This is harmless to the drive and a routine condition of use however, it causes the SeaTools tests to take much longer time to complete. This is harmless to the drive and a routine condition of use however, it causes the SeaTools tests to take much longer time to complete. When that happens, SeaTools will temporarily suspend its current progress while the drive is busy. Otherwise, Windows will continue to give the disk drive commands to access data for the needs of the other applications. The main reason for this is to keep the drive focused on SeaTools as much as possible.

Isolate SeaTools - close all other applications before running a hard disk diagnostic.

If you have a SeaTools for Windows icon on your desktop, simply launch the program from here.

I expect you will see the same dummy serial number.Launch SeaTools by following these steps once it is installed: If you want to prove this for yourself, remove the PCB with a Torx screwdriver and power it up on its own. I suspect that both drives failed to reach the SA at one time, in which case they would have reported the dummy serial number, model number and firmware version in the ROM. When a drive cannot access the firmware area in the reserved section of the platters (System Area = SA), it defaults to identifying itself with a dummy ID stored within the 'ROM' on the PCB. XxxxxxAx - Self-Service SeaTools Test Code It appears that the test codes have changed in recent times, but my understanding was (in 2013 ?) that the second last digit identifies the failing test, as follows: It is generated from the drive's serial number and the number of the failing test. This code is an encoded hexadecimal number which is unique to each drive. Can someone help me understand what is going on?Īs part of the RMA process, a user needs to obtain a SeaTools 'test code'. Here is the log file note the failed tests on two different dates - they are on two different hard drives. This is why the Seatools log file got appended. Here's the bizzarre part: both of these drives are showing up as the same S/N in Seatools - and not what is printed on the label on the hard drives.

The replacement drive could be formatted by my Mac, but the Short Generic failed.

The first one could not even be formatted (Seatools said cyclic redundancy check failed). But having terrible luck with the quality of the drives being shipped. I found Seagate Ironwolf 4TB drives on Amazon for $15 less than the WD Reds.

Seagate seatools mac