High read and write errors on brand new Seagate Barracuda 256MB cache

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11 Oct 2010
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hi all (solved!)

I have on older PC with :

i5 3470 @ 3.6Ghz x 4 cores
12Gb DDR3 RAM @ 1333Mhz
Intel Q series 8 motherboard
(replaced from a Gigabyte H77M-D3H rev1.0 mobo with both BIOS's broke)
1Gb Nvidia GTX 650 on PCIe x16 v 3.0
250Gb Samsung EVO 860 SSD
(no read or write errors - just a small amount of moving cells to new ones which normal for an MLC SSD that's 7 years old - wear levelling i believe its called)
2TB Western Digital HDD with 64Mb cache (no read or write errors at all and is about 3-4 years old)
2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD with 256Mb Cache (3-4 weeks old and a lot of read and write errors - also the drive is picked up as an SSD one some defrag or optimization apps due to the large 256Mb cache)

should i rteurn this drive?

thanks
 
Last edited:
sent it back..getting a WD black 5200rpm as advised by someone else as , it has a 5yr GT compared to 2yr GT on the Seagate...says it all - ill never by Seagate ever again as they have failed me in the past.
 
Nteretsing, I'm awaiting my Seagate Barracuda Pro 10TB. I've been running 2x4TB Seagates for 7 years and they're still working away... hope the quality hasn't dropped :-(
 
sent it back..getting a WD black 5200rpm as advised by someone else as , it has a 5yr GT compared to 2yr GT on the Seagate...says it all - ill never by Seagate ever again as they have failed me in the past.

Do this ^^

I know our stories/experiences are all anecdotal but I'm 44, don't recall not building PC's and I've just had my THIRD Seagate drive fail.

In 25 years that might not sound like a lot, however, I've used IBM, Hitachi, Samsung, WD, probably others too and I've had warnings/signs with all these brands as they began to fail.
For example, a Samsung HDD threw out the SMART monitor warning one day several years ago and a scandisk run marked off some bad sectors. I was able to pull everything off this drive. After a full format the drive still worked and it's in my machine now as an additional media backup. Obviously I don't trust this drive much but it IS still working just fine.

Conversely, a couple of weeks back, I restarted my PC and it would hang after the POST. After much faffing about I got it to boot with only the NVME drive in. After more faffing about I discovered it was my Seagate that was causing the hang. It was dead. Couldn't get a single file off of it. All three failed Seagates did this, failed without warning and lost everything on them.

TLDR
All hard drives fail, Seagates seem to do it without any warning far more in my experience.
Replace your HDD's every 3-5 years and once the drive has thrown up any kind of issue, return it or don't put anything on it you care about.
 
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