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Anyone own a Seagate Harddrive?

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LXI, yeah the Medalist drives seem to die. The reason I bought one in the first place way back when is by the recomendation from a friend who I thought I could trust at the time but after 3 in a row I guess he was wrong! 😀

 
I think Seagate made a very good choice by making the Barracuda ATA drives.

They took a proven reliable SCSI drive and put an ATA interface on it. You get SCSI class quality with ATA class prices.

I wouldn't recommend a Medalist Pro to anybody. I'm glad they dropped that line.
 
Seagate #1 dies..... They send me a refurbished one, with a one year warranty. The first drive had a 3 year warranty.

Seagate #2 dies..... They send me a refurbished one, with a one year warranty.

Seagate #3 still works, only used for backup, it's much louder than the other two... I don't trust it at all...


Never again.
 
Well I've only had experience with Quantum. However both of my Quantum's are the LOUDEST drives in the world. The Seagate my dad owns is much quieter. Infact recently the noise has gotten so bad I'm at the edge of trashing the drive for a Seagate with a fluid dynamic bearing spindle motor (no steel ball bearings 🙂). Quantums are reliable but thats about it, they are VERY noisy.
 
I'm not talking drive "crunching/accessing noise", but overall high-pitched squeal, yes the Quantums have an eternal high-pitched squeal. Its driving me->😕
 
I've had my ups and downs with Seagate. A few years ago they were one of the top names in drives but then they seemed to have slumped. (It may have been the Medalist line LXi referred to in his post.

I can tell you from experience that Seagate is easy to deal with when it comes to RMA's, since I've had to return a few.
 
My experience with Seagate is so-so...I currently have a 1.2 G Medalist drive, but it failed on me a year ago...some problems with bad sectors..I managed to create a partiton with the rest of the drive so I salvaged about 60% of it and that works fine.
 
I have no experience with any Seagate drives other than a single medalist, but I do have some comments about it. The drive in question is still operational, I believe it is ~2 gigs, and currently resides in my Grandfather's computer. While repairing his computer a few months back (its a P133 donated by me - mostly random parts I found in my closet), I decided to take this drive apart and find out what a strange scratching sound emitting from it was. I was pleased to see that it was constructed with normal Phillips head screws, and not the safety screws of all my other hard drives. After proceeding to take the cover off, I never did figure out what that damned noise was. However, the actual construction of the drive amazed me. It appeared to me to be apsolute crap. Though I cannot honestly say I know what is required in a HD to make it considered 'well-made', this one had none of the features I would consider crucial. It was simply a metal case surrounding the two (or three? I can't remember) platters. Nothing else other than the read/write head. There were no elements in place to counteract damage from outside forces. When I take a look at any IBM drive, I can see all kinds of gizmo's in place to help dampen the effects of shocks and/or vibrations, as well as other things of which I have no clue of their use. This drive had none whatsoever.

Keep in mind that it is still working perfectly (other than that dammed scratching noise that I never did fix). 😉

I hadn't bought the drive myself, he had thought to upgrade on his own. Evidently, it was a refurbished drive (unbeknownst to him), but it appears to have been repaired and in working condition. This thread in no way is meant to offer my opinion on Seagate's other lines of HDs; I am only offering my personal (and somewhat inexperienced) views on a line of drives many people have had problems with.
 
DUDE! You took the cover off? That thing ain't going to last long now. The dust particles you let in are going to chew up the platters as they get wedged in between the head and the disk.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong. I thought that was a very bad thing.
 
I have had a Medalist Pro(Got hot but still chugs away) and I have a Barracuda II 30gig that I love(so far). I have no problem recommending them to a friend. The IBM is nice too. I have a Deckstar thats been very nice to me.
 
Seagate manufacturers more HDDs that any company in the world. But now that Maxtor bought Quantum, that will/has changed.
 
<<Quantum bought Maxtor>>

The other way around. Actually Seagate isnt that big in units sold, Maxtor alone sells the most units in retail channels as well as having the most OEM contracts. WD comes second in retail, Seagate and Quantum are relatively small players on the IDE field, but in the SCSI field they're the two most dominant.
 
Its magnetic, not optical. I think had I opened it up, and dumped the contents of my vancuum cleaner into it I might have a problem though... That was around 6 months ago btw, and its still fine.
 

DUDE! You took the cover off? That thing ain't going to last long now. The dust particles you let in are going to chew up the platters as they get wedged in between the head and the disk.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong. I thought that was a very bad thing.


Hdds are sealed units. The platers &amp; heads are enclosed in a air tight shock absorbing housing.

I have 3 systems that I don't use any covering, and they haven't give me any more troubles than my covered puters...And one of the puter haven't have it jacket on for 4 years.





 


<< Note to self, if you see Naughty Maximus selling Hard Drives at For Sale Forum don't even click on thread..just keep going >>



I have to agree. 🙂


Well I?m biased by experience like everyone else but I like Seagate drives. I think my 8.4GB is a Medalist and I havent had any problems with it. Actually it has this cool rubber cover around the machined aluminum so I use it between different computers since it is protected better than my other drives. Besides it is the coolest looking drive I own. 😉 And no problems with noise. It's the second quietest drive in my system next to the 75GXP's.

My only experience is with 5400 IDE Seagates but I've used around 20 different machines with Seagate drives. Never a problem with them except a 850MB I pulled from a old Crapard Bell. It had a few bad sectors but went on to be a spare drive in several different computers. Still working fine after about 2 years.

I've had pretty good luck with hard drives but I have my preferences. Western Digital was always my first choice and the last one I bought was a 7200 rpm Cavier when they came out last year. It was everything I expected until it lost DMA mode after a month. Never returned it because I'm still using it but I'll never buy another WD.

My thoughts on Maxtor: They started out as a cheap HD manufacturer but they have really improved the quality lately. I guess I will always view them as cheap hard drives.

Quantums are nice and reliable but I've never owned one myself. They never seemed to have the fastest one when I went to buy (IDE of course).

IBM's have always been around. The 75GXP's are awesome and I would bet that IBM has the fastest IDE models for quite a while.

That's about the end of my experience with hard drives.
 


<< I was pleased to see that it was constructed with normal Phillips head screws, and not the safety screws of all my other hard drives. After proceeding to take the cover off, I never did figure out what that damned noise was. >>



Total BS, taking the cover of any HDD will ruin it, maybe not right away, but in a few weeks, anyone who tries this is truly an idiot!

LXi: I thought i would get flamed, but for some reason people on this forum rarely flame me. 🙂

Patrick Palm

Am speaking for PC Resources
 


<< I have 3 systems that I don't use any covering, and they haven't give me any more troubles than my covered puters...And one of the puter haven't have it jacket on for 4 years. >>



What is the point of this statement?????????

Of course you will not have any troubles with your computers for that reason, the only thing that could possibly happen is a bit better cooling.

But to take the cover of a HDD??

I even read about some fool warming up his HDD with a hair drier to get the fat in the bearings to melt and make it work, you know what happened, he ruined his warranty, somehow heating up your HDD with a hair drier isn't what they call &quot;normal use&quot;.

So, do NOT ever take the cover off your HDD, it will surely ruin it, and do not heat it up with a hair drier, i can't stop you, but i can warn you.

Patrick Palm

Am speaking for PC Resources
 
Quote from self:

<< That was around 6 months ago btw, and its still fine.
>>



...

<< taking the cover of any HDD will ruin it, maybe not right away, but in a few weeks >>


Just to test this theory out, I just hooked up an old 210MB Western Digital HD that I'd taken the cover off of two or three years ago and left off to collect dust. I blew the dust off, and it started up fine, and is working perfectly in my system right now in fact. I have an mp3 playing off of it at this very moment.

BTW, I didn't take the cover off of the 2 gig without a spare 4 gig (not in a system) to replace it with should I have found myself without the 2 gig anymore.
 
I recommend the Seagate Cheetah or X15 line of drives. I also really like the IBM Ultrastar's. Both make excellent drives and I'd trade 2 Quantum Atlas 10k II's for that X15 any day. 🙂
 
Seagates are great drives, mine sounds a little like a Volkswagon parking, but is fast and has given me no problems.
 
I have three Seagate Medalist drives, every one of them works. 261MB, 428MB and 2.1GB. 3800rpm for the first two and 4500rpm for the 2.1GB.

They are all slow, though, and the 2.1GB got messed for a while. I won't buy another Seagate, but I never had any real problems with them. I now have a Quantum LM, and I'm VERY satisfied with it. Next time I buy an HD it's definitely Quantum, Maxtor or IBM. There's no way in hell I'm buying a WD or Seagate.

-RSI
 
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