so. seagate. crap drives much?

[brblx]

seagate used to be the best in the industry, but i now apparently have two of their drives that are failing. just want to get some opinions before i chuck them...

i initially was investigated my drives (4x sata) because i could feel this odd pulsing coming from my PC. sounded like a fan spinning up and down once every couple seconds, but i could feel it in my desk and the chassis of the PC.

it went away when i disconnected my 250gb seagate drive. upon removing the drive, i can hear a rattle inside it. a gentle shake produces a 'click click click' noise. i'm assuming it's a bad bearing, and the play is the cause of my vibration?

i downloaded seatools to check all my drives. the 250gb drive passes, BUT my 750gb seagate does not. failed a short self test, then passed a short self test. now i'm running the long test, which it has not yet failed. is one failure enough to condemn it? this is a 7200.10 drive, i'm guessing this was one of the ones seagate had problems with? i did notice some noises that sounded like the drive turning on and off, but assumed it was coming from the other bad drive. now i'm thinking it was this one.

i guess i'm on my way to best buy to pick up a terabyte drive. just wanted to get some opinions. hoping seagate will at least warranty the 750, which can't be more than a year or two old.

 

[haffey]

one of my 250GB seagates died on me once. the RMA process was quick and easy though - it was all automated afaik. i would RMA them just to be sure. whatever you do though, don't buy hardware from best buy. you can get a 7200RPM 1TB drive online for maybe $80-85.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I believe it was the 7200.11's which had the initial firmware issues. Seagate should hook you up.

 

[brblx]

best buy is convenient because i can get it today. yeah, it costs a little more, but not a ton. plus everyone and their mom has a warehouse in tennessee, so newegg and many other charge me tax, anyway.

i've been looking around and yeah, it was the 7200.11 drives that had massive failures, although the reviews for this drive (ST3750640AS) indicate that it is pretty much a hunk of shit, as well. seems like half the people that bought one from newegg experienced a quick failure.

not even sure i care about RMAing, unless they send me a different drive (assuming not). they can pretty much cram this chinese turd right up their asses...

seagate was the always my 'go to' manufacturer for long lasting drives. now it seems the entire industry is down the tubes...is there a 1TB drive out there with reviews that DON'T indicate a >20% failure rate? i mean come on, i've only had one drive ever fail before this (8GB WD), now it seems like five years or more of reliable service is asking for the moon.

 

[Binky]

If you have all seagate drives, the chance that a failed drive will be seagate is 100%. Umm, yeah.

Drives fail. I've had all brands fail in my own machines. A dead drive does not mean the entire product line is "crap."

 

[brblx]

i have two seagate drives. other two are maxtor and WD. i also have numerous 'retired' seagate drives that never had an issue (that i'm sure were not chinese made).

 

[Nitemare]

Had a Deathstar fail on me way back, so I switched to Seagates. Now I had a 500 GB seagate drive just fail without any warning at all

 

[SunSamurai]

Ive had 2 spinpoing 120s die on me just because. Anyone know if i can return them to samsung or what? My luck they are probably 3 years old with a 3y warrentee

 

[Rifter]

7200.11 were crap no question there but they fixed the problems with the 7200.12 i own 6 of the 7200.12 drives in differnt systems and they are some of the fastest non SAS/SSD drives i have seen and so far not a single problem with them.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

I RMA'ed a Seagate a couple years ago, and since they no longer made the drive they just gave me my money back. I had used that drive for like 2 years, and they just gave me my money back for it. I thought that was pretty cool.

 

[pjkenned]

Seagate RMA is super easy. Put some numbers in online, send them the drive, they send you one back giving you e-mail notifications as the process progresses. The reason you probably see tons of failures at Newegg is that their packaging is not as good as somewhere like Dell. Drives fail, so long as you plan for it, it is not really an issue.

 

[brblx]

i still need to buy a new drive. i guess i'll order one- i'm looking at giving samsung another go, as i've always had good luck with their drives. with longetivity and not speed in mind, i'm looking at two drives for roughly the same price- the f1 750gb raid class, which is well reviewed and boasts an extremely high MTBF number (whatever that's worth these days), or the slower F2 1TB. would slower and less heat really be of much benefit if my drives are typically <35C anyway?

 

[brblx]

well the 750gb just started dying, so i had no choice but to go to BB and pay $120 for a 1tb caviar black. i think retail boxes are worth a little extra, though. i'm copying the 250 now, oddly enough it's still performing okay. hoping i can still get everything off the 750...

RMA's are filed, but now i have to find some boxes and packing materials...should send one of them back in the WD box...

 

[brblx]

it's a shame the big seagate is dying, 'cause damn it and the caviar black are both fast as balls. won't quite take a whole day to get all the files off like i thought, heh.

 

[taltamir]

is one failure enough to condemn it?

YES! if YOU have a hunch that it is acting WRONG and every single test passes you should STILL get rid of the thing... the tests RARELY find a drive to be defective, and when they do, believe them.

 

[CoinOperatedBoy]

Fuck Seagate. I RMA'd a problematic 7200.11, got the replacement, and found that it sounded louder and had a faulty temperature sensor. Their customer support told me not to worry about it and t continue using the drive. Well, what do you know? The drive failed two months later, and they refused to expedite another RMA, give me free shipping, anything. They made zero concessions because they said the first RMA was too long ago -- even though it was their advice that stopped me from sending the replacement back in week 1. So instead of spending another $10-20 in shipping just to get another bum drive, the Seagate is going in the trash and I put that money toward a Western Digital.

 

[faxon]

my step dad runs a home NAS server with 4 Seagate 1TB ES.2 drives in it. he got 4 of them right around the launch time of the 7200.11 drives, and they inherited the same issues. one of the drives has already been replaced and we just havent got around to RMAing it yet, and another one is also going bad, with the other 2 showing signs of possibly failing as well. in the mean time, my 150gb Vraptor, 1TB WD Green external, and my 2 spinpoint F1s are all cranking along just fine, as are my 3 7200.10 barracudas that are going on toward 2-3 years old now. my advice, wait a year or 2 for seagate to iron out their drive issues and make a point to buy drives from multiple manufacturers. im planning on buying some WD 1TB Blacks to RAID with my F1s, since it's good practice to RAID different drives together if you're concerned about the failure rates of a particular line of drives

 

[taltamir]

considering seagates policy towards SSD is "SSD as a technology infringes on some of our patents for data storage", I wouldn't expect them to be an active player in the HDD scene for long... they might stay around to sue a lot of people though. (while not producing anything)

 

[hans007]

i've never really had a problem with seagate, and I did have one of the 7200.11s (i flashed it and never had a problem other than it was a bit noisier than the drive i have now).

That said, maxtor pretty much was the worst drive company around for years, and well seagate bought them, so maybe that can explain some of it.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: hans007
That said, maxtor pretty much was the worst drive company around for years, and well seagate bought them, so maybe that can explain some of it.

The Seagate folks that I'd talked to after the Maxtor acqusition claimed they'd dumped the Maxtor designs. I'm not sure what Seagate actually used from Maxtor, other than the name. Seagate said that the Maxtor name had a higher recognition than Seagate's in the Home market.

 

[sxr7171]

Yeah because Maxtor used to sell retail drives, Seagate didn't do that until they acquired Maxtor.

 

[pjkenned]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
The Seagate folks that I'd talked to after the Maxtor acqusition claimed they'd dumped the Maxtor designs. I'm not sure what Seagate actually used from Maxtor, other than the name.

Pretty close.