Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1.5TB external HDD problems

[maxim naumov]

hi everyone

I am having problems with a recently purchased external HDD:
0bc2:5031 Seagate RSS LLC, FreeAgent GoFlex 1.5TB USB 3.0.

the HDD would work fine for a while but then the kernel would lock up
and require a powercycle. after turning off soft updates on that
filesystem the lock up has disappeared, but the system still reports
lots of errors repeatedly like the following:

Jun 22 17:05:13 xxxx kernel: (da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): AutoSense failed
Jun 22 17:05:13 xxxx kernel:
g_vfs_done():da0s1d[WRITE(offset=406613852160, length=16384)]error = 5
Jun 22 17:05:13 xxxx kernel:
g_vfs_done():da0s1d[WRITE(offset=406613868544, length=16384)]error = 5
Jun 22 17:05:13 xxxx kernel:
g_vfs_done():da0s1d[WRITE(offset=406613884928, length=16384)]error = 5
Jun 22 17:05:13 xxxx kernel:
g_vfs_done():da0s1d[WRITE(offset=406613901312, length=16384)]error = 5
Jun 22 17:05:13 xxxx kernel:
g_vfs_done():da0s1d[WRITE(offset=406613917696, length=16384)]error = 5
Jun 22 17:05:13 xxxx kernel:
g_vfs_done():da0s1d[WRITE(offset=406613934080, length=16384)]error = 5
Jun 22 17:05:13 xxxx kernel:
g_vfs_done():da0s1d[WRITE(offset=406613950464, length=16384)]error = 5

after getting into that state the HDD seems unresponsive. usbconfig
reset/power doesn't help, you have to physically unplug the drive and
plug it back in.

the same FreeBSD box, same USB socket, same cable, same backup
software and data, but a different USB 3.0 drive (Verbatim 1TB) shows
no errors.

I tried the UQ_MSC_NO_SYNC_CACHE quirk, no luck.

I initially thought the drive was failing, but the long smart test
detected no errors.

it looks like the Seagate is getting its knickers in a twist for some
reason, but after similar tests I found that it works fine in
GNU/Linux 2.6.38, however, the following error is displayed from time
to time during transfers:

[ 5633.140506] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb]  Sense Key : Recovered Error
[current] [descriptor]
[ 5633.140521] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex):
[ 5633.140526]         72 01 04 1d 00 00 00 0e 09 0c 00 00 00 00 00 00
[ 5633.140548]         00 4f 00 c2 40 50
[ 5633.140560] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb]  ASC=0x4 ASCQ=0x1d
[ 5700.040026] [Hardware Error]: Machine check events logged

googling shows that this is a known but benign problem: "SMART
responses for SATA disks on SAS get interpreted as errors".
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1881928
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13594

I was wondering if the GNU/Linux error is somehow related to the
problem I see with FreeBSD. perhaps it is also seen as an error but
the umass code doesn't cope well with it.

more info about my system: 8.2-RELEASE on i386. USB2 EHCI host
controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM.

it looks like it is more likely to fail when transferring large files.
I use the external HDD for backups (rdiff-backup), backing up hundreds
of GBs, with many files over 1GB.

any ideas and requests for more data are welcome.

/max