Last ever Seagate drive died half hour ago

Justintime · 26 Aug 2013 at 07:45

Well, after all these years of Seagate drives, my final one has died. Why final? well over the last 5 years I've suffered countless drive failures In my private enterprise, personally and at my daily job.
The rot started with the 7200.11 1.5tb drives, of which I've had 17 die out of 10 purchased (hehe, figure out why

). The final replacement gave up the ghost this morning with loud clunks and heavy whining, Windows 7 spat out errors about failure etc.. didn't matter, it had nothing on it, I was just waiting to see how long it would last. Every replacement died, within 6 months and all developed bad sectors within days. I only gambled on an RMA working as my work sends them off for me in the post.

Heres my compilation

Private jobs:
7200.11 1.5tb - 94 purchased - 72 failed, replaced with another brand
7200.11 1tb - 43 purchased - 19 failed, replaced with another brand
7200.12 2tb - 103 purchased - 38 failed. replaced with another brand
ST2000DM001 - 26 purchased - 15 failed, by this time I stopped buying Seagates

Personal
7200.11 1.5tb - 10 purchased - 17 failed
7200.11 1tb - 5 purchased - 5 failed
7200.3 250Gb - 15 bought for a little NAS RAID server I had a couple yrs back, all retired, 9 failed, 4 RMA'ed ones failed, I gave up.

Work
1tb 7200.11 - 300 in workstations, all OEM, 141 failed, replaced with WDs
1.5tb 7200.11 - 182 in workstations, OEM, whopping 139 failed, replaced with WDs and Samsungs, who were not Seagate owned at the time, manufacturer seems to have learnt their lesson and no more seagates have been used since.

I was told I could have the Seagate 1.5s when we upgraded to 3tb drives but scrapped them, didn't even bother to sell them as I don't feel like cheating people.
Seagate send back recertified drives with little to no testing and seem to just wipe the SMART data from another customers RMA and relabel, don't expect the RMA to last. Of course I use a lot of other brands and have failures but nothing like the Seagates, not even close.

nshire · 26 Aug 2013 at 11:46

I do wonder how seagate compares to maxtor back in the day. (I know seagate bought them in the end).

We had a SAN in work and 1st week of having it 1 seagate went off and thought bugger here we go but none other has failed yet in 6months.

I got 3 hard drives that are samsung and been perfect and they are 2+ years or older. But now seagate has bought Samsung I won't touch any of the samsungs now.

Western Digital is the only decent hard drive manufacturer left.

Deadly Ferret · 26 Aug 2013 at 12:26

I'm curious, did you buy the majority of them prior to the first few of the failures occuring? If not, why did you keep buying Seagate disks? :confused:

Justintime · 26 Aug 2013 at 12:54

Deadly Ferret said:
I'm curious, did you buy the majority of them prior to the first few of the failures occuring? If not, why did you keep buying Seagate disks?

Majority of the problems started showing up within a year, I do buy in bulk as well. Also the work ones I had no say over. I tended to give them a chance with the newer models as people said they improved, they did but they still failed more than other brands.

Justintime · 26 Aug 2013 at 12:59

nshire said:
Western Digital is the only decent hard drive manufacturer left.

I tend to agree, used to be Samsung and WD over the last few yrs but now Seagate has their hands on Samsung, I can't trust their drives anymore.

Yas786 · 26 Aug 2013 at 13:23

Justintime said:
Private jobs:
7200.11 1.5tb.

LOL i have 2 of them sat in my NAS box and one of them failed on me the other day so i repaired it but within a day it had crashed so is no longer seen by my NAS. Thankfully i had them both in a RAID 1 config so i didnt lose any data but the fact is that its a pain for me because they are now discontinued so will now have to replace the other working hd with a pair of new ones but a different size.

Going to purchase a pair of WD red 2 tb drives sometime soon as they are meant to be good for NAS solutions. No doubt the other one will fail on me pretty soon, an expense that i could do without tbqh

Justintime · 26 Aug 2013 at 13:38

I can say that I have 10 3Tb WD reds in 2 file servers and have used 29 so far in builds (slowed down on that side of business) with 0 failures as yet. One Red did have a reallocated sector 7 months ago and nothing since, keeping my eye on it but not going to worry as it happened pretty early on and hasn't gotten worse.

Yas786 · 26 Aug 2013 at 13:46

Justintime said:
I can say that I have 10 3Tb WD reds in 2 file servers and have used 29 so far in builds (slowed down on that side of business) with 0 failures as yet. One Red did have a reallocated sector 7 months ago and nothing since, keeping my eye on it but not going to worry as it happened pretty early on and hasn't gotten worse.

Thats good to hear

, the one that died on me had the reallocated sector error then a day later crashed.

Mind you cant complain, they gave me 2 yrs of decent service but i guess one died due to the heat it created. Idle it was about 50c and when running probably close to 60+c from what i remember.

wazza300 · 26 Aug 2013 at 14:25

I have a small 120gb Seagate that came with my Pentium 4 pc,its about 6 or 7 years old,still works fine but god its noisy

Justintime · 26 Aug 2013 at 14:31

wazza300 said:
I have a small 120gb Seagate that came with my Pentium 4 pc,its about 6 or 7 years old,still works fine but god its noisy

The older ones are fine, I think its the 1-2tb range that are dodgy. Did have a higher than average failure rate of the 750GB versions though, didn't keep data on that so can't make a definite comment. Not had any experience with the 3 or 4Tb drives so can't comment. The Momentus seems a decent drive in 5400rpm flavour and can't complain about the XTs.

Speed · 26 Aug 2013 at 14:32

Justintime said:
I tend to agree, used to be Samsung and WD over the last few yrs but now Seagate has their hands on Samsung, I can't trust their drives anymore.

You can't trust Samsung drives because Seagate now own them? :confused:

Seagate just rebranded the remaining Samsung stock with Seagate model numbers, they never made any Samsung branded drives. Sure you have to deal with Seagate for RMAs, but all the HDD companies are pretty much the same to deal with now.

Yas786 said:
No doubt the other one will fail on me pretty soon, an expense that i could do without tbqh

Is it not still in warranty?

I use pretty much all Seagate drives, although thats not really a brand preference thing, more a "they were the cheapest at the time thing". No problems thus far with the 3TBs at least, ST3000DM001 if memory serves.

wazza300 · 26 Aug 2013 at 14:34

Speed said:
You can't trust Samsung drives because Seagate now own them?

+1

they might be rebranded as Seagate but they are still Samsung design

EDIT: the f4 drives I was talking about

Yas786 · 26 Aug 2013 at 14:38

Speed said:
Is it not still in warranty?

I use pretty much all Seagate drives, although thats not really a brand preference thing, more a "they were the cheapest at the time thing". No problems thus far with the 3TBs at least, ST3000DM001 if memory serves.

Im not sure as i couldnt find the receipt for it but honestly i dont think its worth sending it back to get it fixed for it only to fail again. At the moment the one that is in my NAS seems to be fine but at some point, probably next week ill be looking to get a pair of WD reds in and then hope that these drives last me a fair while.

Justintime · 26 Aug 2013 at 14:38

Speed said:
You can't trust Samsung drives because Seagate now own them?

Seagate just rebranded the remaining Samsung stock with Seagate model numbers, they never made any Samsung branded drives. Sure you have to deal with Seagate for RMAs, but all the HDD companies are pretty much the same to deal with now.

If I send a Samsung made drive for warranty, am I assured I don't get a Seagate made Barracuda or something in return? Hence why I won't buy any Samsung branded stock or Seagate Samsung rebrands still floating about.

Speed · 26 Aug 2013 at 14:46

Yas786 said:
Im not sure as i couldnt find the receipt for it but honestly i dont think its worth sending it back to get it fixed for it only to fail again. At the moment the one that is in my NAS seems to be fine but at some point, probably next week ill be looking to get a pair of WD reds in and then hope that these drives last me a fair while.

It generally goes off the serial number. You can check here: http://support.seagate.com/customer/en-us/warranty_validation.jsp

Sure, but if it is under warranty it will just cost you postage. You get a sealed replacement back, sell that on the MM and put the funds towards a different drive.

Justintime said:
If I send a Samsung made drive for warranty, am I assured I don't get a Seagate made Barracuda or something in return? Hence why I won't buy any Samsung branded stock or Seagate Samsung rebrands still floating about.

Generally, you get like for like back if that have stock. They do this to avoid compatibility issues. Samsung designed/manufactured drives tend to be more reliable in my experience as well. Although that being said I've had no issues with the modern Seagate large drives.

Justintime · 26 Aug 2013 at 14:52

Seagate avoid compatibility issues? I've had them send 5900rpm drives in lieu of 7200 or vice versa, different model (usually newer) etc.. They seem to have a constant supply of 7200.11s though, the cycle of death continues

Speed said:
Sure, but if it is under warranty it will just cost you postage. You get a sealed replacement back, sell that on the MM and put the funds towards a different drive.

It'll be green bordered and marked recertified. Plus anyone with a bit of knowledge would not touch one and i'd feel bad selling it.

Speed · 26 Aug 2013 at 16:08

Justintime said:
Seagate avoid compatibility issues? I've had them send 5900rpm drives in lieu of 7200 or vice versa, different model (usually newer) etc.. They seem to have a constant supply of 7200.11s though, the cycle of death continues

Strange, I've always got like for like for every drive I've RMA'd regardless of manufacturer. Maybe I was just lucky.

Justintime said:
It'll be green bordered and marked recertified. Plus anyone with a bit of knowledge would not touch one and i'd feel bad selling it.

It will yes, I've never found the recertified drives any less reliable tbh, but then I've only had a few.

Feel bad? Each to their own I guess, in my opinion it is down to the buyer to do the research on the product and make a decision on if to buy it or not. There are countless products sold on the MM that I wouldn't touch with a bargepole due to bad personal experiences with them, do I think its bad that sellers are selling them? Of course not.

As long as you clearly state what it is, its condition, remaining warranty, where you got it from etc you have covered your responsibilities as a good seller imho.

Justintime · 26 Aug 2013 at 16:36

Speed said:
S

It will yes, I've never found the recertified drives any less reliable tbh, but then I've only had a few.

Had more than a few, bad product that has physical fatal flaws that can't be corrected by firmware will always remain so. I've given up now and just bin any clients Seagate and if its under my warranty still i eat the cost, if not i suggest another manufacturer for them to get. Rather a good reputation than the client never using me again.

Speed · 26 Aug 2013 at 18:28

Justintime said:
Had more than a few, bad product that has physical fatal flaws that can't be corrected by firmware will always remain so. I've given up now and just bin any clients Seagate and if its under my warranty still i eat the cost, if not i suggest another manufacturer for them to get. Rather a good reputation than the client never using me again.

Yeah I guess it is different when you are trying to maintain a reputation with clients for return business etc.

Sasahara · 26 Aug 2013 at 23:15

So you're not considering trying Toshiba now they have Hitachi's 3.5" assets?

I'm looking to replace my existing Mechanical HDDs internal and external all WD, due to size age. Since 1998 I've not had a personal HDD for longer than 3 years till now. That being due to the floods inflating the replacement prices I've held back.

I've been using WD pretty much exclusively for the last 5-6 years that probably accounts for around 30 drives. (Not counting SSDs)

Just had my first personal HDD fail recently (I'm not counting HDDs I've use for work and other builds), only a low use external drive WD My book 2TB USB3, 150 hours use. :< Removed it out of the case and reformatted, just under half the drives sectors have completely failed from a fixed point onwards. Typically it was just after the 2 year warrantee expired. ^^ Formatted to 1TB it seems to work as an internal so I'll use it for testing only.

Price wise Toshiba beat WD with similar models and warranty, though I've not had one since they were IBM drives.

Ideally I want to go with 4TB drives, but the choice is pretty limited. :/