I hate Seagate

[ZippyDan]

In the interest of fairness, I wanted to provide an update on this.

I e-mailed Seagate tech support with the details of my situation, including the previous RMA claim numbers. I explained that I owned this drive for five years, but since it was replaced 3 times, I could never trust it. I also pointed out that that model line was notorious for hardware problems and I felt like I had been supplied with an endless stream of lemons as replacements.

They agreed that my experience was abnormal and unusual, so they offered me a one-time replacement (without warranty) and upgrade to a newer model line (but same capacity).

I now have the new drive, and I am satisfied that Seagate has done their best to fulfill their warranty, even going beyond their legal obligations.

The jury is still out on how I feel about their reliability. I will see how long this drive lasts and I will continue to monitor the market before making my next drive purchase. But if this drive does fail, I won't be complaining.

Note that I did call them about this problem first, and received a very neutral response. E-mailing them turned out to provide a better response. Anyway, I would like to update the title to say "I was very disappointed with Seagate" instead of "I hate Seagate".

 

[mikeymikec]

I stopped using SG when they dropped their warranties, like the OP I was a fairly strong supporter in the days of their 5-year warranty. Also, it seemed that OEM WD drives were dropping like flies in comparison, but perhaps that's because of sheer numbers; in that era, SG didn't seem to be getting anywhere near the same numbers of drives in OEM PCs (though perhaps just not in my neck of the woods).

Having said that, I'm using WD Black drives now (whenever I'm using hard disks), I like their 5-year warranty and kick-ass performance, but I really am against the fact that if they replace a drive, they replace it with one that has a 6 month warranty. On one occasion, I had to replace a drive in the first year (so about 4.5 years left to go on warranty), then I get a 6 month warranty? The warranty should last at least as long as the original product's warranty. To me a six month warranty for a hard disk sounds like, "well, here's one that's on its last legs that you can use while you migrate to a proper drive".

With Logitech mice, again 5 year warranties, I had an MX700 fail, replaced within warranty with an MX1000, another 5 year warranty, failed within warranty, now I have an MX Revolution which to my estimate is about 8 years old and still works fine. Ok, so the first two mice shouldn't have failed, but that warranty policy really is customer friendly.

 

[ZippyDan]

Having said that, I'm using WD Black drives now (whenever I'm using hard disks), I like their 5-year warranty and kick-ass performance, but I really am against the fact that if they replace a drive, they replace it with one that has a 6 month warranty. On one occasion, I had to replace a drive in the first year (so about 4.5 years left to go on warranty), then I get a 6 month warranty? The warranty should last at least as long as the original product's warranty. To me a six month warranty for a hard disk sounds like, "well, here's one that's on its last legs that you can use while you migrate to a proper drive".

That sounds ridiculous and I'm fairly certain illegal. The new drive must at least carry the remainder of the original drive's warranty. I'm pretty sure the 6 month thing is a minimum thing. For example, if your drive fails with 4 years and 9 months left in the warranty, you don't get a drive with 3 months left. You always get a 6 month warranty at least. I could be wrong.

With Logitech mice, again 5 year warranties, I had an MX700 fail, replaced within warranty with an MX1000, another 5 year warranty, failed within warranty, now I have an MX Revolution which to my estimate is about 8 years old and still works fine. Ok, so the first two mice shouldn't have failed, but that warranty policy really is customer friendly.

I love the Logitech warranty. And in my experience they are not even very concerned with the exact date of the purchase. They pretty much just replace anything that is broken. They love their customers and their customers love them back. I don't often buy preipherals, but when I do, Logitech is always going to be my first choice because of their warranty.

 

[mikeymikec]

Probably not illegal in the UK. CD ripping was only legalised this year I think...

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Why does this thread sound like a litany of Egg reviews, when we tech-veterans tend to be overly dismissive of them?

I've read through the "low-golden-Egg" ratings for the WD Reds and Seagate NAS drives. Neither group of customers seems particularly confidence-inspiring. And we've said time and time again that the low-egg ratings tend to have a biased incidence count, since the disgruntled are more likely to post their dismay. But too many DOAs make you wonder if you want to roll the dice.

 

[Doomer]

They all stink.

 

[Elixer]

That sounds ridiculous and I'm fairly certain illegal. The new drive must at least carry the remainder of the original drive's warranty. I'm pretty sure the 6 month thing is a minimum thing. For example, if your drive fails with 4 years and 9 months left in the warranty, you don't get a drive with 3 months left. You always get a 6 month warranty at least. I could be wrong.

Sadly, you are wrong.
They will only have 60-90 day warranty, and they send back refurbished (aka "certified repair" crap to replace a new HD just blows chunks.
It isn't uncommon to have back-to-back DOAs on these as well.

You can argue about it all you want, but, they stand firm on this.
I got a stack of "certified repaired" drives that have all failed a little after 90-120 days, and even though I pointed out that the original drive had 3 years left, they wouldn't budge.

 

[itsallpoo]

I cried when Seagate bought Maxtor, that had always been my favorite for years and years, few problems always an easy RMA. I refuse to buy WD unless they are the last brand on earth from a past problem with them, tick me off once I generally don't try your products ever again. If I have a choice between Seagate and Hitachi I'll go Hitachi. I've had several of their drives and they've been fine, they are of course famous for some of their laptop drive products and still supposedly are. I think mechanical hard drives are on the way out, everything will be solid state in a few years and the price is coming down pretty steadily for the size. A lot of folks are clouding these days so a lot of stuff like photos and word processing stuff is going to end up clouded so the desktop won't need 3tb of storage anymore, I'm also thinking that games may end up distributed so you won't have much local at all it will all be on the game servers. As broadband connection speeds increase and SSD storage gets cheaper I think we'll see a lot of changes in systems.

 

[Rebel44]

Sadly, you are wrong.
They will only have 60-90 day warranty, and they send back refurbished (aka "certified repair" crap to replace a new HD just blows chunks.
It isn't uncommon to have back-to-back DOAs on these as well.

You can argue about it all you want, but, they stand firm on this.
I got a stack of "certified repaired" drives that have all failed a little after 90-120 days, and even though I pointed out that the original drive had 3 years left, they wouldn't budge.

Well, here in EU, law says that replacement will have remaining warranty of the original product + time spent in RMA process.

 

[ZippyDan]

Sadly, you are wrong.
They will only have 60-90 day warranty, and they send back refurbished (aka "certified repair" crap to replace a new HD just blows chunks.
It isn't uncommon to have back-to-back DOAs on these as well.

You can argue about it all you want, but, they stand firm on this.
I got a stack of "certified repaired" drives that have all failed a little after 90-120 days, and even though I pointed out that the original drive had 3 years left, they wouldn't budge.

Their own warranty page disagrees with you:

http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp

The relevant portion:

Limitation of Remedies

YOUR EXCLUSIVE REMEDY FOR ANY DEFECTIVE PRODUCT IS LIMITED TO THE REPAIR OR REPLACEMENT OF THE DEFECTIVE PRODUCT.

WD may elect which remedy or combination of remedies to provide in its sole discretion. WD shall have a reasonable time after determining that a defective Product exists to repair or replace a defective Product. WD's replacement Product under its limited warranty will be manufactured from new and serviceable used parts. WD's warranty applies to repaired or replaced Products for the balance of the applicable period of the original warranty or ninety days from the date of shipment of a repaired or replaced Product, whichever is longer.

And this does apply to Black drives as well.

The same policy states that recertified drives only come with a 6 month warranty, but based on the language above, that would only matter if the drive that you originally purchased was recertified. As is clearly stated above, the warranty period of the original drive determines the warranty of the replacement.

 

[Elixer]

Their own warranty page disagrees with you:

http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp

This is seagate we are talking about, not WD....
I got the e-mails to prove it someplace, but, they told me flat out it is 90 days, not the remainder of the warranty for the original drive.
This was back 4 or 5 years, and after that exchange with them, I said I wouldn't buy another seagate again, and I haven't.

 

[ZippyDan]

This is seagate we are talking about, not WD....
I got the e-mails to prove it someplace, but, they told me flat out it is 90 days, not the remainder of the warranty for the original drive.
This was back 4 or 5 years, and after that exchange with them, I said I wouldn't buy another seagate again, and I haven't.

Sorry I didn't realize you were a different person. The original person I was responding to was talking about Western Digital Black drives.

Anyway, even if you are talking about Seagate, their own website disagrees with you.

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

Relevant Portion:

What Will Seagate Do?
Seagate warrants that repaired or replaced products are covered for the greater of either the remainder of the original product warranty or 90 days.

 

[Topweasel]

As stated before by other users bad experiences specially with something as usually reliable as a HDD tend to be anecdotal. Probably gone through 35-40 personal drives throughout the last 15 years. Including several Deathstars (45GB, 60GB, 2x 120GB), I have only ever had to RMA 2 drives, 1 exchange, and early in my days thought that 1 drive was dieing.

The 1 DOA (the Exchange) was a 5 platter shipped when Newegg was at it's worst when shipping OEM drives (and if you know anything about OEM drives, they are several times more likely to be DOA anyways, all the QC is expected to be picked up by the OEM and that's why they sell them cheaper (besides the packaging stuff as well)).

1 Dead Raptor (150GB). 1 Dead Seagate (7200.9 1TB). For the warranty replacements both drives I think are working till this day.

The first ever HDD I purchased was a 10GB WD and I thought that one was on its way out before I sold it to a friend to buy a 20GB. In retrospect I was in Highschool so I can't feel to bad about selling it even though I thought it might be dieing (and I always sell my electronics at a very very low rate, I don't like charging competitive prices on my used electronics). Honestly it probably had more to do with Windows 98 being horribly unstable and using a VIA based board.

That actually taught me not to always assume I know exactly what was broken and for years I shied away from WD purely on a drive that technically never died on me. Really got me to recognize that judging a companies products based on one bad example is just plain silly and it bugs me when you have users saying I will never buy X again because I once had an issue. Specially when the company in question is one of the highest rated. My experience with the Deathstar was another. They got a such a bad rap for that it was also that big screw-up that pushed IBM to offload the drive business. But I couldn't have been happier with the drives and ended leaning towards those drives till this day. Even when you run into a "problem child" it might still a great product for you and the actual failure rate is probably blown way out of proportion.

Not saying that applies to the OP, going through so many swaps is just plain silly.

 

[tential]

Why does this thread sound like a litany of Egg reviews, when we tech-veterans tend to be overly dismissive of them?

I've read through the "low-golden-Egg" ratings for the WD Reds and Seagate NAS drives. Neither group of customers seems particularly confidence-inspiring. And we've said time and time again that the low-egg ratings tend to have a biased incidence count, since the disgruntled are more likely to post their dismay. But too many DOAs make you wonder if you want to roll the dice.

One of the first things you learn in a basic highschool statistics class it that disgruntled people are far more likely to go out of their way to let you know.

I have Seagate drives and haven't had one fail yet (knock on wood if one fails I'd cry myself to sleep). I've never had a drive fail at all and I own Samsung, WD, and Seagate.

I need to get an UNRAID server asap for my drives.

 

[NewYorksFinest]

Seagate can be a hit or miss: some are good, some are absolute crap hard drives.

 

[Doomer]

I've had good luck with Seagate refurbs. Better luck than with brand new ones in fact.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Sorry I didn't realize you were a different person. The original person I was responding to was talking about Western Digital Black drives.

Anyway, even if you are talking about Seagate, their own website disagrees with you.

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

Relevant Portion:

I'd posted earlier in your thread about high-capacity drives and failure rates. You seem like a practical person, your exasperation seems to parallel what I sometimes feel myself.

I looked into this some more, and recalled what's happened per HDDs over the last few years.

First, there was the "AF" patch that needed installing in Win 7 and similar to deal with the new Advanced Format sector-size. Second, there was the migration from MBR partitions to GPT partitions -- especially for the drives over the MBR limit of 2TB.

I'm just wondering how these things could play into your very singular experience with the HDDs.