Seagate 3TB Good or Bad?

D

dpoverlord

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 18, 2004
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Decided and went and bought 3 WD RED 3TB drives. Now I need to figure out how to link all of these to prevent data corruption and best speed. Will have:

3 1.5TB Seagate
3 3TB WD RED
1 1TB Hitachi

Any ideas on what is the best setup?

EDIT: I purchased 3 Western Digital RED 3 TB drives and have another 3 1.5 TB Seagate drives I will replace them with.
In your opinions whats the best way of setting this up? Should I attach 6 drives to the system to "ALWAYS BE ON" I rarely shut off my computer, or would it be better to keep the 3 TB Drives set them up in a Raid setup and then every now and then attach the 3 1.5 TB to backup the important files.

Would love your input.

I noticed that Seagate changed their warranty to 1 yr and Newegg seems to only show the drive failing.

I am looking to replace my 4 1 - 1.5TB drives with 1 large drive and I am considering getting two so that I can mirror them as backups. Then I want to get a 256 or 512GB SSD. Anyone have experience with the Seagate or the WD 4TB Black? I am apprehensive of going the black as it seems to cost 4x the price of the 3TB...

Thoughts?
 
Last edited:
dpoverlord said:
I noticed that Seagate changed their warranty to 1 yr and Newegg seems to only show the drive failing.

I am looking to replace my 4 1 - 1.5TB drives with 1 large drive and I am considering getting two so that I can mirror them as backups. Then I want to get a 256 or 512GB SSD. Anyone have experience with the Seagate or the WD 4TB Black? I am apprehensive of going the black as it seems to cost 4x the price of the 3TB...

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Blacks are not your only other-company option at 3GB+. Yes, its a bit perplexing why WD didn't release a Black at 3TB instead of 2TB and (the recent) 4TB.

Anyway, as you have a SSD system drive which means you are planning on the big ones for data drives, ultimate spindle speed is not critical. Thus, there is the WD Red 3TB (Amazon at $160) and other vendors ($150+). 3 year warranty, rated for 24/7 availability (Blacks & Barracudas are not). "Designed for NAS use", but perfectly capable of desktop usage (I have several in desktops). "5xxx rpm" spindle speed (which reduces power usage/costs over 7200 rpm drives), but overall good performance; exceeding 7200rpm drives in several benchmarks.

For less money, there is the WD Green at $130. 2 year instead of 3 year warranty for Reds, no stated MTBF & not rated for 24/7 availability (still the power saving "5xxx rpm", though).

If you are hooked on 7200rpm drives, there is the Toshiba DT01ACA300 3TB. 2 year warranty. Vendors here, $144 or more in Amazon Marketplace; $163 when sold by Amazon (but out of stock). More vendors from Pricegrabber here; $140+. Finally another vendor here at $142 (I've used before, reliable).

Finally, Hitachi themselves (owned by WD). At 7200rpm, there is the Deskstar 7K3000 (vendors here; $170). There is also the "5xxx rpm" 5K3000 (also $170...heh). Haven't had much luck finding the 3TB size of either spindle speed in a non-retail kit format at an affordable price. Also not much luck finding warranty info; best could find is this page stating "1 year, 2 years, 3 years or 5 years". Looks like WD is more interested in their own drives right now (although the enterprise Ultrastar (expensive) pages do specify "5 year warranty" for them; typical for enterprise drives).
 
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4tb Hitachi usb3 drives where 170 lil bit back maybe cheaper. I'd get that or WD red. Seagate is least favorite drive. When failed RMA cost double WD price for me and they refused my last RMA and WD accepted on identical drive problems :)
 
Ok so it's better to not get the 3TB Seagate and go more towards teh WD Red 3tb?
 
Seagate's 3TB 7,200 RPM 64MB Cache drives are just fine.

The Red's are interesting and comparable to price on the Seagate's. However, they do spin at 5,400rpm.

This will impact the performance noticeably. If they were at 7,200rpm for this price I'd probably lean towards them.

However, the Seagates are faster, IMHO, are better for certain situations.

If this is to be a NAS strictly, sitting in the closet access over the network, I think the RED's would be fine.

If, as I do, you build up your array in your main PC you will appreciate the speed of having built the array with faster disks.

Especially if you do video conversions, or anything that requires manipulating large files on a regular basis.

At the moment, www.ncix.com has the RED's on for $158 and the Seagate Barracuda's at $138.

So, for $20 more, you get a slower drive but longer warranty, and potentially more reliability.

Then we have Seagate's Constellation CS 3TB (7,200rpm) at $188 or Seagate's SV35 Series 3TB (7,200rpm) at $166.

I have not used the Constellation or SV35 series but they seem to be marketed as being more reliable.

I have used the Barracuda's and, (oh god about to jinx my self), have not had a failure in 10 years using Seagate products.

If cost per megabyte is a concern, the Barracuda's are the best at the moment and provide good performance. For me, they have also been very reliable.

4TB drives are just too expensive at the moment, period. Cheapest I could find was $299 for a WD Black. You can get 2 x 3TB drives for the same cost for more total storage.

Food for thought.
 
the seagate 3tb is not 1 year warranty anymore, they're now 2 year warranty. Most retailers haven't updated that info.
 
I wonder if it would make sense to put a 3GB Seagate into an array or Raid I would hate to have it fail and lose everything. Never have done Raid.
 
Bbq said:
the seagate 3tb is not 1 year warranty anymore, they're now 2 year warranty. Most retailers haven't updated that info.
Click to expand...

Awesome. :rolleyes:

Are they making it retroactive to past drives or only on new stock purchased after some unpublished date?
 
Bbq said:
the seagate 3tb is not 1 year warranty anymore, they're now 2 year warranty. Most retailers haven't updated that info.
Click to expand...

Correct. After just six months of offering one-year warranties, Seagate raised its warranty to its current two-year term on all of its Barracuda drives that shipped since July 2012. So, current Barracudas have the same two-year warranty length as WD Greens and WD Blues.
 
The drives I bought in December list as 1 yr on Seagate.com.
 
vr. said:
The drives I bought in December list as 1 yr on Seagate.com.
Click to expand...

It might be because you have not yet registered your drives with Seagate. If you don't register, the warranty defaults to one year from the date of manufacture (not from the date of purchase).
 
Registered one of the drives, still says 1 yr.
I'll check again tomorrow.
 
I'm no fan of Seagate consumer drives. They have a long (recent) history of firmware & design problems, as those Newegg reviews can attest to.

dpoverlord said:
I wonder if it would make sense to put a 3GB Seagate into an array or Raid I would hate to have it fail and lose everything. Never have done Raid.
Click to expand...

No, it wouldn't make sense. Not for a Baraccuda or some of the drives I listed. They are not rated (or certified) for RAID or array usage. The WD Red is. The Hitachi Deskstars (both the 7200rpm & 5900rpm) are rated for "24x7 availability" (as is the Red), so likely would be fine in a RAID as well (as many people in this forum have them in).

sawk said:
The Red's are interesting and comparable to price on the Seagate's. However, they do spin at 5,400rpm.
This will impact the performance noticeably
Click to expand...

No. Its the old "7200 is a bigger number than 5400, thus it must be faster all around" misconception. You have to look at comparative drive performance benchmarks. An Anandtech one has a great comparison between the Red and the Seagate 3TB (7200rpm) here. They split a lot of the benchmarks, with the final word being: "However, one can safely say that in 2 - 5 bay NAS systems based on ARM chipsets, it is unlikely that 7200 rpm drives are going to consistently deliver better performance than the 5400 rpm / IntelliPower drives."

If you really want a 7200rpm drive regardless of benchmarks and want to pay for the increased power usage (if you pay for power), I'd go for either the Toshiba or Hitachi Deskstar linked above.
 
i have always been a fan of Seagate but now I'm just really sad... i ran there firmware upgrade tool and it changed my bootloader (on a intel ssd) and just crashed so I'm now trying to get some info back from my system drive but it seems its all lost. dos based firmware tool... Seagate what year is this really???????


i just read that dpoverlord wants to raid Seagate 3tb i got 3 of them.. ST3000DM001 i can't raid them i cant even boot with them on my raid controller.


i would say stay away from seagate ST3000DM001
 
dos based firmware tool... Seagate what year is this really???????
Click to expand...

The reason for it being dos is that dos can be made smaller compared to linux. Seagate can not give out a free bootable copy of windows so that is not really an option. Remember that Seagate must support firmware upgrades for the system disk this would not work from a windows based application.
 
DigitalLF said:
i have always been a fan of Seagate but now I'm just really sad... i ran there firmware upgrade tool and it changed my bootloader (on a intel ssd) and just crashed so I'm now trying to get some info back from my system drive but it seems its all lost. dos based firmware tool... Seagate what year is this really???????


i just read that dpoverlord wants to raid Seagate 3tb i got 3 of them.. ST3000DM001 i can't raid them i cant even boot with them on my raid controller.


i would say stay away from Seagate ST3000DM001
Click to expand...

You have some other really weird going on, I know of 2 people at work here that run these drives in raid, one is software and one is using a LSI 2960-4i.
 
I have 8 ST3000DM001 running in a NAS at home and 8 running in a NAS at work for the past few months. Out of 16 drives, one was DOA and Amazon replaced that quickly. Other than that, they have been great.
 
DigitalLF said:
i have always been a fan of Seagate but now I'm just really sad... i ran there firmware upgrade tool and it changed my bootloader (on a intel ssd) and just crashed so I'm now trying to get some info back from my system drive but it seems its all lost. dos based firmware tool... Seagate what year is this really???????
Click to expand...

...

As much as I dislike Seagate for having sold me a 1-year warranty drive (since I bought it in that time window, now buying WD), you shouldn't blame Seagate if you didn't bother reading and following all the instructions:

Welcome to Seagate's Firmware Upgrade Utility and Procedures.

Seagate highly recommends that you do a complete system backup of all
data on your hard drive prior to performing a firmware upgrade to
ensure there is no chance of data loss during the process. Seagate is
not responsible for any data loss that may occur during or after your
firmware upgrade.

Read the End User License Agreement below.

Basic instructions:
1) Read the Warnings and Cautions below.
2) Use a standard desktop PC with an integrated SATA controller, or
a common SATA add-in controller like a Promise SATA150-TX2.
3) Disconnect all PATA or SATA devices from the system, except the
device needing the firmware update.​
 
TType85 said:
I have 8 ST3000DM001 running in a NAS at home and 8 running in a NAS at work for the past few months. Out of 16 drives, one was DOA and Amazon replaced that quickly. Other than that, they have been great.
Click to expand...

Bought 7 ST3000DM001 during BF 2012 for $90 each
6 ST3000DM001 are running in raid6/z2 since Dec 2012 on "testing"/trial ..... so far is running smoothly 24/7,
I will move my old 8X500G( already RMA 4 Seagate drives and 1 WD drives, each has 5 years warranty), drives and 6X1T ( old samsung F3, pretty solid!!!) to a backup server.
each drive has ~2 year 2 months warranty ..
 
apf888 said:
...

As much as I dislike Seagate for having sold me a 1-year warranty drive (since I bought it in that time window, now buying WD), ...........
Click to expand...

this is unpredictable on seagate warranty as I see, on all my 7 ST3000DM001 drive, each drives has different warranty coverage, some has 2 years-1 month, some has 2 year-2 months. and 1 drive has warranty ended in january 2015:p..

I bough those drives during BF 2012 from amazon and newegg..
 
DigitalLF said:
i have always been a fan of Seagate but now I'm just really sad... i ran there firmware upgrade tool and it changed my bootloader (on a intel ssd) and just crashed so I'm now trying to get some info back from my system drive but it seems its all lost. dos based firmware tool... Seagate what year is this really???????


i just read that dpoverlord wants to raid Seagate 3tb i got 3 of them.. ST3000DM001 i can't raid them i cant even boot with them on my raid controller. U failures.


i would say stay away from seagate ST3000DM001
Click to expand...

ExhibitA why hard disk manufacturers are hesitant about giving out firmware update tools to end users. If your drive had a mfg date in the second half of 2012 then you didn't actually need an update. I've run the tool many times, it works fine.

Sorry for your troubles but they have zero to do with the merits of the drive, which happens to be an excellent one and I've got about fifty of them now.

And a diff boot loader doesn't mean 'all your data is lost' so take a breath.
 
Last edited:
cantalup said:
this is unpredictable on seagate warranty as I see, on all my 7 ST3000DM001 drive, each drives has different warranty coverage, some has 2 years-1 month, some has 2 year-2 months. and 1 drive has warranty ended in january 2015:p..

I bough those drives during BF 2012 from amazon and newegg..
Click to expand...

Yeah, but I checked mine, it really does say 1 year when you enter it into their warranty check system. :mad: Flood or not, they should've just said "sorry about that 1-year warranty mistake, we'll make it up to all of you by making ALL of them after Jan 2012 two year".

You know it's downright ridiculous when you can buy external drives that have double the warranty compared to the same internal drives. (Seagate external = 2 year, even during the post-flood period... someone wasn't thinking quite right with that 1 year warranty, especially when the competition was only lowering it to 2 years or not even at all!).

<RANT>Not sure what happened to the leadership at Seagate, but it seems they're clawing back a lot of things which made them successful in the consumer space. I remember when Seagate had 5-year warranties and were basically pitched as a server-quality drive sold to the consumer. Premium product, great warranty, solid performance. Then they decided to drop it to 3 years and gave a poor excuse citing that most returns happen in the first 3 years (ALL of my Seagate 5-year warranty drives still work). The fact that they offered that 5 year warranty is part of the reason why all my PCs have Seagate instead of WD. Now, they're being slowly populated with WD. Why? Because part of selling the product should be the willingness to stand behind it (which Seagate failed big-time on when they effectively said "screw you" to everyone at the beginning of last year with that warranty reduction).</RANT>

tl;dr Just offering a good warranty on a quality product assures the customer that it's worth buying.

Seagate's 1 year warranty offering doesn't instil confidence and probably isn't worth buying. I bought one, it works fine, but if it fails in six months I probably *really* will stop buying Seagate. (I have tons of GoFlex drives, 2 year warranty).
 
apf888 said:
...

As much as I dislike Seagate for having sold me a 1-year warranty drive (since I bought it in that time window, now buying WD), you shouldn't blame Seagate if you didn't bother reading and following all the instructions:

Welcome to Seagate's Firmware Upgrade Utility and Procedures.

Seagate highly recommends that you do a complete system backup of all
data on your hard drive prior to performing a firmware upgrade to
ensure there is no chance of data loss during the process. Seagate is
not responsible for any data loss that may occur during or after your
firmware upgrade.

Read the End User License Agreement below.

Basic instructions:
1) Read the Warnings and Cautions below.
2) Use a standard desktop PC with an integrated SATA controller, or
a common SATA add-in controller like a Promise SATA150-TX2.
3) Disconnect all PATA or SATA devices from the system, except the
device needing the firmware update.​
Click to expand...

I agree with apf888 here, live and learn from your mistakes, you should be able to recover.

Also, DigitalLF, try to keep your woes in your own thread. Trying to hijack someone else's thread isn't cool.

Seagate is not to blame, Nor is LSI.
 
odditory said:
ExhibitA why hard disk manufacturers are hesitant about giving out firmware update tools to end users. If your drive had a mfg date in the second half of 2012 then you didn't actually need an update. I've run the tool many times, it works fine.

Sorry for your troubles but they have zero to do with the merits of the drive, which happens to be an excellent one and I've got about fifty of them now.

And a diff boot loader doesn't mean 'all your data is lost' so take a breath.
Click to expand...


Ive upgraded like 10-15 drives before so a firmware tool is nothing new to me. But this time it went wrong somewhere. i think its because True Crypt and that tool didn't work great together. my system drive was encrypted at the time so i them decrypted it and and the partition was lost so i used a few well known programs for trying to recovery the partition table but no dice. then i ran a recovery program and all i found wore some junk like internet history.. but what I was going for here was just to say that my experience has for the most part been windows based tool for upgrading and i guessed this one also wore windows based but it rebooted my computer and changed the boot loader to a Seagate one and after that i couldn't recovery my data. so for a non system drive i hoped it would have been a GUI not a CLI tool.



Basic instructions:
1) Read the Warnings and Cautions below.
2) Use a standard desktop PC with an integrated SATA controller, or
a common SATA add-in controller like a Promise SATA150-TX2.
3) Disconnect all PATA or SATA devices from the system, except the
device needing the firmware update.
Click to expand...

Thats exactly how i did i even changed from AHCI to IDE to be sure. i first ran the dos version of the tool and only the Seagate drive was connected at that point but then i went over to the what i guessed was the windows tool but it was just the dos tool with a built in boot loader.



I did not in anyway try to hijack someones thread, im sorry if it seemed like it. I just wanted to explain why i vote against Seagate. I'm 100% new to raid so it might just be me but the drive is not in the compatible list at LSI. and for me to resolv that problem i will keep to my own thread.
 
It's alright DgiitalLF, the problem you are experiencing does not reflect on the quality of the Baracuda drives. It is a unique situation you are experiencing.

I've written up some information which I'll post over in your thread shortly, hopefully it'll help.
 
vr. said:
Registered one of the drives, still says 1 yr.
I'll check again tomorrow.
Click to expand...

At least you got 1 year. LOL.:)

I just bought this damn thing in a previous sale on 1/12/2013:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185

HDD arrives today, and even though Newegg's damn site claims a 2-year warranty; Seagate's warranty validation tool says I only have a 6 month warranty. It ends on July 27 of this year!

Awesome! :eek:
 
vr. said:
8 of them still say 1 yr.

Emailed Seagate to say hi.
Click to expand...

Good luck. In my case, I expect them to (either) not respond (sending a claim was more difficult than I anticipated), or to lay the blame on NewEgg.

If that happens, I expect Newegg to resolve it. If not, then it's going back. Six months is completely unacceptable; sans deceptive advertising.
 
vr. said:
8 of them still say 1 yr.

Emailed Seagate to say hi.
Click to expand...

if you just buy those HDs recently, contact(call) seagate to mention that you bought recently from newegg.
I think at the end, you will have to provide seagate with your newegg receipt that you just bought recently, and let them adjust your drives warranty to 2 years.

good luck...
 
Whelp, Seagate was more helpful than I anticipated. :eek: They updated my warranty to two years.

Genuinely awesome!

Overall, a bit bizarre though. I implore everyone who buys a new Seagate HDD to check their warranty upon purchase.
 
After the whole fukushima event, quality control has gone to crap. Ive purchased both seagate and WD hard drives and 50% or more have failed.. They still need time to catch up to the demand..
 
I have owned alot of Seagate Drives over the past 10 years.. I have had one fail a few weeks ago with smart errors (7200.12 500GB) which was in a RAID 0 pair for 4 years..

I bought a couple of 1 TB 7200.14 ST1000DM003 to replace the pair for $140 shipped..

Here is a benchmark on the new drives shortstroked in RAID 0:

hdtunebenchmarkintelraiv.png


I immediately flashed the firmware to the latest and so far so good.. NewEgg actually did a good job on packaging.

What I observed with the failed drive is that it was the only one not getting good airflow over it..After I got the new drives, I moved my SSD to the place with the failed drive was and now all my mechanical drives have good airflow..
 
heflys20 said:
Whelp, Seagate was more helpful than I anticipated. :eek: They updated my warranty to two years.

Genuinely awesome!

Overall, a bit bizarre though. I implore everyone who buys a new Seagate HDD to check their warranty upon purchase.
Click to expand...

Told you already hehehe.

Not on Seagate only. every new purchase of HD must be checked its waranty online :D. If the warranty length is less than advertised... contact/deal with them to modify the warranty.

if the warranty is longer than advertised, we just keep quit and nothing happens :p
 
cantalup said:
Told you already hehehe.

Not on Seagate only. every new purchase of HD must be checked its waranty online :D. If the warranty length is less than advertised... contact/deal with them to modify the warranty.

if the warranty is longer than advertised, we just keep quit and nothing happens :p
Click to expand...

I just contacted support to extend my warranty on my drives to the full 24 months.. they sent me an email so I could reply to it with proof of purchase.. Kind of a pain, but that extra 3 months might be useful.
 
vr. said:
8 of them still say 1 yr.

Emailed Seagate to say hi.
Click to expand...

Their response:
Seagate Support said:
"Thank you for contacting Seagate Support regarding the warranty period of your drive. When this drive was
built, it came with a 12 month warranty. If the warranty for this model drive was changed after than time,
your drive would still have kept the same 12 month warranty."
Click to expand...
 
^^^
vr,

I assume the original warranty is 1 year Not 2 years.

they will persistently not extend to 2 years.
 
I am using 8 of them in a raid5 since ~ 1/2 year + 2 as single drives and no problems so far.
So i bought another 16 for a second raid 5 which is actually on init.
They all came with about 2 years waranty.
 
how about this one:

J and R
/western-digital/pe/WD_BAAU0030HBK/

3TB desktop - $126.

J&R Item # WD BAAU0030HBK
UPC # 718037770017
Mfr. Part # WDBAAU0030HBKNESN
 
While the Seagates (ST3000DM001) are 7200rpm drives, their read access times are not really better than that of the WD Reds. Where they excel are the sequential transfer rates. I personally use the Reds in my server because of their low power consumption. My desktop uses a SRT cached Seagate drive, which is also very quiet.
 
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