Why i am done with Seagate for the last time

Justintime · 22 Mar 2016 at 09:30

Nothing will EVER convince me to get a Seagate drive again, even if it was £20 for 5tb.
So far for January to March:

So called 'enterprise' 5tb Constellations :

Of 20 we have, 10 in each nas, 7 (4 and 3) have died, all developed bad sectors, of the replacements, 4 failed rebuild and developed bad sectors, so call that 11.

5Tb freeagent or whatever it is, we have 9, 4 have died of bad sectors, none have been dropped or mishandled.

We have 2 small 4 bay Qnap nas with 3tb Seagate drives just for backing up the music departments projects, bad sectors in 3 drives, 2 and 1.

We mostly use WD reds and WD RE drives, of 30, one has developed a single bad sector in January and nothing since. i am expecting the Seagates to die off and thats it for them, gonna replace any personal dead Seagate with another brand, why we buy them over and over i do not know, guess its the price but i've complained for years about it and finally they're listening to me, WD from now on.

Armageus · 22 Mar 2016 at 09:34

So you have been unlucky with Seagate drives and lucky with WD?

Not sure what your point really is?

Justintime · 22 Mar 2016 at 09:42

My point is everyone should go and buy a Seagate drive cause they're cheap and reliable, thats my point.

randal · 22 Mar 2016 at 09:42

I think it's perpetuation of the belief that Seagate are inherrently bad drives, which looking at the OP's sample would appear so...

That said, Seagate gained their reputation for Lada-esque drives for a couple of 3TB models didn't they?

Either way, it's been enough for me to give them a swerve for a large number of years also. I too use WD Reds for my mass storage needs, and the pair of 3TBs I have in the Microserver have been spinning since Feb 2013 without so much as a wobble.

Justintime · 22 Mar 2016 at 09:45

randal said:
I think it's perpetuation of the belief that Seagate are inherrently bad drives, which looking at the OP's sample would appear so...

That said, Seagate gained their reputation for Lada-esque drives for a couple of 3TB models didn't they?

Either way, it's been enough for me to give them a swerve for a large number of years also. I too use WD Reds for my mass storage needs, and the pair of 3TBs I have in the Microserver have been spinning since Feb 2013 without so much as a wobble.

Its not only this sample, my bosses keep buying seagates when they get offers on them and we're constantly changing them, much much more than other brands, though Seagates are a minority brand here. Our worst ever time was with the 1.5tb ones, though the 5tb ones are looking to be as bad.

randal · 22 Mar 2016 at 09:50

Well if anything the sample size gives you enough ammunition to present a case to your management about the use of WDs over Seagate.

Attach a time figure to each rebuild, restore or installation and then put a £ figure on your time. They'll then know how much the Seagate drives are costing them over the WD drives in man time/money, not that the Seagate drives are probably that much cheaper than the WDs but at least you'll have your business case for changing drive vendors.

Richdog · 22 Mar 2016 at 09:53

Armageus said:
So you have been unlucky with Seagate drives and lucky with WD?

Not sure what your point really is?

His point is obvious and supports the findings from the Backblaze testing. Seagate drives are unreliable.

Armageus · 22 Mar 2016 at 09:59

Justintime said:
My point is everyone should go and buy a Seagate drive cause they're cheap and reliable, thats my point.

Lol.... glad we agree on something

randal said:
I think it's perpetuation of the belief that Seagate are inherrently bad drives, which looking at the OP's sample would appear so...

If you buy enough drives at the same time, then you will always get some failures. If you also buy all from the same supplier, then there is always the possibility that a batch may have been damaged during distribution. For NAS / enterprise drives at work, I always try to buy from a couple of different suppliers, and spread them over a few weeks where possible (to try and minimise the chance of them all being from the same batch).

Drives from all manufacturers fail - it's just a question of when. Certain models from all manufacturers have had higher failure rates - doesn't mean every single model from that manufacture will.

At the desktop level the HP PCs we buy at work come with a mix of drives from different manufacturers (WD/Seagate/HGST). In my eyes if a big OEM like HP is happy to supply from different manufacturers, and offers the same 3 year warranty on all then they have obviously done enough homework on failure rates / reliability to be happy with them.

EDIT:

Richdog said:
His point is obvious and supports the findings from the Backblaze testing. Seagate drives are unreliable.

Wondered how long it would be before that old chestnut came out. Again the Backblaze testing is not representative of anything - if you run a "home" grade disk in a "enterprise" environment then surely you expect failures. Whether WD's "home" drives are better in an "enterprise" environment is meaningless, as long as Seagate's "home" drives work in a "home" drive.

Justintime · 22 Mar 2016 at 10:04

Armageus said:
Drives from all manufacturers fail - it's just a question of when. Certain models from all manufacturers have had higher failure rates - doesn't mean every single model from that manufacture will.

We had way over average on the 1tb enterprise and desktop models, the 1.5s were sometime like 300% failure rate (yes, every replacement died quickly, to the point of not bothering to get rma) The 2tb ones had way over average and the 3 and 5tb ones seem to be going the same way, this is a sample rate going into the hundreds over the years, Hitachi, WD and Samsung before they were bought by Seagate did not have close to the failure rate of the Seagates, now i can't even trust a Samsung disk.

I squirm when i open an order and see a Seagate drive, i expect an early death and usually am not dissapointed.

Richdog · 22 Mar 2016 at 13:23

Armageus said:
Wondered how long it would be before that old chestnut came out. Again the Backblaze testing is not representative of anything - if you run a "home" grade disk in a "enterprise" environment then surely you expect failures. Whether WD's "home" drives are better in an "enterprise" environment is meaningless, as long as Seagate's "home" drives work in a "home" drive.

Backblaze testing is not representative of anything? Really?

They are still running large amounts of hard drives and collecting information on the failure rates of each. Seagate also came out worst by a considerable margin. And that doesn't mean or represent anything?

I fail to see the logic in that statement.

Armageus · 22 Mar 2016 at 19:27

Richdog said:
Backblaze testing is not representative of anything? Really?

They are still running large amounts of hard drives and collecting information on the failure rates of each. Seagate also came out worst by a considerable margin. And that doesn't mean or represent anything?

I fail to see the logic in that statement.

All it proves is that home Seagate drives don't stand up well in an environment they weren't designed for and that WD stand up better in those conditions.

nutcase · 22 Mar 2016 at 19:52

I'm more than happy with the approx 30 Seagate enterprise drives I have either at home or work. Not many in the swing of things but enough. Did have one fail 2 weeks ago - dated 2007 and it had been in 24/7 use from the time we got it new.

I'm still nervous of consumer seagate drives though. Although around the late 90s and earlier they were THE drive manufacturer. Did get burned a few years ago with consumer disks.

Rroff · 22 Mar 2016 at 19:59

Sadly stacks up with my experiences with Seagate of late - and a few years ago I was a huge fan and used them extensively :| I've stopped using them in builds I do for anyone else as they were letting me down. The 1TB Seagate in the system I'm on right now has non-negligible error rates in SMART diagnostics but seems to be functioning ok for now.

andy_mk3 · 22 Mar 2016 at 20:02

Of the 2 drive failures I've ever had personally, both have been Seagates. I'm very happy with my Samsung and WD drives.

Disco_P · 22 Mar 2016 at 20:21

Over the last 5 years I've had 5 drives die. 2 seagates, 2 samsung and a WD.

I have no regard for branding, what's cheap with good warranty is all that matters.

Justintime · 31 Mar 2016 at 11:34

Another 5tb constellation dropped out with about 60 bad sectors yesterday. Teacher came today to say her 3tb portable started clicking over the long weekend and she lost about 20% of her work to corruption.

OspreyO · 31 Mar 2016 at 11:46

Richdog said:
Backblaze testing is not representative of anything? Really?

They are still running large amounts of hard drives and collecting information on the failure rates of each. Seagate also came out worst by a considerable margin. And that doesn't mean or represent anything?

I fail to see the logic in that statement.

Theres more to that story....

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

http://www.weaktown.com/articles/60...ility-myth-the-real-story-covered/index5.html

OspreyO · 31 Mar 2016 at 11:50

Seems to go in Cycles. I remember when Seagate was top dog and WD was brutal. Now its the other way around.

OspreyO · 31 Mar 2016 at 11:52

Another link

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/222267-seagate-faces-lawsuit-over-3tb-hard-drive-failure-rates

d_brennen · 31 Mar 2016 at 12:11

OspreyO said:
Theres more to that story....

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

http://www.weaktown.com/articles/60...ility-myth-the-real-story-covered/index5.html

How not to talk to the internet...

Still wouldn't go out of my way to buy a Seagate if there were any other choices though