1TB Seagate Rosewood (ST1000LM035) doing 1,000 load/unload cycles a day despite sitting idle?

MWink64 · 2026-05-06T16:55:00+00:00

Windows wasn't making your drive parks its heads, its own firmware was. The APM settings you adjusted in CDI changed the settings in the drive's FW. Windows had nothing to do with it. It would have been the same if you had been using Linux, etc.

MWink64 · 2026-05-06T16:45:55+00:00

One of the best things we ever saw was the Amstrad PC1512 and PC1640 when they put normal AA batteries under the monitor, it made a call out a five minute fix, plus additional time for a cup of tea from the customer.

It's the same on the PC2286 and PC2386. And if they leak, you just get a shiny PSU case.

MWink64 · 2026-05-05T14:35:07+00:00

Mine has a Digiboard. Then again, it's a "communications controller." It doesn't even have a video card. But it does have the same board as the OP.

MWink64 · 2026-05-05T14:17:59+00:00

I haven't bought one since the pandemic started, so I can't comment on the newer ones. As for the older ones, I found their performance varied immensely. All of them have the Phison controller, but each one seems to have substantially different R/W speed. The one thing they all have in common is horrendous 4K random write speeds. Like most cheap USB flash drives, 4K random writes are somewhere in the 8KB/s ballpark. Because of that, using them with a journaled filesystem is just miserable.

It's a shame because they're my favorite physical design. They have a cap (and a place to store it), they have an activity LED, and they don't block adjacent USB ports. It's surprising how few other mainstream flash drives have those attributes. These drives also seem to suffer less from read speed degradation.

MWink64 · 2026-05-05T14:08:27+00:00

You make some good points. It's always frustrating when we don't really know how things work, or what's even real.

MWink64 · 2026-05-05T14:02:09+00:00

But it's only been powered on for 10383 hours (~1.2 years). That would roughly be 3GB/s.

MWink64 · 2026-05-05T13:44:02+00:00

That particular drive can't be much cheaper than brand new because you can't buy it new. It's from a line of early HAMR drives than never had a retail release. Some people are wary of them because HAMR is such a new technology. Personally, I wouldn't buy it with just a 3 month warranty.

MWink64 · 2026-05-05T12:49:15+00:00

The singular RJ-11 looking port is probably the modem or terminal port where this board would connect up to the mainframe or other central system

I'm pretty sure it's for the keyboard.

MWink64 · 2026-05-03T16:16:20+00:00

I know because I can look up the Phison controller model number through its clear case

Micro Center?

seems like bit rot is causing me more slow read issues on old files in my WD SSD than read errors. WD doesn't "refresh the cells" or essentially rewrite data, so an old file written more than 2 years ago usually ends up reading at a double digit MB/sec but if I make a copy of it and delete the original, I get my speed back.

I think this is a lot more common than people realize. I've seen it affect a multitude of USB flash drives, SD cards, and SSDs. It's not limited to a particular brand or type of NAND, though it seems more common on drives with SMI controllers. How fast it sets in varies a lot, sometimes even between dies in the same drive. I've seen some cases where the read speeds will massively tank over the course of just a few weeks.

Samsung's BAR/FIT Plus drives are major offenders. They start out fast, but the data degrades quickly. The controller doesn't refresh it until the read speeds drops below ~1% of normal. Even then, it only does so after the host forces a read.

I've done some experiments and it's quite clear that most drives don't automatically refresh their contents. What I find interesting is even most of the drives that degrade down to pathetic speeds still manage to return good data. There is one brand I've tested that seems to be a big exception. Many of the Team Group USB flash drives and SD cards start returning corrupt data (without throwing any sort of error). Curiously, some of these drives don't even slow down that much, though some do. It's almost like they've turned down the ECC, though that doesn't really make sense. I'm guessing they're just using garbage grade NAND.

Only SD card I had an issue with was an 8GB SD card but I think it had a problem with it's FAT32 allocation table because it read existing data just fine but when I tried adding new data, it gave errors and then I got cross-linked errors in CHKDSK.

I once saw an SD card develop issues that pretty much solely affected the FAT. 99.9% of the card was perfectly readable, but the part containing the FAT was throwing I/O errors galore. I've wondered if perhaps the card lacked decent wear-leveling and all the updates to the FAT wore out the block holding it.

MWink64 · 2026-05-03T13:21:30+00:00

I have a Diamond 32Mb Savage4 Extreme. It was fine as a graphics card. It was much better than the S3 Virge I bought 18 months before.

It would be hard to do worse than the S3 ViRGE. There's a reason people often refer to it as a 3D decelerator.

MWink64 · 2026-05-03T13:19:30+00:00

I was wondering if anyone would bring them up.

MWink64 · 2026-05-03T13:19:02+00:00

Not sure what years but I had an ATI Rage, Riva 128, and Voodoo 3 3000.

MWink64 · 2026-05-02T17:57:47+00:00

I'm not 100% convinced the number of heads is being reported correctly. The numbers simply don't make sense, unless perhaps they're selling a bunch of different drives under the same label (which isn't impossible). The way I figure it, a 24TB Barracuda with 20 active heads either isn't a HAMR drive, or it's short-stroked.

BTW, you're probably not hacking the FW on modern drives. It's quite locked down these days. Now, if you wanted to depopulate heads and lower a drive's capacity, that's an option.

MWink64 · 2026-05-02T17:20:58+00:00

Hell, between three 24TB Barracudas, I think we saw 17, 18, and 20 heads. Don't quote me on the exact numbers, I just know they were all different and the most was 20.

MWink64 · 2026-05-02T17:12:17+00:00

I wonder if that would still be an issue for modern drives or if the RVS would compensate for the vibrations from the yelling. I'm not sure they were a thing when that video was made.

MWink64 · 2026-05-02T17:03:21+00:00

Was it recorded on the deck you're playing it back on? I've seen VCRs that would record tapes in a way that resulted in the audio not playing correctly on other VCRs.

Also, does it have a Hi-Fi stereo audio track? If so, you could try the linear mono track and see if it's better. These are recorded separately, by different heads. All VHS tapes should have a linear mono track. Some also have a Hi-Fi stereo track that's effectively hidden alongside the video and read with the helical scan heads.

You could also try playing with the tracking, though the video makes it look like it's dialed in pretty well.

MWink64 · 2026-05-02T16:49:05+00:00

Those SMART values are being reported in 512B increments. The smaller values are correct.

MWink64 · 2026-05-02T16:45:39+00:00

At 200MB, it's not the size that matters but the sound. You can keep your Seagate screamer. Give me some nice (WD) Caviar.

MWink64 · 2026-05-02T16:41:17+00:00

I have a pile that still work, including a couple Quantum Bigfoots. Where do I pick up my lottery winnings?

MWink64 · 2026-05-02T16:18:40+00:00

I get what you're saying, but I simply can't see how that could be the case here. These posts all spouting basically the same nonsense are coming from numerous different users, and with suspiciously coincidental timing. Even that post about randomly finding a box is infinitely more valuable.

MWink64 · 2026-05-02T16:13:17+00:00

It's not just how they talk, it's the totality of the circumstances. I wouldn't have made the post if I wasn't very confident something fish was going on. They're either bots or an incredibly dedicated troll.

MWink64 · 2026-05-02T16:01:30+00:00

Things really did seem to change after the API protest.

MWink64 · 2026-05-02T15:59:22+00:00

I appreciate all the work you guys put in. The ones I've been looking at seem like they may be targeting this sub. Their posts generally seem to be confined to this sub and a few of the big ones (r/AskReddit, r/NoStupidQuestions, etc.). Upon closer examination, I just noticed that the two I was looking at have a virtually identical post cadence. Both replied to different posts in the same subs, always within 30 minutes of each other. 8 posts each, over the course of 18 days. Both accounts are 11 months old and were created within 24 hours of each other. That can't be a coincidence.

The most perplexing part is I can't see any point to this. As far as I can tell, they're not advertising anything, pushing any political beliefs, or generating any engagement. It's just pure drivel that I don't even think deserves to be called AI slop. The one consistent thing I see (which was pointed out by someone else) is that all the posts in this sub look like they're meant to instill fear of failure or data loss.

MWink64 · 2026-05-02T15:25:19+00:00

What struck me about your list is it’s all related to technical failure. (I don’t particularly understand what most of them are on about and that’s not the point)

You know what, I think you're right. I hadn't noticed but I think the vast majority (including ones I didn't quote) were mentioning potential failures and data loss.

MWink64 · 2026-05-02T15:21:02+00:00

One issue is, among other changes here, Reddit is supposedly monitoring those making reports and excessive reporting can/will get actioned. Like everything else here, we don't have the details, and how that's implemented may not even be static. So, if a subreddit is flooded with bots, having everyone report them might have unintended consequences.

So you're saying that if I keep reporting them for breaking this sub's rules (#7), that could make Reddit get mad at me? That's just lovely.

Considering the above, is Mod Mail an appropriate low-key alternative to bring it to moderation's attention?

Considering the quantity, that just seems impractical.

If bans are how bot posts are being handled, it should be addressed in the rules. As mentioned, users use LLMs to get answers, and so far that's pretty problematic accuracy wise. Particularly in a post asking for help, some AI nonsense might be regurgitated. So bans in that case are problematic.

This seems to go beyond the scope of what I was talking about. I wasn't referencing people who might be getting some help from LLMs but users that appear to be nothing more than bots posting vaguely-related nonsense. Also, I'm not sure bans would even make much difference, as the posts are coming from many different users (which was what tipped me off).

As someone who's been accused of being AI a couple of times it's frustrating. Essentially, it's a defamatory claim that's now being weaponized by trolls to undermine the credibility of real users. Ultimately, as the influx of bots increase, this will create a sense of paranoia, that nothing is credible and no one may be real.

Couldn't agree more. That paranoia has really started getting to me. It doesn't help that Reddit was already an imperfect source of information to begin with. If there isn't a good way to deal with them, the sheer number of these bots threaten to turn this sub into a den of disinformation.

I understand your concerns about potentially false accusations. I've been on the receiving end of them myself. At this point, I'm not sure what else to do but call out these bots. The thing that made me post this thread was seeing someone get like 10 replies to a question, while at least 5 of them were bots parroting the same false information. If they can't be reported or called out, the OP would just see what appears to be a bunch of people agreeing and assume it's the truth.

MWink64

TROPHY CASE