Seagate hard drives = CRAP

[ktk]

http://aycu27.webshots.com/image/4706/2001279366914872565_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2001279366914872565)

http://aycu33.webshots.com/image/6512/2001250618477940347_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2001250618477940347)

and this is my 2nd hard drive in 10 days....

i rma-ed my ticking hard disk within a week and the new drive is giving me problems again.....

anyone has this problem?

Made In China SHIT.im pissed.

[ktk]

http://aycu04.webshots.com/image/4723/2002858620405476060_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2002858620405476060)

results from my first "tickin' timebomb"Seagate Harddisk. god that tick can wake you up at night while sleeping (com and me in same room).

:mad:

anyone has this issue? around 20 or so users in Taiwan have this problem FYI. nasty.
5 year warranty, ha.cant even last 5 weeks.First one started ticking 5 hours into use. damn.

[Slartibartfast]

I run only seagate drives, have yet to have one die. WD, on the other hand....

Fact is, every manufacturer has lemons, that's just how it goes.

[protias]

If this is your 2nd drive in 10 days, then maybe you should start looking at your power supply and not the drives. Yes you could very well have gotten 2 bad drives, but that is extremely unlikely. What is your power supply?

[ryan_975]

It's also possible that your delivery company isn't handling the drives very nicely.

[ktk]

hmm lemme see my power:

ACBEL POWER 390

PRODUCT NO: ATX350CN-SN6NN

its not grounded as there is no socket to ground it (110V here in TW)

is that a possible cause of the problem? :confused:

[EnderW]

http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=BrandMostReliable

[protias]

I would head over to the PSU forums (http://www.hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=93) and ask them. I could not find that brand in the sticky (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1045259), nor have I heard of it.

[Slartibartfast]

Yeah, that brand name doesn't ring a bell, so I'd label it "suspicious."

[ryan_975]

Yeah, that brand name doesn't ring a bell, so I'd label it "suspicious."

Here's a 450w model from AcBel. It's not the same model lineup, or prbably not even the same manufacturer as the OP's model though.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817117003

[ktk]

the seek error rate is at 49%...normal for a new drive? i have the diagram attached too.... anyone with similar HDD can do this test for me?

[unhappy_mage]

The problems with your drive are most likely due to your power supply. Is there an online retailer that will ship to you that you could link? That will let us suggest a better one.

Until you've checked the power supply (do you own a digital multimeter?) I'd assume that's the problem.

Where did you buy the drives from?

[Hvatum]

http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=BrandMostReliable

Personally I think that's a silly argument. Of course, your experience with a drive does not represent a statistically significant sample, but it's still important to know which drives generally are more reliable. A large survey could accomplish that, which storage review is doing. Why they don't reference it on the above page I'm not sure.

One could actually apply the argument you linked to to cars or planes also. Like: "It's not really important to worry about how often each model of car or plane crashes. Unless you're driving hundreds of cars or planes at the same time you won't see those same statistical results necassarily play out. You could buy only Toyotas yet have them all fail, but that doesn't mean that Toyota is a bad brand. So based on this logic there cannot possibly be any relationship between reliability and hard drive brand. Anyone who thinks there is is an uneducated Pleibian."

[EnderW]

Personally I think that's a silly argument. Of course, your experience with a drive does not represent a statistically significant sample, but it's still important to know which drives generally are more reliable. A large survey could accomplish that, which storage review is doing. Why they don't reference it on the above page I'm not sure.

One could actually apply the argument you linked to to cars or planes also. Like: "It's not really important to worry about how often each model of car or plane crashes. Unless you're driving hundreds of cars or planes at the same time you won't see those same statistical results necessarily play out. You could buy only Toyotas yet have them all fail, but that doesn't mean that Toyota is a bad brand. So based on this logic there cannot possibly be an importance or relationship between reliability and brand and anyone who thinks there is is an uneducated Pleibian."
Get a clue.
You analogy is utterly ridiculous.

The point is, whether or not a drive is going to fail depends upon if it was damaged during shipping, poor handling by user, bad PSU, or lack of airflow, not simply by the brand.

Also, this thread should be locked IMO.
To OP: Obviously if the largest hard drive maker in the world had a reputation for making drives prone to failure we would know about it. Instead of making baseless accusations, try examining your system to find the true cause of the failures, most likely your no name PSU, which if you knew anything about computers, you wouldn't be using in the first place.

[Hvatum]

*useless ad-hoc comments removed*

The point is, whether or not a drive is going to fail depends upon if it was damaged during shipping, poor handling by user, bad PSU, or lack of airflow, not simply by the brand..
The point is, whether or not a car is going to fail depends upon if it was damaged during driving, poor maintance by user, bad oil, or lack of oil changes, not simply by the brand.. :p

Is it possible that brand, as well as the conditions of use could play a role in the reliability of a drive or car? NO WAY! I hate to offend the current dogma of hard-forums here, but brand does make a difference and should be payed attention to. Obviously buying a brand which is more or less reliable does not guarentee any single given drive will break or not break. Someone can still hit a very reliable drive with a hammer and it will stop working - on the other hand an unreliable brand can perform very well.

Go and check out the Storage Review reliability survey results, because they actually do have Seagate in the lead for reliability. Of course, as the OP's case proves, this does not mean every single model of Seagate drive is reliable or without problems. In fact some specific models or runs might be very bad (eg. Deathstars) - this is actually all the more reason to know what your buying though. If you go with a tested and true model of a good brand you significantly improve your chances that the drive will be reliable - seems to me common sense.

[EnderW]

not worth wasting my time
believe what you want

[Astrogiblet]

Yea, I only have faith in Seagate drives. They have never done me wrong, where I have lost 3 or 4 western digitals in a short period of time. Also, any company that is willing to ad two more years of warranty to their product then all the other companies must know that their drives are better and will last longer.

And, typically, newegg reviewers report a lot more problems with WD drives, and they get lower ratings, where seagate users report less problems, and have higher ratings.

[Mega2]

I got two 320gig seagate @41*c

my question is how many times have you kicked it?

and what temp is your hard drive is taiwan hot?

[Astrogiblet]

Oh, I guess I should mention I'm running 2 500gb seagate drives right now. The 16mb cache, sata II ones. They have been running 24/7 under pretty heavy load (I move and deal with a lot of data) for a few months now without a single problem.

[unhappy_mage]

I have 10 seagates in operation right now - 8 320s and 2 IDE 120s. The 320s have been running 24/7 since August; the 120s have been taking a pounding doing everything from boot disk to scratch disk to torrent drive since 2003.

I also have or had 6 or 7 maxtors, and one or two WD (I can't remember what one drive was). I've experienced zero failures when I was using a reputable power supply (remember, nothing kills hardware like a Deer :p).

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&tm=33&id=150072)http://www.hardfolding.com/utag1.php/mem/428/1.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=36&id=428&type=1)

[tuskenraider]

Also, any company that is willing to ad two more years of warranty to their product then all the other companies must know that their drives are better and will last longer. Bah, they're just trying to get more market share. Sorta like Hyundai's 100,000 warrantly. Doesn't make the product any better. Both with take some losses for that.

[swatbat]

If this is your 2nd drive in 10 days, then maybe you should start looking at your power supply and not the drives. Yes you could very well have gotten 2 bad drives, but that is extremely unlikely. What is your power supply?

I don't know about this. First drive failed. Second drive is prob a refurb from seagate. I've had nothing but problems with refurbs. When I use to work as a notebook tech I had to deal with refurb drives from all the vendors daily. Hell I've had 5 drives bad in a row.

My personal view on hard drives is if one dies I just buy a new one. They are one thing that I don't trust a refurb on.

[ktk]

i guess i wold go for a new PSU and a new RE2 series WD hard dirve when i get my pay next month....

maybe i should buy the lottery since the chances of 2 conesctutive screwed drives are so small...

[ktk]

I don't know about this. First drive failed. Second drive is prob a refurb from seagate. I've had nothing but problems with refurbs. When I use to work as a notebook tech I had to deal with refurb drives from all the vendors daily. Hell I've had 5 drives bad in a row.

My personal view on hard drives is if one dies I just buy a new one. They are one thing that I don't trust a refurb on.

I know how you feel....

BTW i figured out that a RMA isnt worth my moolah and time, esp time.

RMA > 5 bucks post and one to two weeks for the damn thing to come back.
I NEED my computer for w.ork, so its buy one new one and sell the damn RMA part away cheap when it comes back IMHO..

[drizzt81]

The point is, whether or not a car is going to fail depends upon if it was damaged during driving, poor maintance by user, bad oil, or lack of oil changes, not simply by the brand.. :p
[...]

I suggest you pay a visit to the drive reliability survey over at SR (http://www.storagereview.com/map/lm.cgi/survey_login). While I still think that their samples is too small, you will notice that the same brand can have widely varying percentile scores.

If you look at the Baracude 7200.7 and compare it to the 7200.8 both drives have hundreds of responses and completely different percentile scores...

oh yes, to view the results you need to enter at least one drive, but preferably all the drives that you own.

[TechLarry]

I have 10 in use as well. 7200.7's through 7200.10's. I've only had one segate failure in 5 years, and that's a 7200.7 160GB that just recently failed after about 3 years.

-Larry

I have 10 seagates in operation right now - 8 320s and 2 IDE 120s. The 320s have been running 24/7 since August; the 120s have been taking a pounding doing everything from boot disk to scratch disk to torrent drive since 2003.

I also have or had 6 or 7 maxtors, and one or two WD (I can't remember what one drive was). I've experienced zero failures when I was using a reputable power supply (remember, nothing kills hardware like a Deer :p).

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&tm=33&id=150072)http://www.hardfolding.com/utag1.php/mem/428/1.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=36&id=428&type=1)

[unhappy_mage]

i guess i wold go for a new PSU and a new RE2 series WD hard dirve when i get my pay next month....

maybe i should buy the lottery since the chances of 2 conesctutive screwed drives are so small...
RE drives are not recommended for single-drive usage.

Use the serial numbers of the drives if you do buy lottery tickets :p

[codegrinder]

I think we need to make individual threads for each mfg. that way people can bitch in those threads. :p

[ryan_975]

RE drives are not recommended for single-drive usage.

Use the serial numbers of the drives if you do buy lottery tickets :p

why not? I've been using an RE drive for the last 5 months, well up to about two weeks ago.

[Sparkyy]

REs are meant for hardware RAID controller because their TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery) is different, instead of 4 ms or something that a desktop requires, they are in to full seconds of waiting until mentioning an error because RAID cards operate differently. You can run REs as a single drive but it is not recommended.

[ryan_975]

REs are meant for hardware RAID controller because their TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery) is different, instead of 4 ms or something that a desktop requires, they are in to full seconds of waiting until mentioning an error because RAID cards operate differently. You can run REs as a single drive but it is not recommended.


I though it was the other way around, RAID contollers were having problems waiting on WD's desktop drives because they weren't responding due to error recovery times. Then RAID controller would time out and drop the drive from the array. So in effect, the RE drives have a shorter error recovery time than non RE's, giving way to better performance.

Have I been misled?

[Sparkyy]

No you still have it wrong, RE drives have LONG wait times then non-RE drives. Meaning NON-RE drives wait about 4 milliseconds before reporting the error. The RE drives will wait about 8 seconds before reporting the error.

[ryan_975]

No you still have it wrong, RE drives have LONG wait times then non-RE drives. Meaning NON-RE drives wait about 4 milliseconds before reporting the error. The RE drives will wait about 8 seconds before reporting the error.

Okay this is straight from WD's site. http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=249&language=en

Q: What is time-limited error recovery and why do I need it?
A: Desktop drives are designed to protect and recover data, at times pausing for as much as a few minutes to make sure that data is recovered. Inside a RAID system, where the RAID controller handles error recovery, the drive needn't pause for extended periods to recover data. In fact, heroic error recovery attempts can cause a RAID system to drop a drive out of the array. WD RE2 is engineered to prevent hard drive error recovery fallout by limiting the drive's error recovery time. With error recovery factory set to seven seconds, the drive has time to attempt a recovery, allow the RAID controller to log the error, and still stay online.

[Sparkyy]

Yes, and nothing I said went against WD. As I said, a NON-RE drive will take like 4 ms to fix the error it encountered. However a RE drive will, and I said 8 seconds but it is actually 7 seconds, fix the error on the RAID card side so that the drive can keep going. Meaning the RAID card will mark the area as a bad sector and ignore it and the array won't break.

[ryan_975]

Yes, and nothing I said went against WD. As I said, a NON-RE drive will take like 4 ms to fix the error it encountered. However a RE drive will, and I said 8 seconds but it is actually 7 seconds, fix the error on the RAID card side so that the drive can keep going. Meaning the RAID card will mark the area as a bad sector and ignore it and the array won't break.

and I emphasize

: Desktop drives are designed to protect and recover data, at times pausing for as much as a few minutes to make sure that data is recovered

what I got out of that is that desktop drive can take up to a few minutes to recover and respond, thus letting the RAID contoller think it's not there and it'll drop it from the array. RE drives are limited in the amount of time they have to recover from an error, if they can't do it by 7 seconds they give up and hand the error over to the RAID controller to take care of. Doesn't necessarily mean it'll take the whole 7 seconds every time.

[unhappy_mage]

REs are meant for hardware RAID controller because their TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery) is different, instead of 4 ms or something that a desktop requires, they are in to full seconds of waiting until mentioning an error because RAID cards operate differently. You can run REs as a single drive but it is not recommended.
Not exactly. The TLER means there's a cap on how long the drive will try (7 seconds or whatever). Without TLER there's a much higher cap - it'll keep trying for longer than 7 seconds. This is good for desktop drives - when you've only got one drive, it's the only place to get the data from, so it has to keep trying as long as possible. But with a raid controller and a redundant array, there are other places to get the data - the parity from the other drives, or the mirror. So waiting 30 seconds when the other drive has the data is counterproductive.

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&tm=33&id=150072)http://www.hardfolding.com/utag1.php/mem/428/1.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=36&id=428&type=1)

[Hvatum]

I suggest you pay a visit to the drive reliability survey over at SR (http://www.storagereview.com/map/lm.cgi/survey_login). While I still think that their samples is too small, you will notice that the same brand can have widely varying percentile scores.

If you look at the Baracude 7200.7 and compare it to the 7200.8 both drives have hundreds of responses and completely different percentile scores...

oh yes, to view the results you need to enter at least one drive, but preferably all the drives that you own.

Yes, these are exactly the results I'm referring to. If you take all of each brand's models, weighted by the number of owners, Seagate comes out on top. Of course some models rate better and some rate worse. It may even be possible that 7200.8 is a less reliable model. Not everything is a statiscal abberation.

Now, you can say that a sample size less then ~10,000 is meaningless, but I do think that the storage review drive survey is large enough to draw some meaningful conclusions from. Certainlly results so far suggest Seagate is a more reliable brand. It also suggests that Western Digital, though on average behind, does produce a very reliable brand in the case of their Raptor line. Perhaps differing manufacturing standards for high end vrs. low end brands and models could make a difference in reliability? Seems like common sense to me.

[Dark Ember]

Geez, I haven't logged into the forums in 2 months, and nothing has changed. :(

For the every day user, ALL BRANDS are equally reliable. The DPPM numbers are so low for any given manufacturer, your chances of getting a "busted" one out of the chute vary by tenths to hundreds of a percent. If you get a broken drive, it is most likely that something else is the cause - and it's usually handling damage or power - like was mentioned above.

The only exception to this is situations like the IBM 75GXP's a while back that had a design flaw - and we all hear about big problems like those. Companies can't afford to ship drives that are going to break all the time. The margins on hard drives are too slim and the cost associated with the warranty returns would kill them.

I'm sure when I come back in another 2 months, there will be a similar thread. Sigh.... :rolleyes:

[Hvatum]

Geez, I haven't logged into the forums in 2 months, and nothing has changed. :(

For the every day user, ALL BRANDS are equally reliable. The DPPM numbers are so low for any given manufacturer, your chances of getting a "busted" one out of the chute vary by tenths to hundreds of a percent. If you get a broken drive, it is most likely that something else is the cause - and it's usually handling damage or power - like was mentioned above.

The only exception to this is situations like the IBM 75GXP's a while back that had a design flaw - and we all hear about big problems like those. Companies can't afford to ship drives that are going to break all the time. The margins on hard drives are too slim and the cost associated with the warranty returns would kill them.

I'm sure when I come back in another 2 months, there will be a similar thread. Sigh.... :rolleyes:

Exactly, when will these Plebeians figure it out? I scoff at these fools who believe there could be a difference in reliability between brand, model or price range. Obviously such things are a mere trifle - completely irrelevant to people of finer stock such as you and I. Indeed I studied this subject to an exhaustive depth under the tutelage of Sir. Comstock, learned fellow of the Royal Society.

In the case that anyone here shall seek to resume this debate, you may present yourself at your leisure, preferably in the hall Gentleman's Fencing club, located on Trafalgar Square. There we will have the pleasure of further discussing this with the sustenance of Tea and Crumpets, baked by the Royal House of Baking, by appointment of the Queen.

[EnderW]

Geez, I haven't logged into the forums in 2 months, and nothing has changed. :(

For the every day user, ALL BRANDS are equally reliable. The DPPM numbers are so low for any given manufacturer, your chances of getting a "busted" one out of the chute vary by tenths to hundreds of a percent. If you get a broken drive, it is most likely that something else is the cause - and it's usually handling damage or power - like was mentioned above.

The only exception to this is situations like the IBM 75GXP's a while back that had a design flaw - and we all hear about big problems like those. Companies can't afford to ship drives that are going to break all the time. The margins on hard drives are too slim and the cost associated with the warranty returns would kill them.

I'm sure when I come back in another 2 months, there will be a similar thread. Sigh.... :rolleyes:
2 months? more like next week.
It will be right next to the "how much faster will my games load with RAID0?", "which of these almost identical hard drives will be better?", and "how fast is a Raptor?" threads

:rolleyes:

[Hvatum]

2 months? more like next week.
It will be right next to the "how much faster will my games load with RAID0?", "which of these almost identical hard drives will be better?", and "how fast is a Raptor?" threads

:rolleyes:

Fast enough to catch that fat guy from Jurassic Park... Raptors are also very smart. Watch out. :eek:

[Astrogiblet]

2 months? more like next week.
It will be right next to the "how much faster will my games load with RAID0?", "which of these almost identical hard drives will be better?", and "how fast is a Raptor?" threads

:rolleyes:


You forgot the "How much better is the 8800GT_ over xxxx video card", and all the other ones.. *too tired to list them all out*.

Argh.

[Happy Hopping]

My last 3 seagate hard drives were all non-fluid bearing, so they are noisy as hell, and I got them all replaced, but nothing wrong w/ the data, just noise.

The newly replaced drives, both are SCSI 320, 15K rpm, are very good, quiet, and fast, no problem so fast, it's been replaced since Aug.

I posted a thread on whether I should buy Seagate or Samsung, [scroll down a few thread], you can see it, and everyone said seagate.

Calling local and ask around, one dealer said he is stuck w/ 10 dead Samsung hard drive, and no warranty as OEM drive is only 1 or 2 yr.

4 other dealer friends said Seagate as well, mostly due to the warranty.

To make matter more interesting, even if Seagate MTBF is unchanged at 1.2M hr., I can't see how Samsung MTBF be sitting at 600K hr., that's extremely low.

Before Maxtor, Quantum merged w/ Seagate, the lowest MTBF is 1M hr., and I'm not a fan of WD, so in the end, there is not much of a choice, and I just pick up a Seagate 320GB SATA 2 today.

One thing though, I did hear one dealer said since Seagate bought out Maxtor, they have been relying heavily on Maxtor's China manufacturing plant, and the drive quality is not as good as the old days.

So I make sure the drive I bought is MAde in Singapore, Sinagpore has 4 M people, only rely on 7 exports and make their country wealthy. Hard drive is one of them. All the hard drive I bought that's made in Singapore, they all last past the warranty period.

[Hvatum]

My last 3 seagate hard drives were all non-fluid bearing, so they are noisy as hell, and I got them all replaced, but nothing wrong w/ the data, just noise.

The newly replaced drives, both are SCSI 320, 15K rpm, are very good, quiet, and fast, no problem so fast, it's been replaced since Aug.

I posted a thread on whether I should buy Seagate or Samsung, [scroll down a few thread], you can see it, and everyone said seagate.

Calling local and ask around, one dealer said he is stuck w/ 10 dead Samsung hard drive, and no warranty as OEM drive is only 1 or 2 yr.

4 other dealer friends said Seagate as well, mostly due to the warranty.

To make matter more interesting, even if Seagate MTBF is unchanged at 1.2M hr., I can't see how Samsung MTBF be sitting at 600K hr., that's extremely low.

Before Maxtor, Quantum merged w/ Seagate, the lowest MTBF is 1M hr., and I'm not a fan of WD, so in the end, there is not much of a choice, and I just pick up a Seagate 320GB SATA 2 today.

One thing though, I did hear one dealer said since Seagate bought out Maxtor, they have been relying heavily on Maxtor's China manufacturing plant, and the drive quality is not as good as the old days.

So I make sure the drive I bought is MAde in Singapore, Sinagpore has 4 M people, only rely on 7 exports and make their country wealthy. Hard drive is one of them. All the hard drive I bought that's made in Singapore, they all last past the warranty period.

Interesting, thanks for the info.

Note, I don't think that one specific brand is more reliable - just that there are measurable differences between various drive models, manufacturing methods/plants and so on. By no means would I say "Brand X is always better then Brand Y." That's just stupidity and anyone claiming that point of view is making a fool of themselves.

[ktk]

My last 3 seagate hard drives were all non-fluid bearing, so they are noisy as hell, and I got them all replaced, but nothing wrong w/ the data, just noise.

The newly replaced drives, both are SCSI 320, 15K rpm, are very good, quiet, and fast, no problem so fast, it's been replaced since Aug.

I posted a thread on whether I should buy Seagate or Samsung, [scroll down a few thread], you can see it, and everyone said seagate.

Calling local and ask around, one dealer said he is stuck w/ 10 dead Samsung hard drive, and no warranty as OEM drive is only 1 or 2 yr.

4 other dealer friends said Seagate as well, mostly due to the warranty.

To make matter more interesting, even if Seagate MTBF is unchanged at 1.2M hr., I can't see how Samsung MTBF be sitting at 600K hr., that's extremely low.

Before Maxtor, Quantum merged w/ Seagate, the lowest MTBF is 1M hr., and I'm not a fan of WD, so in the end, there is not much of a choice, and I just pick up a Seagate 320GB SATA 2 today.

One thing though, I did hear one dealer said since Seagate bought out Maxtor, they have been relying heavily on Maxtor's China manufacturing plant, and the drive quality is not as good as the old days.

So I make sure the drive I bought is MAde in Singapore, Sinagpore has 4 M people, only rely on 7 exports and make their country wealthy. Hard drive is one of them. All the hard drive I bought that's made in Singapore, they all last past the warranty period.


Guess i got a rebadged MAXTOR MIC -shit then.

i'll do more homework when buying my drives next time IMHO. Singapore drives are faster by 2-5 % too...and more reliable.