up to about 2.1TB. I do not know of a reason why FAT would be slower writing a single file if you make one large file and it is bigger than 1TB, the speed is controlled by the harddrive not the OS, the OS just changes the sector number to write to, and one number is about the same as another. There might be an issue with moving the head from the write space to the FAT table, but that should not be done until the file is closed, and you leave the file open while writing large files.

There is an issue with Windows and FAT if you have like more than about 512 files in a folder, as I said above, if you keep under that limit it is easy to read and write hours of frames at 24/25/30 fps.

Also if you use ZIP or RAR etc to make one large file using FAT should not be much different from other OS since you are just filling sectors on the harddrive and it would be the harddrive that shows down as you fill more space because it needs to find sectors that are not bad. In newer disks they report 100% good sectors even though they are full of bad ones, the disks have more space than reported so that they can jump the head over the bad sectors to find a spot that is not bad.

I have not found any improvement in 24fps playback using NTFS over FAT and SATA disks sometimes seem worse than EIDE, not that there might be some lab measurement that shows otherwise, I just have not seen it yet, other than the issue of having too many files on one folder.

[Martin Weiss]

Be careful about using the firmware provided by Newegg. Here is a story of why it is better to go through the proper channels, i.e. Seagate support:

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/...essage.id=3491

[Dan Hudgins]

Here is a story of why it is better to go through the proper channels, i.e. Seagate support:

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/...essage.id=3491

Note in that link that Seagate seems to be using FreeDOS (FAT32) for their repair CD!?

I have also gone to using FreeDOS FAT32 CD and the Windows ME "rescue" boot floppy to get my programs working on 500GB+ disks without having to deal with the video "bugs" in Windows XP Home SP3 (tm) (does not work higher than 640x480 on some computers and monitors).

If your Windows XP Home SP3 system and data disks are formatted FAT32 you can boot the computer with the FreeDOS FAT32 CD and have access to files, although I would not use long filenames as some issues may come up with the way the directory displays filenames, I just use 8+3 in my programs so it is not an issue. Under Windows XP Home SP3 you need to use a freeware program called FAT32FORMAT.EXE to get it to format large disks FAT32 since XP was intentionally crippled by Microsoft, with the freeware everything works fine!?

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/ind...at32format.htm

I noticed that a local seller has some Seagate 1.5TB disks for about $129, is there a way to tell if they are the ones that need new firmware?

We could use more disk space for some stuff we are working on and 1.5TB for about $129 seems like a miracle compaired to what storage cost a few years ago... 1.5TB seems big enough to store about 15 minutes of uncompressed TIF 4K frames, so it just takes just 6 disks maybe to store master frames for a feature, or 6x129=$774 for a master frame set, thats like 1/20th the cost of a 35mm printing negative!

[David Morgan]

Anyway to see which version of the firmware you're running with? If I don't need to mess around with dos, I'll be much happier.