Reminder to oneself...never,ever buy a Seagate HD again.

Armageus · 14 Aug 2015 at 10:14

Jim99 said:
I doubt that it's going to make much of a difference which brand you buy.

Jim99 said:
It's still just a case of chance.

dannywaugh1 said:
I don't think is matters what brand you buy.

These sum this thread up perfectly

Dave2150 said:
There have been several articles, including the blackblaze one, that confirm this - really high failure rates compared to WD.
.

The backblaze one is flawed on so many levels not sure why people still keep bringing it up - some articles ref that article:

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6...bility-myth-the-real-story-covered/index.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/17/backblaze_how_not_to_evaluate_disk_reliability/

crinkleshoes · 14 Aug 2015 at 10:37

Up to you what you think about that... it seems to back up the experiences of quite a lot of people, myself included.

I see many more complaints about Seagate than the other manus... especially the 3TB drives.

I bought six of the things when they were relatively new... first two failed within 18 months, the next 2 failed the following 6 months after that.

Still have two operating after a few years.

Compared to my WDs... 4x3TB + 8x4TB + 4x6TB and not a single failure yet.

Plus longer warranties etc...

Armageus · 14 Aug 2015 at 11:29

crinkleshoes said:
Up to you what you think about that... it seems to back up the experiences of quite a lot of people, myself included.

If running non NAS or enterprise drives in situations they weren't designed for (e.g. 45 drives in an enclosure) is your thing, then sure read what you want from it. But it doesn't match my experience, or I'm sure as many people as it does match.

crinkleshoes said:
I see many more complaints about Seagate than the other manus... especially the 3TB drives.

Possibly because I believe they were first to market a 3TB drive, albeit probably not a NAS rated drive, possibly they sold more than any other manufacturer - you don't see people posting about being happy with their hard drive .

crinkleshoes said:
Compared to my WDs... 4x3TB + 8x4TB + 4x6TB and not a single failure yet..

Don't Jinx it

All drives fail - just a case of when.

At work we have had all drives fail over the years, whether value (e.g. Green drives), standard drives (e.g. Blue or equivalent), and performance (e.g. Black and Raptors). We have had enterprise SAS and SCSI drives fail from all manufacturers.

A recent one just to put things into some kind of perspective - we have recently bought a load (around 100 spread over a few months - so different batches etc) of HP 800 Mini PC's at work, and replaced the 2.5" Hard drives with SSDs - the split between hard drive oem's in the machines was roughly: 50% Seagate, 20% WD Black, 30% Hitachi.

I assume that if HP has enough confidence (and has to support them with warranty) to offer drives from all three of the main manufacturers, that I can have confidence in all of them.

snowdog · 14 Aug 2015 at 11:35

Seagates still do have higher than usual failure rates in my experience, but WD also seems to be getting worse ( the wd caviar green series are significantly worse than the AAKS ( later: Blue) series, and I've seen issues with Samsungs & Hitachi's too.

7200.9-7200.12 seem to be a rubbish Seagate series in my experience though, about 20% of em I had ( admittedly, I do buy a lot of 2nd hand stuff) have shown issues immediately or over time or even failed completely.

What's with the 3tb drives then, I have a 3tb Seagate Nas atm ( which, admittedly, has been getting noisier when seeking, but haven't thought much of it as it still works, and smart data is fine too).

Khrest · 14 Aug 2015 at 12:34

I bought 2 x 3tb drives 18 months ago. First one failed after 11 months, replacement failed last week. Second one failed outside warranty.

Will never ever buy a seagate product again, either I was incredibly unlucky to lose three in under a year, or they really do sell junk.

chippy08 · 16 Aug 2015 at 15:59

Would never touch seagate myself but i am in the market for 3 3tb drives looks like i will go wd but i see the prices have shot again.

rapt0r · 16 Aug 2015 at 19:40

Just had 1 of the dreaded Seagate 3TB fail on me last week also. Looking at a head-stack replacement priced at £634 should I choose to go ahead with it.

I'm really surprised there is not a sticky containing details of reputable Data Recovery Specialists listed in this forum as it was the first place I came and searched. It surely would have saved me £65 had I known which companies to avoid and the various 'No Fix No Fee' bs companies that are around. I believe I have found a company that is truly 'No Data No Fee' as in they don't ask for money upfront for parts that are 'non-refundable' even if your data can't be recovered like 99% of them do. This 1 do all they can to recover your data first including getting the donor parts (if needed) and then charge a fixed fee at the end after providing you with a list of the files that can be recovered and their integrity.

And yeah, never buying a Seagate ever again, ever never ever. Never.

Rroff · 16 Aug 2015 at 19:44

snowdog said:
Seagates still do have higher than usual failure rates in my experience, but WD also seems to be getting worse ( the wd caviar green series are significantly worse than the AAKS ( later: Blue) series, and I've seen issues with Samsungs & Hitachi's too.

7200.9-7200.12 seem to be a rubbish Seagate series in my experience though, about 20% of em I had ( admittedly, I do buy a lot of 2nd hand stuff) have shown issues immediately or over time or even failed completely.

What's with the 3tb drives then, I have a 3tb Seagate Nas atm ( which, admittedly, has been getting noisier when seeking, but haven't thought much of it as it still works, and smart data is fine too).

I've experience of 100s of the Seagate .9 and .10s (new) with very little failure within the limits of my experience - but the .11s are just a total failure story and the .12s aren't inspiring either - some of them have been going strong (got about a dozen setup in NAS boxes without any issues so far as well as a 5 disc RAID in my previous gaming PC) taking a beating for several years others have started spamming SMART errors after a year and becoming highly unreliable not long after.

kayomani · 16 Aug 2015 at 19:45

I have a few 1.5s and 2tb Seagates and they have outlasted the WD greens I got around the same time.

crinkleshoes · 16 Aug 2015 at 19:51

It seems to be the 3TB drive that have the worst reputation... others are doing quite well for themselves.

I know I have a few older 1TB drives from them and they kept going well... think I had some 500gb drives that have lasted a while.

They changed their warranty from 3 or 5 years to 1 year when the 3TB drives were released... so seems they already knew what they were releasing was crap.

nutcase · 16 Aug 2015 at 20:51

Seagate enterprise grade drives are fine. Last pretty much forever. A million years ago, in the 90s their consumer drives were the best.

Now I wouldn't touch one with anything.

Selekt0r · 17 Aug 2015 at 21:25

rapt0r said:
I'm really surprised there is not a sticky containing details of reputable Data Recovery Specialists listed in this forum as it was the first place I came and searched. It surely would have saved me £65 had I known which companies to avoid and the various 'No Fix No Fee' bs companies that are around.

No, the sticky which is missing is the one saying 'Always Always Always have a backup (preferably multiple redundant ones) of anything which is important to you'. There are way too many posts around here by people who have been bitten by hard disk failure.

nutcase · 18 Aug 2015 at 08:43

I've been playing with some RAID recovery software (see thread on failed WD DX4000 - we don't have to send it back yet so are having a play. We've had some good results with R-Studio. Not bothered paying for it as we don't NEED to recover anything, but did a single file recovery and that worked ok.