Another hard drive warranty question

[Grant]

The drive in my old MacBook pro is a Samsung drive (made by seagate ?).
Every now and then the laptop freezes up for 30seconds or so, then unfreezes and continues operating normally.
The 30 second freeze is a well documented issue, even MYBB has had a few thread regarding it.
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/529744-MBP-The-Spinning-Beach-Ball-Of-Death

iStore & DigiCape say the drive is on it's way out - this seems the general opinion regards this problem.
The laptop runs Win7 through bootcamp, so I ran SeaTools - as recommended by Seagate.
SeaTools says the drive is good, as does Mac's Disc Utility.
The drive itself is still under warranty, however it seems Seagate want a SeaTools report stating the drive is faulty in order to swap out under warranty.

So I have a situation where the drive is playing up, but SeaTools says it is fine. (therefore no warranty swap out)
How is the best way to deal with this issue - any ideas ?
Furthermore, I do not remember where the drive came from - as for a cash slip or receipt - no chance of finding that.

 

[Rickster]

Download and run this in windows 7, and post a screenshot here please.

 

[[email protected]]

Small and easy to use.
Great little program to test your hard drive

 

[sajunky]

SeaTools says the drive is good, as does Mac's Disc Utility.
The drive itself is still under warranty, however it seems Seagate want a SeaTools report stating the drive is faulty in order to swap out under warranty.

SMART report is good, but it can be another problem, corrupted firmware. You can't fix it by upgrading firmware.

To find out hard drive condition boot from Hiren's live CD and use such tools like Victoria for DOS or Windows and do full surface scan and meassure delays. Just normal default scan, don't try to repair or erase delays. There is another program for this purpose (Testdisk I think). If you know how to deal with DOS, the best program is MHDD. Post results here.

 

[Grant]

SMART report is good, but it can be another problem, corrupted firmware. You can't fix it by upgrading firmware.

To find out hard drive condition boot from Hiren's live CD and use such tools like Victoria for DOS or Windows and do full surface scan and meassure delays. Just normal default scan, don't try to repair or erase delays. There is another program for this purpose (Testdisk I think). If you know how to deal with DOS, the best program is MHDD. Post results here.

problem is that seagate want the report from their sea tools - not others

 

[sajunky]

problem is that seagate want the report from their sea tools - not others

Correct, but they will obviously change their minds when supplied with evidence.

 

[GreGorGy]

What reason did Digi and iStore give for their prognosis?

 

[Grant]

What reason did Digi and iStore give for their prognosis?

Their reasoning was based on past experience.
Although I rarely agree with them, on this occasion I have to. The drive was replaced with spare clone / backup drive & there has not been a problem since.
(it must be noted that the spare cloned drive was kept totally up to date, any change to software or o.s. happened on the cloned drive too - this eliminates the blame for the problem being software related)