Samsung Spintpoint F3 1TB $80

Got 2 of these drives. Very nice. May get a third at some point if it stays at or near this price.
 
And with Seagate you will be lucky to get that much life, to say nothing of actual warranty service. YMMV, but I'm personally never buying Failgate again.
 
And with Seagate you will be lucky to get that much life, to say nothing of actual warranty service. YMMV, but I'm personally never buying Failgate again.

I've had three Seagate drives (1.5tb 3.5, 2 tb 3.5, and 500gb 2.5), and all three are fine.

Methinks problems with Seagate are overblown.
 
I've had three Seagate drives (1.5tb 3.5, 2 tb 3.5, and 500gb 2.5), and all three are fine.

Methinks problems with Seagate are overblown.
Nope, actual statistical data shows that the Seagates are unreliable.
 
Nope, actual statistical data shows that the Seagates are unreliable.

source please? I'm thinking of picking up a new drive in the next couple months and would like to see a fail rate comparison.
 
source please? I'm thinking of picking up a new drive in the next couple months and would like to see a fail rate comparison.
I think I have it saved on my home computer. Otherwise I'll try to track it down, or another [H]'er could find it before then.
 
The question is, are these original Samsung drives or rebadged Seagates like the recent F4 2TB's that were on sale at Newegg?
 
Nope, actual statistical data shows that the Seagates are unreliable.

Define "unreliable".

Are we talking more unreliable than the competition?

Or buying a drive is asking for certain data loss?

Because if it is the first, I maintain.
 
I have a 1.5TB Seagate that developed bad sectors (lots of them) three times. So yeah, no more Seagates for me.
 
I know that recent Seagates over the last few years have been unreliable much more so than other competing brands, its pretty easy to see the complaints if you look. However, my question is, since Seagate acquired Samsung, and they continue to sell Samsung's old Spinpoint drives rebadged, are they actually changing anything about the drive other a sticker?
 
Define "unreliable".

Are we talking more unreliable than the competition?

Or buying a drive is asking for certain data loss?

Because if it is the first, I maintain.

It is the first, and you maintain because your personal experience with a statistically insignificant sample indicates that they are reliable.
 
my f3s have a 3 year warrenty whats up with this? I've actually got one of the f3' 1tb's on my desk to get RMA'ed and a 2nd in my raid 5 array at home that needs to be rma'ed. I own 4 of these drives, if you don't give them good cooling they act up. The one on my desk has a drive head that went out but I just never rma'ed it lol
 
I've got 9 F4 2TB's, 1 F3 1TB, 1 F3 500GB, and all of them are running like a champ. I'm just not sure if Seagate is doing anything to the old Spinpoints, but I sure hope they don't touch them.
 
It is the first, and you maintain because your personal experience with a statistically insignificant sample indicates that they are reliable.
:rolleyes:

So...I'm going to trust a handful of randoms on the internet, or my personal experience? Let's not forget the fact that in the grand scheme of things, we are all "statistically insignificant."

Seagate is the OEM for several computer manufactures. The ~100 hard drives I've just finished pulling out of the computers at work have functioned fine for the past 5 years and have shown no signs of failure. They came from three different rounds of purchasing and as such used three different models of HD, but they were all Seagate. They won't work fine right now, but that's a completely different story. :D

In the computer lab right now, we have at least 50 more Seagate drives. Of those, 1 has failed. A < 2% failure rate? That's within most manufacturing tolerances. Which is why I asked if it is more than the competition, or if there is an actual, unresolved manufacturing issue.

I will grant I am unsure of whether Seagate provides Dell/Gateway/etc. top shelf drives and leaves the rest to us or what. Likewise, I am uncertain of the OEM HDD model number.

Until someone gives me more than "I had a hard drive fail on me," I maintain, the "Seagate is unreliable" vibe is overblown.
 
Last edited:
reasonably recent study (January 2011):
http://www.guru3d.com/news/list-of-hardware-failure-rates/

The HDD is likely one of the most critical components in your computer, in this category Maxtor received the best ranking:
Maxtor 1,04% (contre 1,73%)
Western Digital 1,45% (contre 0,99%)
Seagate 2,13% (contre 2,58%)
Samsung 2,47% (contre 1,93%)
Hitachi 3,39% (contre 0,92%)

I'm comfortable buying Samsung hdds, so why not Seagate?

*edit* Seagate has a lower failure rate for hard drives than Asus has with motherboards.

So what's the problem?

In the motherboard market there doesn't seem to be a lot of difference between manufacturers:
Gigabyte 2,33% (contre 2,36%)
MSI 2,44% (contre 2,54%)
ASUS 2,49% (contre 3,05%)
ASRock 2,71% (contre 2,21%)
 
Last edited:
That's LOL! I remember people used to say "Don't buy Maxtor, they are junk!" Now Maxtor=Seagate=Samsung! This is genuinely hilarious. The only people I would choose to believe is someone using consumer drives by the thousands in a 24x7 environment for apples to apples comparisons.
 
wtf is up with the warranty...... i look away when i see 1 year on HDDs.....
 
Slowly coming down to pre-tsunami/pre-flood prices, but not quite there yet.
 
I know that recent Seagates over the last few years have been unreliable much more so than other competing brands, its pretty easy to see the complaints if you look. However, my question is, since Seagate acquired Samsung, and they continue to sell Samsung's old Spinpoint drives rebadged, are they actually changing anything about the drive other a sticker?

X2 Anyone ??
 
That's LOL! I remember people used to say "Don't buy Maxtor, they are junk!" Now Maxtor=Seagate=Samsung! This is genuinely hilarious. The only people I would choose to believe is someone using consumer drives by the thousands in a 24x7 environment for apples to apples comparisons.

I worked there(Xyratex, the supplier for NetApp) my personal observation is that we had the least amount of trouble with Hitachi. We never used Samsung's though so it I can't give any reliable information on them.
 
Bah - dead deal. Shows for $109.99 now.

[edit] doh! - never mind. Didn't realize there was also an instant $30 off. Looks like I need some caffiene.
 
I'm just going by actual statistical data I've seen.

Please provide a link. I would like to read more on hard drive failure rates. I posted the most recent study I've found and it stated the contrary to your claim.
 
I'm just going by actual statistical data I've seen.

I can claim whatever I want too. I've also seen a lot of bullshit articles out there or "statistical data" with outlandishly low sample sizes in an attempt to try and "prove" what they wanted to.

At the end of the day seagate is the largest oem manufacturer of hard drivers. People like Apple don't use them because they are unreliable. FYI Western digital has had issues with botched firmware pretty recently.
 
I have 2 1TB F3's from last year when Samsung still owned the HD line. If these F3's at Newegg are the same drives as the ones that I bought last year I would buy them again. I wish Samsung wouldn't have sold there HD line to Seagate. I'm thinking about picking up 2 more 1TB F3's if they are the same and 3 or 4 F4 2TB drives if they are the same as when Samsung made the drives. Any one know for sure if the drives are the same, exactly?
 
I have 2 1TB F3's from last year when Samsung still owned the HD line. If these F3's at Newegg are the same drives as the ones that I bought last year I would buy them again. I wish Samsung wouldn't have sold there HD line to Seagate. I'm thinking about picking up 2 more 1TB F3's if they are the same and 3 or 4 F4 2TB drives if they are the same as when Samsung made the drives. Any one know for sure if the drives are the same, exactly?

My main boot drife is a 1TB F3 I got 14 months back...For $50 shipped, I'd like another but not for 1.5x the price I paid for the first one.
 
Those statistics get heaviyl skewed by laptop drives.

I want stats for desktop drives only: no laptop, no enterprise/server drives

I personally had three WDs fail in different machines - all weeks after warranty expired.
 
I've had three Seagate drives (1.5tb 3.5, 2 tb 3.5, and 500gb 2.5), and all three are fine.

Methinks problems with Seagate are overblown.

You thinks WRONG. I have owned Samsung, WD, Hitachi, and Seagate. About 20 of each of Samsung, WD and Hitachi. Only 4 Seagate drives. Two of the Seagate drives failed (one after warranty period, the other before).

Only three total out of the 60+ of the other drives failed and all were way past warranty (like 3-4 years past warranty).
 
I have had great experiences with the Samsung F3 drives, including one that is badged Seagate.

I have 5 of them in the house now that all have been running great for years.
 
I don't think you can dub Seagate "unreliable" as a whole. They've had a few drives that were inherently flawed. I purchased a 1.5tb drive that was nothing but trouble from the start (well, after the return time expired) and I've since warrantied it 3 times. All were bad. Click of death... however I've had Seagate's that performed great for years. The Momentus XT's are awesome drives. I have 2 and they perform great!
 
I'm solidly in the "Seagate is crap" camp. FWIW I don't claim any statistics but my own. I've been working with HDDs since the old Winchester MFM/RLL days of 10MB drives in the early 80's. I've bought/used/installed hundreds of HDDs in my life. And I've never had another brand with as many failures as Seagate. Is it a 100% failure rate? No, of course not. But I'd say of the Seagate's I've personally been involved with, it has easily approached 25-30% at least. Maxtor drives used to actually be decent many years ago, and then Seagate bought them. I would fear the same for Samsung now.

As far as my personal use, I've bought around 20 or so drives in the past 2-3 years. The vast majority were 500GB and 1TB Hitachi Deskstars that have run 24/7 in NAS configurations, with a couple of WD Blacks and Raptors sprinkled in. I've not had a single failure yet with any of them.
 
Back
Top