[SMacTech]

I have read throughout the years, of people complaining about the spinning beach-ball of death [SBOD]. While there are times I would get one, because of a process that wasn't threaded or something taking a while to complete, what I am seeing now is something I never have seen before in OS X.

My internal 60gb drive developed some problems, so I went out and purchased a Seagate 160gb 8mb buffer ata-100 drive. I installed Tiger on it and copied my user settings from another partition [ the flaky 60gb internal ]. Everything worked!

However, I now get the SBOD more times in one day, then I have seen in a month. So I fire up terminal and run fs_usage to see what's going on in file access. What is happening is the drive is simply not responding [sometimes] and is taking anywhere from 2-5 seconds to decide to give me access. It is basically just hanging there, with NOTHING happening.

I then created a new user account and used it for awhile. I saw the same SBOD delays when browsing the web, accessing mailboxes, using the Finder, etc. There is no other haxies, 3rd party software, or hardware on this rig. Plain vanilla Apple stuff, sans NEW seagate drive.

I had enough of this delay, knowing it is not at all normal for OS X. So I reformatted the 60GB original drive, reinstalled Tiger and copied the settings back from the Seagate drive.

I now am using the same account settings and data from the SBOD Seagate and the original 60gb drive and the SBOD is GONE!!!

Take it for what it is worth...

Drive info :

ST3160023A: aka the SBOD Seagate drive

Capacity: 149.05 GB
Model: ST3160023A
Revision: 8.01
Serial Number: 4LJ0BMGN
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk1
Protocol: ATA
Unit Number: 1
Socket Type: Internal
OS9 Drivers: No
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

IBM-IC35L060AVVA07-0:

Capacity: 57.27 GB
Model: IBM-IC35L060AVVA07-0
Revision: VA3BA52A
Serial Number: VNC303A3L6SZAA
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Protocol: ATA
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Internal
OS9 Drivers: Yes
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

[msuper69]

The drive sounds flaky.

[SMacTech]

Originally Posted by msuper69

The drive sounds flaky.

The drive formats correctly, without any errors. It is acting flaky, as a brand new drive operating this way, which otherwise works without problem. I have copied over 100GB to it. While it has a 5 year warranty, I am not worried about the $129 spent.

It just has that stall, that while to some it would appear an OS X problem. It happens periodically. The drives are set to not spin down. If the drive is in constant use, the stall is NOT there. Running fs_usage shows exactly the file and volume being accessed, complete with resulting delay.

How many other similar FLAKY Seagate drives or other brands are out there?

[eggman]

That Seagate is the same drive that came with my Dual 2.0Ghz G5, albeit with an SATA interface... and I've been pretty happy with it. So much so that I got a second one to mirror it for nightly backups.

Capacity: 149.05 GB
Model: ST3160023AS
Revision: 3.05
Serial Number: 3JS16ZNN
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Protocol: ata
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Serial-ATA
Bay Name: "A (upper)"
OS9 Drivers: Yes
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

I can't say that the SBOD is a stranger... but it isn't a frequent companion, either.