Bought a Seagate 160GB Baracuda drive in December '06.It was working fine till August last year when it stopped being detected by XP,post which I used a recovery tool to retrieve all the data.Then formatted the drive and all was good till a month ago when I started getting Windows Error Messages saying "Windows could not write to that disk"??? and for the past week,the drive has become extremely slow.Copying data from there to other drives takes ages and there is stutter and interruptions while playing audio files.I backed up data and formatted the drive again last night.But still the problem persists..

I will take it to the dealer and ask for a replacement perhaps since its under warranty.But just wanted to know what the problem might be.

Cheers

What kind of drive...internal/external? SATA/IDE?

It could be something as simple as a cable...

And yes, it should have at least a three year warranty...but you will probably need to go through Seagate for the warranty replacement. It would be a good idead to go to Seagate's site and grab the SeaTools diagnostics to run on the drive.

Internal and IDE.... And no,I checked the cabling & also replaced the IDE cables.Still the same problem.

Going to take it to the Seagate service center tomorrow.Lets see :)

Suggest you run the diagnostics (http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools) just as mjc suggested.

I concur. Seagate drives have been very reliable for me - I have not had one single failure EVER with Seagate drives. Running the diagnostic software from Seagate will tell you what is going on. I would also not rule out a dodgey IDE controller on the motherboard. Although somewhat of a rarity, the IDE controller can go senile ;) You could try plopping the drive into another known-to-be-good PC, and see if it is still slow there too. This would definitely point to the drive or the controller.

Thanks to both of you for your replies..I did connect the hdd to another pc but ended up with the same problems.I,however,did not run the seagate test.Instead took it to the service center and thankfully my replacement is arriving in a day or two :D

Also,Mini-Me can you elaborate on this "ide-controller going senile".What does it exactly mean? Should I be changing the connecting wires on the motherboard?

Thanks to both of you for your replies..I did connect the hdd to another pc but ended up with the same problems.I,however,did not run the seagate test.Instead took it to the service center and thankfully my replacement is arriving in a day or two :D

Also,Mini-Me can you elaborate on this "ide-controller going senile".What does it exactly mean? Should I be changing the connecting wires on the motherboard?

Hi.
:)

All I mean, is that like any other electronic device, the IDE controller on a motherboard can fail.

This is not that likely, but anything can happen.

I just mean, by it going senile, a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that the controller can fail, while the rest of the board remains operational.

This is not that likely - perhaps 4% of the time, but I just thought I would mention it.

If you stick around on the forums, you will get used to my slightly-twisted sense of humor!!!!
:p

Heh yes I did get what you meant.. But wanted to know what the possibility of it happening were.In any case,once the new HDD arrives.I do intend to get new cables.