When did Seagate start to suck?

Seriously... I have bought five new Seagate drives over the last 12 months, about three hours ago the last of those drives died. This one lasted the shortest amount of time at just under a month.

I have two Seagates in another system that have been functioning flawlessly for a about five or six years now. This recent run has completely shattered the faith they built up in me over the years before that.

Anyhow, I lost about 60GB of music (waiting for DVD-Rs in the mail, they'll prolly arrive tomorrow) and yeah. Seagate has finally lost my business after nearly a decade of unwavering loyalty.

Bleh, and I just took my pissyness out on some newbie discussing the a new Windows shell.

But I digress, does anyone know if Seagate made some sort of corporate change that has lead to such poor QA or if I have just been on a remarkable unlucky streak. (most of the drives had been in different systems in different locations so it isn't like there are other factors involved).

cheers,

catch

Well, I just got a seagate about 2 monthes ago. 120gb ata 100 8mb cache, it's been working just fine. Normally I would think a bad shipment in your area, but this has happened over the past 12 monthes?? Is there any symptoms that the drives have before they die? Or they just die unexpectedly? I hope I don't experience the same tragedy you are! :eek:

That is the same drive as mine that died today.

Actually it isn't really dead... it just accesses VERY slowly, so slowly that typically any applications relying on the data will crash. (and it wiped out about half the data on the drive)

Three of the drives gave no warning at all, the other two gave about an hour of warning.

cheers,

catch

I have certainly seen more drive failures of late, but not any particular make. The 7200rpm drives don't seem as reliable as the older 5400 rpm ones. I guess the older ones were much more expensive and had a three year warranty, as opposed to the current 12 months.

I did read somewhere that current drives have an MTTF of about 30 months as opposed to 60 months for the older ones.

Have you tried running the Seagate diagnostics tool against it?

:)

Quote:

---

Have you tried running the Seagate diagnostics tool against it?

---

Yeah, it keeps locking up and eventually crashing. I can't use on of the desktop utils because any system the drive is in lags and then crashes.

cheers,

catch

Hi catch,

Have you tried this tool?

http://www.roadkil.net/unstopcp.html

It may let you recover stuff that appears to be lost. It does work on damaged drives, and I think that it just copies stuff so it isn't using any apps on the drive.

Who knows, you may get lucky. I have had reasonable results with it in the past :)

No, I was not familiar with that tool.

I think I'll check it out with some other stuff... this drive is just music and I think I might end up with a lot of song skipping or other issues. I'll just rip all the CDs again when I get a new drive.

Thanks though... looks like a good tool.

cheers,

catch

How hot have these drives been getting?

i try to run mine below 35deg Celcius especially if they are running 24/7.. the 7200rpm drive get bloody hot if there is no airflow around them.. this leads to various failures.. motor, controller, bearings (well thats what it sounds like)..
I currently use Everest pro to check my systems.. my rule of thumb is .. Touch the drive with your thumb.. if it is a comfortable temp it is OK ..if you need to remove your thumb quickly it is too hot, if you see the manufacturers logo on your thumb.. it is way too hot, If you smell bar-b-que.. your HDD is about ****ed..ahh done cooked i mean..

As for Seagate.. I have been sideing with WD in the past 12 months.. Seagate was second choice.. Cooling of the HDD is now my no-1 priority when setting up systems after the CPU that is..

undertaker, I have seen these "hard drive coolers" at tiger direct, maybe newegg has them... If you have heard of them what are your thoughts on them? Good? Bad? What would you recomend to cool a HDD in my case that doesn't have any spots for front intake fans??

hi
i have wd and seagate hard disk curently in my pc.both work nicely.both are ate disks 7200 80 g each.
no problem so far withthem.
well the very first pc i built was with seagate 7200 60g hard disk.I was very very new and newby with pc then and of course didnt know much about any parts at all.
unexpectadly my hard disk died after 6 months and to say i was not prepared for it is understatment.
Never heard about backup before or importance of it.even though was just personal no work related pc it still hurts with all music and games and photos gone.
was suprised when seagate support site told me that disk had 3 years varanty and that fact helped me recovering from disaster.(never even dream of it because i bought my parts on swap market)
with your case it look like that you are more concern about losing data then acctually losing disks (financially)
Somotimes is really stupid to back up data like in your case back up 60 g of music.(but then its hard to see them lost)
i learn from my experience that its not question if hard disk will crash its matter of time.so i always try to stay ahead of potential disaster one step ahead.backing up and running diagnostic hard drive tools to see if everything is ok with hard drive.Of course as undertaker mentioned i had invested in termaltake case with 7 fans and i feel little bit better:) and more confident about heat component.
as nihil sugested try seagate tool:
http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/
i still have xp on my seagate drive not on wd but then you never know.Its matter of time.........
Good luck with hopefuly recovering yor data

Quote:

---

I have seen these "hard drive coolers" at tiger direct, maybe newegg has them... If you have heard of them what are your thoughts on them? Good? Bad?

---

The coolers that I have seen (and tested) are the attach to the bottom of the HDD type.. they are certainly a help.. effective?.. only 50%
I prefer to have a fan blowing across the drive ie blowing from the end.. thi in a suitable enclosure is abot 80-90%
the only improvement I have experimented with, and currently not financialy practical.. is a mixture end mounted fan and Aluminium and copper heatsink fins mounted on and around the HDD.. this is my current 100% reference..

And as mentioned.. all that my advice will do is improve the reliability, reduce the risk .. not prevent a failure from ever happening..

Right I know that, I was just wondering because I have no place to put fans in fron of my case... and according to everest my HDD runs at about 41 C...

Hi The Duck this is the kind of thing you should be looking for. It mounts in a 5.25" drive bay and replaces the plastic blank that is usually there. It sucks air in at the front through a filter and blows it across the drive.

http://www.jdr.com/interact/item.asp?itemno=FAN-DRV

Check them out, you can get them with multiple fans as well.

I also put an "exhaust fan" at the back. This takes up what would be an expansion slot (PCI) but there is usually space at the bottom of the MoBo. It does not mount in a PCI slot, it just needs the screw hole in the case.

:)

That's nice, I'll have to look into that. I already have a back outtake fan, My case has a spot where you can mount it on...

Thanks again :D.

I've really never had a true problem with the actual HDD failing........ I'm 50-50 on the bad-luck -- corporate change. I mean harddrives are supposedly very reliable in our current time period for such a sensitive complex device. If I lost that many gigs of music I'd be livid. I'd probably wage an Internet smear campaign on that company with anecdotal evidence.

Were these refurbs or did you open them brand new?


As for the HDD coolers, if you don't mind the extra noise ( of course they make low DBM) add a fan, but seriously unless you have a stack of more than 3 15,000 rpm drives I wouldn't even bother. And this is coming from someone who watercools his s-478..... and soon will be using a phasechange system on a s-775.

I don't have any recent Seagate drives, but they were the first to offer 5 year warrenties across their entire line. So Seagate themselves do believe their drives are up to stuff. And people generally do not have problems with them.

By the time you kill 5 drives, I imagine there has to be another issue that is causing these problems. Really, you should not be able to kill 5 drives in that time period. The last drive that sort of thing happened with was in the IBM DeathStars (*cough* Desk Star *cough*) when the drive sizes were a bit smaller.



By dead do you mean that reformatting does not correct the problems? (I assume this is true because you do happen to know a fair bit about computers)


Can you give me specs on your powersupply?

The market of powersupplies is in making the consumer buy a PSU based on watts. They don't even have to be real watts. The company just needs to be able to print them in a book with some arcane formula for finding it.

Unfortunately 99% of the consumers do not understand PowerSupplies well enough. But I'd guess 85% of them are lucky enough to buy a name-brand and leave it as-is and usually expirence no problems.

But since the power supply is one of the most important parts of the computer, it needs to be well understood. It could be that this thing is ready to fail, and it is warning you by killing all of your HDDs.

I need: +12v AMPs, +5v AMPs, +3.3v AMPs, and maybe a combined WATTs rating could help. Also name the brand, and anything else you can find. I'll look it up and see if it is up to stuff. It would be benefitial to know other hardware specs, but generally just knowing the PSU can be an alert to major problems.

Cheers.

Quote:

---

I mean harddrives are supposedly very reliable in our current time period for such a sensitive complex device.

---

Yeah... I've not had any issues with drives at work or drives acquired before the last year or so, nor the two refurbed drives I bought this year or three drives that Seagate actually replaced (with refurbed ones as well). Maybe their refurb department has better QA than their new production lines?

Quote:

---

Were these refurbs or did you open them brand new?

---

All brand new.

Quote:

---

As for the HDD coolers, if you don't mind the extra noise ( of course they make low DBM) add a fan,

---

No room for a fan in this system... but the other drive in it, is a Seagate from about three years ago, and it is closer to the heat source, ran fine.
I took the bad drive out, placed it in an open system of mine so the drive wasn't near anything and after about five minutes of operation it was prolly about 180F maybe hotter. This was with plenty of airflow and nothing else heating it in a different system than the one it failed in.
To be honest, I have no idea how hot it would have gotten (the system had been up for about two weeks) and I guess I am just lucky it failed before it melted any wires or such.

Quote:

---

I don't have any recent Seagate drives, but they were the first to offer 5 year warrenties across their entire line. So Seagate themselves do believe their drives are up to stuff. And people generally do not have problems with them.

---

Yeah, they have always been flawless until this last year. I am sure you could find a few posts by me on here swearing by Seagate drives to people who were asking about building their own systems.

Quote:

---

By the time you kill 5 drives, I imagine there has to be another issue that is causing these problems. Really, you should not be able to kill 5 drives in that time period.

---

Unfortunately there has been no common thread between the drives... I mean a drive dies, I send it to Seagate, they send me a refurb, I stick it where the drive that died was... everything works fine. This is five drives over three systems. I'd have just assumed I was being dumb otherwise, but this clearly seems a Seagate production line QA issue at this point.

Quote:

---

By dead do you mean that reformatting does not correct the problems?

---

Most won't reformat, get very, very hot, or show up on the bios with names like:

Drive: %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%8476$&%$%^#$^%$%^$%$*&%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Size: 7834383535836326347667264567763832863286363 bytes

Oddly drives like the latter (happened twice) still kinda work, they can't boot but they can still hold data... only they will randomly lose a third to half the data once every other week or so. That was a lot of fun.

I don't have power supply specs on hand right now (writing this during commercials of [adult swim]) but the latest system was a Shuttle X Zen with no extra anything beside the HDD and the DVD-R so it seems unlikely that the PSU would be the guilty party. Expecially due to the heat issue, and the fact that the current drive is having no issues. The last one did take almost a month to fail though... if this drives goes I'll check it out.

Really I think Seagate has cut some corners on new prodcut QA or I have become amazingly unlucky. :(

cheers,

catch

Hi !mitationRust

Quote:

---

And this is coming from someone who watercools his s-478

---

Which implies that you are overclocking, so you will have ensured a good airflow in the first place?

The problem seems to arise more in small cases where all the 5.25" drive bays are occupied. Hot, stale air can collect around the HDD and cause overheating issues. In this situation the HDD cooling unit is advisable.

The last few cases I have bought have been fitted with twin fans front and back which would have the same sort of effect. At the end of the day it is all about airflow?

Tim~ I totally agree that the PSU is the most overlooked component, particularly when people are doing upgrades :eek:

However, Catch did specifically mention that these events had happened at different locations, and in different kit. This would seem to rule out local microclimate, environment and power supply, and led him to question the manufacturer.

Quote:

---

The last drive that sort of thing happened with was in the IBM DeathStars

---

I seem to recall that Fujitsu (I think?) had a lot of drive failures that even resulted in a class action against them, and them having to pay compensation on drives that failed after the 12 months warranty?...............so it does happen.

I would be very interested to know what it was that failed with these drives. I know that HDD manufacturers buy in common components, so it might be like the MoBo capacitor scandal that we had?

My latest thought has been on the statistics of the whole issue. Perhaps we are seeing more failures because there is a much larger population of newer drives that have a shorter warranty and a much reduced QA process?. Perhaps the overall failure rate is more a reflection of the total population size, than a quality problem? In this case, Catch would seem to have been terribly unlucky?

:)

On the IBM Deathstar, I can only find this picture...

http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?im...RfMV8xX2wuanBn



But more seriously, I tend to recall seeing a video that showed what was wrong (they opened the disk up): the read/write heads were unable to get onto the HDD's platters from the "parked" position. Hence a "click of death" while the read/write heads destroyed themselves while running into the platters.


I can't seem the find the video anymore (Google tosses up a 403 error when I'm trying to find it, probably due to my use of inurl: -- see attachment), but that is what I remembered of it.



And I agree more and more that in catch's case, this does look like a problem on the manufacturer's end. Kind of sad, but that is the way it is looking... :(

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by nihil
Hi !mitationRust
Which implies that you are overclocking, so you will have ensured a good airflow in the first place?

---

Not really, I'm not the average. My rad is outside of the box so the ambient temp has little effect. Not to mention the Europe designs that don't use the 1/2" tubes.

Most people are sitting on a potential extra 300 - 500 MHz but are too scared to touch it because of a false heat scare. Heat only goes up when you touch your v-core while OCing. I suggest that everyone do this. This would be a great incentive for comp repair stores and it only takes a few minutes. You owe me one buddy. :)

I skipped over the meat of the post.....Damn bra, I'm with you and Tim ( it's an assurance issue), Seagate did you wrong, period. Look at the bright side, you've alerted me to stay the hell away from the rogues at Seagate.
I've basically stuck with what I know, Maxtor and West-dig.....though I'll admit I'm a cheap arse sometimes when it comes to components. I've never owned anything over a 20gig, everything else is on media. I like cheap spring-loaded keyboards from China as well. But at the same time I'll spend a crap load on wireless mouse’s etc......

Excuse me as I go outside of the box for a minute here. But you know how two people can buy the exact same RAM (model) from the same vendor but the sticks will both have different chips? The only way you can tell this is to read the fine print on the top of the chips. OCZ RAM is widely used by overclockers but some chips are notoriously sought after for their stability / ability. The reason for the difference in chips is because as the market fluctuates so does the amount of chips made and some companies just use what chips are available.

Maybe Seagate used some bad chips.

I've had my expectations and such invested in a particular company. One day out of the blue blindsided from the coc*s*kers ....this was made in India. MTX car stereo amps. BTW check out their new 22" sub 300+ lbs http://www.mtxaudio.com/caraudio/pro...Hammer_img.cfm .........see and then you come back to them like a battered housewife.

MTX is still good.

[Adult Swim]........... You have to get a TiVo and do a homemade HDD mod (Seagate refurb ;) ).....I'm a day behind you I'd suppose. I like to watch my stuff in the late mornings. I'm on the phone/ em@il / VoIP with too many vital investors from Alaska and Russia during [Adult Swim] to follow my Lil' Slugger (Paranoia agent) and my hunger force etc...

Catch :

Quote:

---

I've not had any issues with drives at work or drives acquired before the last year or so, nor the two refurbed drives I bought this year or three drives that Seagate actually replaced (with refurbed ones as well). Maybe their refurb department has better QA than their new production lines?

---

!mitationRust :

Quote:

---

Maybe Seagate used some bad chips.

---

I mentioned this problem to a friend and he said he seemed to recall that a batch of defective resin had gotten into the marketplace. This stuff is used in the manufacture of ICs, and apparently 13 IC makers were affected. Apparently these ICs were responsible for some hard drive failures as the stuff was prone to break down and cause short circuits.

We may be facing a time bomb like the capacitor electolyte scenario? :eek:

Presumably the re-furbs would have had the controller card replaced?

If it is a bought in components problem, it makes you wonder which manufacturer is reliable?

Here is something about the resin:

http://www.computerwatch.net/content/view/21/26/

Never had a problem with seagate but then I've not got any recent seagate drives. I've still got a running 2.1Gb Seagate from my first PC it's 9 years old.

I've been throught the Deathstar failures and a big run of Fujitsu trash. We replace a couple of hundred drives with Maxtors. Chosen mostly due to cost but they have been reliable apart from 1 DOA. Maxtor is owned by Fujitsu I think which gave us some worries but they were unfounded.

I think some companies have reintroduced 3 year warranties but on selective models.

I havn't had any problems with seagate lately (especialy my new 300GB ultra320 scsi 10k7 drives)...

Maxtor is the brand giving me shite atm.. Have seen atleast three (3) Maxtor 250GB (p)ata drives die..
And a toshiba 2.5" 60GB (1MB cache) drive (which I replaced with a Samsung 80GB (8MB cache) disk)..

I totally agree

Currently doing hardware\OS updates

I see a maxtor...I replace it....

Have had too many fail

MLF

Looks like you just have to pray for divine guidance when buying HD.

Western Digital anyone?

Well, I have had my seagate 120gb 8mb cache 100 ATA HDD for 3 months now and have not had a problem... yet...

We still have some seagate Barracudas running...5+ years

Of course these are not mission critical machines....

Have been putting seagates into all new machines...

No issues...yet. :rolleyes:


Still use seagate scsis in the servers.....Have only had 1 fail in 8 years..it was 2 years old...and originally installed by someone else...mave have been damaged during the install????

I tend to replace primary servers hardware every 3 years or so...use the old ones for spares, static data etc

MLF