Drive errors for Sata 6.0 drive with Sata 3.0 hard disk controller

  • Thread starter Thread starter Edward Diener
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Edward Diener

I have a Sata 6.0 drive, an Hitachi GST Deskstar H3IK20003272SP, which
strangely enough I have only used intermittently mostly for data backup.
I have been using it on an older system ( circa 2008 ) whose Sata
controller only supports Sata 3.0.

I had experienced occasional problems in the past with the drive, a few
times when backing up software and once when I tried installing a Linux
distro to a partition on the drive, but had not been using it very much
otherwise. Currently the drive is empty again but I was considering
another installation ( Windows 8.0 for which I have an OEM version ) on
the drive.

The warranty period for the drive ends at the end of August, and Hitachi
will honor the warranty since I checked on their RMA site.

Running quick and extended smart tests on the drive show no errors, but
when I also look at the errors that smart had reported against the drive
I am told that there have been a total of 1856 different errors, of
which I can see the last 5 reported in detail. None of my other hard
drives, used much more extensively than the Hitachi, show any smart
errors having ever been reported during use.

Is the drive defective ? Or have the errors and occasional problems I
have encountered occured because I am using a Sata 6.0 drive with a Sata
3.0 controller ?

I am of course strongly tempted to RMA it to Hitachi, but they might
respond that since the Smart quick and extended tests show no errors,
there is nothing wrong with the drive and not replace it. But I am
naturally worried it might still be defective and I do want to use it if
it is actually working well.
 
I have a Sata 6.0 drive, an Hitachi GST Deskstar H3IK20003272SP, which
strangely enough I have only used intermittently mostly for data backup.
I have been using it on an older system ( circa 2008 ) whose Sata
controller only supports Sata 3.0.

I had experienced occasional problems in the past with the drive, a few
times when backing up software and once when I tried installing a Linux
distro to a partition on the drive, but had not been using it very much
otherwise. Currently the drive is empty again but I was considering
another installation ( Windows 8.0 for which I have an OEM version ) on
the drive.

The warranty period for the drive ends at the end of August, and Hitachi
will honor the warranty since I checked on their RMA site.

Running quick and extended smart tests on the drive show no errors, but
when I also look at the errors that smart had reported against the drive
I am told that there have been a total of 1856 different errors, of
which I can see the last 5 reported in detail. None of my other hard
drives, used much more extensively than the Hitachi, show any smart
errors having ever been reported during use.

Is the drive defective ? Or have the errors and occasional problems I
have encountered occured because I am using a Sata 6.0 drive with a Sata
3.0 controller ?

I am of course strongly tempted to RMA it to Hitachi, but they might
respond that since the Smart quick and extended tests show no errors,
there is nothing wrong with the drive and not replace it. But I am
naturally worried it might still be defective and I do want to use it if
it is actually working well.
Click to expand...

Some SATA drives have/had jumper blocks that included an option to
"throttle" the drive back to an earlier SATA level. Does your Hitachi
have that feature?

Perce
 
Some SATA drives have/had jumper blocks that included an option to
"throttle" the drive back to an earlier SATA level. Does your Hitachi
have that feature?
Click to expand...

I see a two-prong something to the right of the Sata connections, but
the doc on the Hitachi website says nothing about it.
 
I've had crooked SATA data cables cause errors.

Get MHDD, available on The Ultimate Boot CD, and run a surface
scan. It will show any sectors that are hard to read, but it's
normal for it to report thousands of slow sectors per 1TB. Here
are some typical results for nondefective drives:

Hitachi 7200 RPM SATA 1TB 7K000.C:

<3ms: 7,600,000
<10ms: 6,500
<50ms: 4,000
<150ms: 4
<500ms: 0
500ms: 0
Click to expand...

At 7200 RPM, one spin takes 8ms.

There's a Windows version of this diagnostic, HDDscan, but
apparently Windows overhead makes it reports lots of false
positives of up to 300ms.

SATA drives automatically switch speeds to match the controller,
and this seems to work well unless the controller was designed
wrong, as was the case with VIA's chips made before about 2009.
OTOH SATA 1.5 controllers from Promise, Silicon Image, and Intel
worked fine with SATA 3 and 6 hard disks (I didn't try any SSD).
Those controllers were vintage 2003.

Some hard disks can be limited to SATA 1.5 speed with a jumper
(Seagate, WD), but the Hitachi drives I've seen instead required
running a utility, called Feature Tool. However it hasn't been
updated from version 2.15 and doesn't seem to support SATA 6
drives.
 
What errors are these? Please post the full SMART report.
Click to expand...

I sent back the drive for a replacement, since it was still within
warranty. When I get the new drive I will run the SMART tests and keep
an eye on any existing errors that develiop. If the drive shows errors
again in normal use I will report exactly what they are.
 
I've had crooked SATA data cables cause errors.
Click to expand...

Crooked meaning bad SATA cables ?
Get MHDD, available on The Ultimate Boot CD, and run a surface
scan. It will show any sectors that are hard to read, but it's
normal for it to report thousands of slow sectors per 1TB. Here
are some typical results for nondefective drives:

Hitachi 7200 RPM SATA 1TB 7K000.C:

<3ms: 7,600,000
<10ms: 6,500
<50ms: 4,000
<150ms: 4
<500ms: 0

At 7200 RPM, one spin takes 8ms.

There's a Windows version of this diagnostic, HDDscan, but
apparently Windows overhead makes it reports lots of false
positives of up to 300ms.
Click to expand...

I see the ISO version from which I should be able to boot a DVD and use
it. Thanks !
SATA drives automatically switch speeds to match the controller,
and this seems to work well unless the controller was designed
wrong, as was the case with VIA's chips made before about 2009.
Click to expand...

The chip controlling the SATA ports is an AMD SB600.
OTOH SATA 1.5 controllers from Promise, Silicon Image, and Intel
worked fine with SATA 3 and 6 hard disks (I didn't try any SSD).
Those controllers were vintage 2003.

Some hard disks can be limited to SATA 1.5 speed with a jumper
(Seagate, WD), but the Hitachi drives I've seen instead required
running a utility, called Feature Tool. However it hasn't been
updated from version 2.15 and doesn't seem to support SATA 6
drives.
Click to expand...

The SATA controller is SATA 3.0.

I sent the drive back to HItachi for a replacement using an RMA. When I
receive the replacement I will test it out with SMART tests and use MHDD
as you suggested. If the usage errors occur again I will report their
exact messages here. Hopefully the replacement drive works better with
my SATA 3.0 controller. I may very well move the drive to a new system I
will be building with of course a SATA 6.0 controller.
 
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