Replace failed Seagate 3tb

mikeym · 16 May 2015 at 17:33

Any help appreciated...

I need to replace my seagate barracuda 3tb drive which has failed on me.

I initially thought that I would get 2 x 2-3tb drives, so that I can get rid of my silly number of old hard drives (all much older than the seagate and still working fine) and be able to have a full backup. However, prices aren't as low as I thought they would be.

I think I'm going to go WD, on past experience. The drive will be used for documents, photos, videos, CAD files and games. Would the WD Caviar Red be suitable / best option for price, performance and most importantly reliability or do I really need to go for a 'black'?

Great timing as I am about to hand in my thesis that I have been working on since October last year! Annoyingly, as a temporary measure I put in an old 1tb drive, re-assigned the matching drive letter and ran dropbox, where I have everything backed up. However, dropbox thought that I had just deleted stuff and so deleted everything online as well. I have gone online to restore the files but because there are so many, I have to wait for a response to my support ticket.

Dave2150 · 16 May 2015 at 21:42

mikeym said:
Any help appreciated...

I need to replace my seagate barracuda 3tb drive which has failed on me.

I initially thought that I would get 2 x 2-3tb drives, so that I can get rid of my silly number of old hard drives (all much older than the seagate and still working fine) and be able to have a full backup. However, prices aren't as low as I thought they would be.

I think I'm going to go WD, on past experience. The drive will be used for documents, photos, videos, CAD files and games. Would the WD Caviar Red be suitable / best option for price, performance and most importantly reliability or do I really need to go for a 'black'?

Great timing as I am about to hand in my thesis that I have been working on since October last year! Annoyingly, as a temporary measure I put in an old 1tb drive, re-assigned the matching drive letter and ran dropbox, where I have everything backed up. However, dropbox thought that I had just deleted stuff and so deleted everything online as well. I have gone online to restore the files but because there are so many, I have to wait for a response to my support ticket.

WD Red would be a good option, considering the reliability and warranty

ED209 · 17 May 2015 at 10:49

never had a WD red myself but they come in the sinology nas drives we sell at work and I do like them

FamousCFC07 · 17 May 2015 at 22:27

I have replaced all Seagate drives in my build with Reds.. very reliable.
I've had 3 Seagates fail to 0 WD in the same time period.

andy_mk3 · 17 May 2015 at 22:28

Only drives that have ever failed on me are two Seagates!

I rock a WD Red in my server, so far it's great.

ginjaninja · 20 May 2015 at 17:58

another Seagate 3tb bites the dust!

mikeym · 25 May 2015 at 21:42

Thanks all for the replies.

Following comments and a bit more research I will definitely go with WD. Probably going to go with a 2tb black and get a second in a couple of months time as redundancy. Worried the 5900RPM red will be a bit sluggish comparatively...

RussD · 5 Jun 2015 at 22:37

I have just had a Seagate 1Tb with OS on go down on me..Not sure now on whether to install a smaller hard drive like 320gb to 500gb or a 1TB WD Blue. (for OS). So afraid that my two 3TB Seagates might go. If they do, I'll lose all my 5 years of photography backups on them....Can't afford the 2x 3TB Wd Reds at this time. Why only 1 year warranty on them...Was cheeper to buy the Blacks a few years ago.

bledd · 6 Jun 2015 at 16:53

Keep more backups.

somewhatdamaged · 8 Jun 2015 at 21:02

RussD said:
If they do, I'll lose all my 5 years of photography backups on them

Someone desperately needs cloud backup.

You should have three copies of everything super important to you

I have all my files on a RAID6 array, this is copied to an external hard drive each night using FreeFileSync
This is then auto uploaded to my online storage (squirrelsave), and then uploaded to Onedrive (free with my office subscription)

I have historical copies of all files from Squirrelsave, copies of the files on an external hard drive, and then also copies online with Onedrive.

It's practically impossible for me to lose my most precious files (pictures and videos of my family, wedding, honeymoon etc)

Grrrrr · 9 Jun 2015 at 13:21

RussD said:
I have just had a Seagate 1Tb with OS on go down on me..Not sure now on whether to install a smaller hard drive like 320gb to 500gb or a 1TB WD Blue. (for OS). So afraid that my two 3TB Seagates might go. If they do, I'll lose all my 5 years of photography backups on them....Can't afford the 2x 3TB Wd Reds at this time. Why only 1 year warranty on them...Was cheeper to buy the Blacks a few years ago.

Crashplan or Backblaze, both around $5 per month.

It'll take a while to upload everything initially but it's probably your best bet until you can afford more storage.

EDIT\\ and not to make you more paranoid or anything but i had 1 year old seagate 3TB fail a couple of weeks ago. Currently waiting on an RMA replacement.