What is wrong with SeaGate these days?!

[Senture]

Just come down to my friends house after he's been having more PC troubles, this time caused by 2 brand new hard drives that were delivered yesterday. It didn't take long to realise that the system crashes were caused by the hard drives. A pair of them DOA. What's even worse is they're from different batches.

I have never had any problems with SeaGate myself but either my friend is very very unlucky, or SeaGate's quality control these days sucks big time. He's had 6 fail in the last year alone!. Has any one else had these problems with SeaGate and also, can anyone from OcUK assist with the problem at hand.

 

[Behemoth]

I've read somewhere (forget where) that updating the firmware on the drive may help.

 

[alex24]

I've read somewhere (forget where) that updating the firmware on the drive may help.

That totally depends on the model. It's still unlikely they'll be DOA. Rare controller and drive incompatibilities exist, but it's very unlikely.

I've had problems with Seagate personally, and when I used to work in PC repair, they were second only to Maxtor in failure rate for many years until Seagate bought Maxtor. Then they were, and still are, consistently the most unreliable HDDs I've ever used. Also tend to be the cheapest, and a lot of OEMs use them too, though many are now seeing sense and using WD instead!

 

[FallshirmjAEger]

That totally depends on the model. It's still unlikely they'll be DOA. Rare controller and drive incompatibilities exist, but it's very unlikely.

I've had problems with Seagate personally, and when I used to work in PC repair, they were second only to Maxtor in failure rate for many years until Seagate bought Maxtor. Then they were, and still are, consistently the most unreliable HDDs I've ever used. Also tend to be the cheapest, and a lot of OEMs use them too, though many are now seeing sense and using WD instead!

I agree with the statement about maxtor, I had a drive that made a horrible noise after about 2 years!

Sorry my post doesn't seem to help, but personally would send them back and grab some WD ones - never had a WD fail on me (Or develop any faults whatsoever for that matter)

 

[Senture]

Thanks for the replies

I've read somewhere (forget where) that updating the firmware on the drive may help.

There were a batch of drives previously that did not address the cache properly unless firmware flashed. These ones have got the infamous Click Of Death and fail the SeaTools Short DST and Short Generic tests on 2 different machines.

I agree with the statement about maxtor, I had a drive that made a horrible noise after about 2 years!

Sorry my post doesn't seem to help, but personally would send them back and grab some WD ones - never had a WD fail on me (Or develop any faults whatsoever for that matter)

I've had a couple of Maxtor drives go bad, but I have never liked the performance they give. WD I'm ok with, but I have had 3 fail on me but that's within norm.

 

[Max3]

Your friend is just unlucky but you can't put faith in any particular brand. That's just some sort of blind faith. Expect your hd to fail someday and backup regularly. That's just the way it is.