Seagate Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Failing Hard Drives

[doublejack]

At this point, the writing is on the wall: Enough educated people know that Seagate is rubbish. The only arguments otherwise are "I personally have not had a problem". Meanwhile class action lawsuits and real-world data are showing that they are indeed worthless. Essentially, there is no excuse for anyone who calls themselves IT or Hardware enthusiasts purchasing a Seagate product and then bitching about quality.

I don't agree that people knowing Seagate drives suck = people won't buy them. People will knowingly continue to buy them because they are cheap. Last summer, I held my nose and bought a trio of 3tb Seagate drives to use for a Windows Storage Spaces array. It has parity, so if one dies I won't lose my data. Why did I buy them? Show me three more 3tb drives I can buy for less than $200 total, with tax. It was $187 out the door at Microcenter. I wanted WD, but could not justify spending 50% more.

MY theory on seagate is that their issue is not design, but QC. Essentially, too many bad apples get pushed out and not enough resources devoted to filtering out products that are faulty out the gate. So if you have a handful of drives that have survived 1 year, chances are they will be fine, as they probably would pass a rigorous QC.

Maybe, but I'm not sure. I suspect that a drive with a quality issue won't work at all. These seagates do work, for a while at least.

 

[Nacho]

I would say that the backblaze numbers aren't accurate though. Desktop class drives aren't designed for server environments so their failure rate should be taken with a grain of salt.

That said, I have about 10000 enterprise class Seagate drives online at work and get less than a 1% failure rate yearly.

 

[pgwalsh]

I've had 12x 3TB 7200 RPM Seagate drives (ST3000DM001) for over a year, no issues. All three of the 3TB Western Digital Green drives I bought were DOA. Sometimes you're just unlucky.

I had 8 of those and after a year and a half they started to fail. I had 2 fail in one week and then a month later another. They don't always fail right away.

 

[westrock2000]

1. Offer multiyear warrany on product.
2. When it fails shortly, replace with product that has 90 day warranty
3. Turn 5 year warranty into 90 day warranty the legal way
4. Profit!

 

[SixFootDuo]

People still think class action suits work?

Resolution will be as usual, each individual will get $3 and a pack of chewing gum, and the lawyers will get $50 million.

They absolutely do work. While you may be thinking of your own neck first and understandably so, the companies involved are left severally stinging.

Seagate no doubt has a management team in place who cut corners, delay upgrades and improvements to it's factories, so on and so forth. I honestly do not see a future with Seagate in it. It's only a matter of time before the "shrinking pc market" catches these guys first.

Besides, we all know what happens to companies that suck, cough .. cough ... OCZ

I just have to ask .... who the PUK buys Seagate drives anyways here on HardOCP? This is no secret. They have been failing for years.

 

[John721]

I know some other places on the internet where Seagate is simply referred to as "Failgate" these days and with good reason. I recently had trouble with an external Seagate drive, though in my case, I luckily bought it from Costco and they accepted a very late return.

 

[SixFootDuo]

I buy almost exclusively Toshiba but now that is thrown into doubt as Toshiba just lost 4.5 billion dollars in some sort of auditing scam or something

 

[GotNoRice]

I would say that the backblaze numbers aren't accurate though. Desktop class drives aren't designed for server environments so their failure rate should be taken with a grain of salt.

I would say that depending on the usage scenario, a desktop could easily be a harsher environment for a hard drive. A thermally controlled server environment that is mostly dust free vs. a desktop stuffed under a desk cooking itself under layers of dust for example. External drives are even worse as you know those are getting knocked around, falling over, cords tugged on, etc. About the only usage scenario I can think of where a server environment would be harsher is if the drive is literally being accessed constantly.

 

[NoNRG]

Funny, Newegg's deals email from yesterday features the Seagate 3TB drive.

 

[DocSavage]

Funny, Newegg's deals email from yesterday features the Seagate 3TB drive.

In a similar vein, I'm starting to realize that a lot of grocery store specials seem to be on dubious quality items. Like the delivery truck has a bunch of refrozen ice-cream, so they put it all on sale for $1 off.

 

[ShocWave]

Anyone know if there is a class action in Canada as well?
I have this exact drive. Died 2 months after the 1 year warranty was up.
I have 8 other Seagate hard drives in my PC going strong after many years.

 

[ShocWave]

Some of the Seagate drives I have are over 10 years old.
My PC has been running 24/7 for years.

 

[husker4life]

My first Seagate 3TB last only 18 months(luckily still under warranty as its only 2 years) 2nd one is still going strong(knock on wood) but i'm not getting my hopes up, i put alot of unmodded games on it so i can easily download them again off Steam.

 

[Jim Kim]

1. Offer multiyear warrany on product.
2. When it fails shortly, replace with product that has 90 day warranty
3. Turn 5 year warranty into 90 day warranty the legal way
4. Profit!

It's not quite that bad. But I will never buy another Seagate after the Backblaze results.
"Seagate warrants that repaired or replaced products are covered for the greater of either the remainder of the original product warranty or 90 days."

http://www.seagate.com/support/warranty-and-replacements/limited-consumer-warranty/

 

[krotch]

Some of the Seagate drives I have are over 10 years old.
My PC has been running 24/7 for years.

Yes and those 10 year old Seagate drives were great quality. Sadly, the new ones, not so much.

I have had 10 Seagate drives in the past 3 years. 2 have failed so far. I've been solely buying Seagate drives since 2002 (aside from the WD Raptors). I've felt their quality was great, but recently they seem to be slipping. I think it all started after they acquired Maxtor.

 

[rat]

Some of the Seagate drives I have are over 10 years old.
My PC has been running 24/7 for years.

Things change. Surely you're capable of understanding that much, right?

 

[farscapesg1]

I had 6 of the ST3000DM001 models in a ZFS striped-mirror pool. 3 died within the warranty period and were replaced. 2 of those three replacements have died again just after the warranty expired. 2 others that made it through the warranty before dying and getting replaced with 2 spares i purchased. The last one hasn't failed yet, and neither have the replacement ones that sat on a shelf until needed. These were a combination of the externals (which were ripped from their shells to use internally) and retail drives.. all purchased for around $100.

I'll have to see if I still have any of the purchase documentation, failed drive serial numbers, etc. I have the latest one that failed.. but just took it to work the other day to add to the recycling/junk collection and won't be back to the office until next week.

 

[Ihaveworms]

I have had several of these 3tb and 2tb seagates die on me. Been replacing them with HGST and WD drives, particularly the reds in the Synology NAS. Hopefully I can get something out of this as the seagate drives are garbage.

 

[krotch]

I moved to the HGST NAS to try out. Over the course of this year, I'll probably pick up 3 more HGST and try 4 of WD's Red NAS drives too.

I don't mind hard drive failures, it happens. I just want to get at least 5 years of life out of it before it fails.

 

[nilepez]

At this point, the writing is on the wall: Enough educated people know that Seagate is rubbish. The only arguments otherwise are "I personally have not had a problem". Meanwhile class action lawsuits and real-world data are showing that they are indeed worthless. Essentially, there is no excuse for anyone who calls themselves IT or Hardware enthusiasts purchasing a Seagate product and then bitching about quality.

The lawsuit is over a specific model (or perhaps all 3TB models). And FYI, when I bought my first one, it was the 4TB WD Red that was having QC issues with 4TB models, and a quick scan on Newegg shows that Seagate 4TB models are rated higher. Now maybe that's based on issues with early reds, but ultimately Seagate appears to be more reliable.

I can only personally attest that 3 4TB drives that are 1,2 and 3 years old are all kicking despite being used 24x7

 

[ShocWave]

Things change. Surely you're capable of understanding that much, right?

Well, yes. As you can see from the image, I have pretty much every generation of Seagate hard drive. I buy a new one every year.

The only drive I had that failed early was the ST3000DM001, my other 3TB model that's a year older is still running fine.

I do feel that Seagate drives aren't as rock solid as they were in the past, but I've seen my fair share of WD failures.

 

[buhbuhfet]

i have a dead seagate, dead samsung, dead WD, dead hitachi, and dead fujitsu, to me they are all equally worthless,