Are these Seagate Portable drives bad?

[Berryracer]

I have 2 new seagate portable USB drives.

One is a 2 TB Backup Plus which I have formatted and started using.

The problem is, once it is connected and there is any data activity like if I am copying files to or from it, my wireless Logitech G602 mouse starts lagging to a point where it is not usable until the drive has finished copying. Additionally, sometimes I hear the chime sound in Windows as if the drive was connected then reconnected.

Second problem is with my Seagate 4TB Portable FastHDD which is supposed to be two 2TB Drives set in RAID 0 mode so it shows as a 4TB drive. the problem with this is I have set it as my torrents download drive, so when downloading torrents, the torrent client would sudenly state data I/O error and all torrents would stop as if the drive was disconnected, if I then start them all manually again, the transfers start but give it a few minutes and the same thing happens again.

Even if I copy large amounts of data to the drive, it would fail somewhere in the middle stating the drive doesn't exist.

Are these Seagate drives so sucky? is there anything I can do to fix it like do they have their own formatting tool maybe me formatting them in Windows wasn't a good idea? or shall I take them back for warranty repair?

 

[VirtualLarry]

The problem is, once it is connected and there is any data activity like if I am copying files to or from it, my wireless Logitech G602 mouse starts lagging to a point where it is not usable until the drive has finished copying.

This is because USB3.0 interferes with 2.4Ghz wireless.

 

[Berryracer]

This is because USB3.0 interferes with 2.4Ghz wireless.

oh darn, never knew that! So I guess the 2TB Seagate Backup Plus is ok if you say this is normal behavior.

But what about the 4TB which randomly disconnects?

It was initially formatted as MBR but since all my drives are GPT (UEFI mode in Windows 8.1) I formatted it as GPT, don't know if that was a bad idea.

Now I probably can't format it back to MBR since manufacturers have a special way of making an HDD have a 4TB partition even when they are in MBR mode

 

[Berryracer]

Just ran a drive test from the Seagate Dashboard and it shows Drive fail Great! the drive only worked for 1 week before it fails!

Note to self: "Never buy anything from Seagate"

 

[Charlie98]

I have 4 Seagate portables... 2 older ones and 2 of the newer ones. My 2TB portable has a wonky cable... sometimes I will plug it in and Windows will ding-dong (hook, unhook, hook, unhook) until I unplug it, reseat the cable in the HDD, and then plug it back in. My older ones do not have that problem, nor does the newer 1TB model.

Try a different port, try the other cable from your other unit... see if that alleviates the problem.

 

[Berryracer]

alright, ill play around some more with it

thanks

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Just ran a drive test from the Seagate Dashboard and it shows Drive fail Great! the drive only worked for 1 week before it fails!

Note to self: "Never buy anything from Seagate"

Outside of some outlier models, Seagate's consumer drives are no worse than any other consumer drives statistically. The main problem is you are buying a product designed for maximum capacity in minimum space, and all manufacturers are making sacrifices to make it work. You are using 2 HDDs shoehorned into a tiny plastic case with no thermal control, and in RAID 0 which doubles your chances of experiencing a failure of the device.

If you don't need something that small, consider a portable hard drive in a 3.5" form factor for a bit more resiliency, especially if you get an aluminum enclosure.

I definitely do not recommend anything more than 1 drive in a portable enclosure. The vibrations and heat ensure that any such drive will not have a long life statistically. Seagate isn't really that sucky statistically, it's just that consumers often have untenable demands, and manufacturers are simply giving people what they want.