Seagate..the 2nd shittiest HDD manufacturer.

[rheffera]

I hate to say this but i have had so many problems with seagate drives.

2 drives in a row that were DOA.

But i gave them the benefiet of the doubt that i was just having bad luck. Now this.

Seagate 1.5TB, ST31500341AS..Firmw are: CC1H

Problem?

7 reallocated sectors in only 287 hrs of power-on hours. Will seagate take it back?

The only company worse is samsungs 2.5" drives..bought one brand new, died within a month, the replacment did the same, and the replacement for the replacement did the same thing. Samsung's 3.5" are ok though.

What are other peoples experiences like?

[nstgc]

They use to be among the best, but yeah, the last dfrive of theirs I bought was sit.

[Meomix]

50 Computers, half of them Seagate drives, for the months that passed everything was going fine then 15 days in BAM Segmentation fault
8 days later BAM Cylinder fault
1 month later our third hardisk was making clicking noises.. BAM I/O Error - Actuator Arm Destroyed
11 days later, our computer failed to boot up, our dual hardisk raid was acting funny BAM Both hardrives fail simultaneously - Bad Sector
3 months later our computer was shutting down at random BAM Actuator Collision - Cylinder Destroyed

At this point i was wondering why the fuck Dad kept replacing the failed hardrives with more Seagates; kept making bullshit excuses that it was cheap bla bla bla.

52 days later, my computer kept seizing at random times causing my games to crash BAM Mechanical Fault backed up what i could then reinstalled the system.

In total over the span of 7 months? we lost over 20 hard disks. BULLSHIT DEVICE.

[Pentium100]

Wow, I have a lot of Seagate drives, but they are all older than 3 years. Only one had problems at first (bad sectors etc), but I traced the problem to a 1m long IDE cable (IDE cables are supposed to be only 46cm long), I lowered the transfer rate from 133MB/s to 66MB/s and have no more problems since then (1.5 years ago).

One of the older drives has been spinning (24/7) for almost 4 years already (S.M.A.R.T. Power On Hours Count = 34910) and has no problems - http://www.hddstatus.com/hdrepshowreport.php?ReportCode=4730066&ReportVerification=AAE8B857

Maybe the quality dropped only recently, I wouldn't know as I only have old drives.

[paul_vash]

Firmware errors are a common problem with the Seagate 1.5TB, ST31500341AS. I was hoping that they had sorted it out by now though.  My experience with Seagate drives have been good, with some older drives I have had a few bad sectors but that is to be expected, I have only had to send one back that was still in warranty ........ so is one out of ten too many?

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15863

[rheffera]

Firmware errors are a common problem with the Seagate 1.5TB, ST31500341AS. I was hoping that they had sorted it out by now though.  My experience with Seagate drives have been good, with some older drives I have had a few bad sectors but that is to be expected, I have only had to send one back that was still in warranty ........ so is one out of ten too many?

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15863

I have already looked at seagate for firmware and CC1H is the latest. the firmware download they do have will brick my drive, according to seagate

[mgz]

i just grabbed 2 750 gig seagate drives about a year and a half ago they have been running 24/7 since then with zero issues.

My paranoia has prevented me from buying drives 1tb and larger currently  as it seems like they have slowed down their advancement in this area and in the back of my mind i just keep thinking aw man if i buy a drive that big i just know its bound to fuck up.

Also another thing ive noticed is with WD and seagate both they have the cheap models and the more expensive version that is barely better but the extra 20$ per drive usually makes it go from 2.5-3.5 eggs on new egg with like 1000 ppl reviewing to 4-4.5 with roughly same amount of reviews.

But i have no actually proof just my own concocted speculations

[x5ga]

I have a Seagate 1TB external desktop drive, it started giving I/O errors after about 1 month after i bought it. Searched around for their support forums for ideas. Reformatted the drive (lost 1TB of anime) using a 64kb cluster size this time (it was the default 4k at first). Drive worked perfectly for another month, then failed agan: I/O error. Reformatted again (lost another TB of anime) using exFAT instead of NTFS and a ginormous 256kb cluster size. Reallocated sector count:  9208. Drive works now, but stutters on reading some of the files. Seagate disks suck ass. Never had a problem with the rest of my hard disks, which are all WD, one of them being from more than 5 years ago and I've been seeding torrents off it since then 24/7. Western Digital makes the best disks.

[mgz]

I have a Seagate 1TB external desktop drive, it started giving I/O errors after about 1 month after i bought it. Searched around for their support forums for ideas. Reformatted the drive (lost 1TB of anime) using a 64kb cluster size this time (it was the default 4k at first). Drive worked perfectly for another month, then failed agan: I/O error. Reformatted again (lost another TB of anime) using exFAT instead of NTFS and a ginormous 256kb cluster size. Reallocated sector count:  9208. Drive works now, but stutters on reading some of the files. Seagate disks suck ass. Never had a problem with the rest of my hard disks, which are all WD, one of them being from more than 5 years ago and I've been seeding torrents off it since then 24/7. Western Digital makes the best disks.

external drives in general are pieces of shit usually. They often give you the shittiest drives they have and well the power supplies for them is completely separate issue.

[fohfoh]

I have never liked seagate from the moment they picked up maxtor. However, their <1TB drives are generally still ok.

However, I've had flawless performance from Samsung...

[Lupin]

Never had any problems with seagate drives. I'm still using several seagate drives that are over 5 years old and still working well (no errors whatsoever other than the normal ECC errors)

I recently purchased a couple of 500 GB seagate drives and so far I have no issues.

One thing common between all these seagate drives I have is that they're local purchases, not ordered online. I do not trust shipping companies to handle such hardware with care. Plus it's cheaper for me to buy them locally by about 10-20% since tax is already included in the local prices.

I have a Seagate 1TB external desktop drive, it started giving I/O errors after about 1 month after i bought it. Searched around for their support forums for ideas. Reformatted the drive (lost 1TB of anime) using a 64kb cluster size this time (it was the default 4k at first). Drive worked perfectly for another month, then failed agan: I/O error. Reformatted again (lost another TB of anime) using exFAT instead of NTFS and a ginormous 256kb cluster size. Reallocated sector count:  9208. Drive works now, but stutters on reading some of the files. Seagate disks suck ass. Never had a problem with the rest of my hard disks, which are all WD, one of them being from more than 5 years ago and I've been seeding torrents off it since then 24/7. Western Digital makes the best disks.

How do you handle the drive? Unlike internal drives, externals are exposed to the harsh environment called your desktop where it can be dropped or kicked around or disconnected while still in use. Just because it's external doesn't mean it's portable. I have seen people treat their external drives like portable ones, handling them without any care. I have 2 1.5 TB external seagate drives. None of them having issues. Both are placed in a location where the chances of getting kicked around or falling are very slim. Both are unpowered when not in use.

Internal drives, while protected inside the case aren't immune to shock either. If your case gets kicked while it's still running, you drive heads might fly above/below it's operating height. A drive operating at an inclined position doesn't help either.

Over the years, I've only have three drives die on me. All three died by user error: 1 20GB samsung drive due to head crash, and 2 40GB maxtor drives due blown circuit boards after I used the wrong power bricks. In all three drives, I was able to recover my data.

[x5ga]

my external drive sits in a well-ventilated place where nothing can fall on it, I don't carry it around with me, and I most certainly don't kick it Also, as far as I can tell this particular seagate external drive that I have is basically a 1TB "internal" SATA drive in an "external" case with a SATA-to-USB adapter fitted on it. Its power supply is probably shitty, it's made by an unknown (to me) company situated in China.

I've had a few maxtor drives also about 6 or 7 years ago, all died randomly. I love it that when the maxtors died, the BIOS showed their codename instead of their model/number (I remember one of them being ATHENA). Easiest way to know that you can throw away your HDD, you don't even have to wait for the OS to give you errors, no software solution (at that time) could mend this, even though a lot of them expressly specified that they can.

[boxer4]

Every manufacturer has their bad batches.  If I were to stop using any brand that I get any failed disk (or even 1 bad sector) from, I'd quickly run out of disks to buy...  Disks will fail, just be prepared for it.

I've had failed/bad sectored/flaky seagates, hitachi/IBM, WD's, fujitsu's, ... right now I'd be down to Samsungs (because I've only had 2 ever) but... no, I'm not always going for slow Samsungs.

I've had several failed seagates in the past.. but I still prefer seagate over other brands, but most of the time, hard disks are a commodity for me, and pretty much doesn't matter what brand it is.

[x5ga]

Every manufacturer has bad batches, yes, but seagate not only has bad HDD batches, it has bad HDD models. Look at the tech support section of their site and there are literally hundreds of people complaining about the 1TB and the 1.5TB external desktop drives because they failed with no apparent reason.

[mgz]

Every manufacturer has bad batches, yes, but seagate not only has bad HDD batches, it has bad HDD models. Look at the tech support section of their site and there are literally hundreds of people complaining about the 1TB and the 1.5TB external desktop drives because they failed with no apparent reason.

yea because those shitty external drives are the same low end piece of shit drives that are 30 or 40$ for seemingly the same thing when you buy the internal drive, with 1$ worth of plastic and shit to power it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007603%2050001306%20600003269%20600003298%20600003459%20600003340&IsNodeId=1&name=7200%20RPM

for shits and giggles if that shows up it should let you compare and go straight down the list for more or less the "same drive" there becomes higher percentages of 5 star reviews for WD


http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007603%2050001305%20600003340%20600003459%20600003269%20600003298&IsNodeId=1&name=1TB

more or less same thing but seagate, 1tb drives 32mb cache 7200rpm the cheapest ones = shitty shit shit.

Now granted the difference in quality may be more varied from manufacturer to manufacturer but its pretty obvious if you spend 10 or 20$ more on your drives that there is FAR LESS failures, or at least thats what i have always noticed and reviews kinda support that.

[fohfoh]

IMO, 1TB+ HDDs are always risky.

[datora]

.
I've been doing a lot of looking for the past three months.  Been reading a lot of forums and various vendor comments, including and especially newegg.

The only drives I will consider at this moment are Western Digital Black editions (at the cheapest end) for large, traditional 3.5" internal storage solutions.  Until yesterday, these were the best bang per $$:

 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136283 (SATA 3)

They went from $60 to $75 at midnight last night, free shipping.  I'm really happy I bought two on Thursday for $120.  Now, for another two days or so:

 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533

are available for $80 each (SATA 6).  I'm tempted to get one of these and place it into a USB 3 docking station ... just don't know if I can scrounge enough to swing it this week  

support SATA 6:
 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817193076
 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817422031

support SATA 1.5 & 3 (a SATA 6 drive needs to be jumper-crippled to work with SATA 3):
 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145078


Anyway.

Based upon all the comments I've read, the Samsungs  Seagates have basically been horrible at 1TB and up for a large production run from end of last year through present.  The number of DOAs is staggering, especially 1.5 and 2 TB sizes.  And, that doesn't frighten me nearly as much as the number that die after 30 or 60 days ... just long enough to put them outside of RMA and also just long enough to actually fill them up with crucial data.

A number of people have posted about buying 4 or 8 drives to build RAIDs and then start seeing drive after drive self-destruct without much warning between 20 and 90 days.  I've been seeing numbers like 2 out of 4 or 3 out of 8 arriving DOA, then having another 2 or three fail after three to six weeks of RMAs finally get all the drives running long enough to build RAID.  Scary.  REALLY scary.

One consistent comment I've seen is that the China manufactured drives are failing at vastly higher rates than Malaysia manufactured.  You don't know where yours is made 'til you receive it.  I've seen several suggestions that if you get a China drive, immediately drop it a few times to make it a DOA, then RMA it until you get a Malaysia drive.

I've not seen very much better happiness out of any other brands right now, except that Western Digital appears to currently have a pretty solid run in quality on their 500GB - 1TB drives, especially in their blue and black lines.

Other comment I take to heart:  Western Digital has excellent free software on their website for owners of their products: Lifeguard and Acronis.

It has been urgently recommended that all new WD drives be burned in using Lifeguard ... fully write zero's across the drive ... before going to initialization and formatting via Acronis.  I just spent a week moving data around all my old (PATA) drives, emptying them completely, running full tests, writing zeros and reformatting before putting them back into service.

I'm happy to say they all have passed tests without any serious issues and I feel much better.  Some are three and four years old & I now have confidence they'll go another two or three.

I treat my gear with r e s p e c t.

My new 750s should be here Monday and I intend to be REAL careful.  Not gonna pop box seal and start filling them.  There will be an aggressive burn in the first week before I begin to trust them with single copies of any files.

[ EDIT: My apologies to Samsung ... I mis-typed the brand name.  It's the Seagate drives that I've been seeing an unusual spike in complaints about failure. ]

[Xtras]

Every HDD manufacturer has piles of complaints. Actually only Western Digital actually has a good positive reputation of all of them (though Seagate and Samsung have a lot of trust in them too), but they do have their own drive failures.

HDs fail, that's life. But if you've got multiple messed up HDDs, either you are extremely unlucky, or you are running them out of spec in some way.

[Haleos]

I've had terrible experience with Seagate drives.  Three of the last four I ordered were DOA on arrival and the one that wasn't DOA broke in a month. I haven't had hardly any trouble with any other brand. I have 2 2-TB WD externals that I have ran almost constantly since I got them and not a problem.  Maybe I just got unlucky with Seagate, but I agree with the topic starter, they are crap.

[halfelite]

I am the opposite. seagate has been the best brand for me. My two wd, and my samsung spinpoint's both failed.