I know Seagates are prone to failure but are they really THIS bad?

[Red Squirrel]

Two new drives, I zeroed both out as a stability/sector test.

Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 (AF) (3TB)
Device Model: ST3000DM001-1ER166


Check out these crazy failure numbers. This is the second drive, it's not done being zeroed out, in fact it had errors before I even started. Never thought of checking the other.

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   100   100   006    Pre-fail  Always       -       9600
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   094   094   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always       -       9
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   100   253   030    Pre-fail  Always       -       1489
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       5
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   097    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always       -       9
183 Runtime_Bad_Block       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
184 End-to-End_Error        0x0032   100   100   099    Old_age   Always       -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
188 Command_Timeout         0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0 0 0
189 High_Fly_Writes         0x003a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022   061   060   045    Old_age   Always       -       39 (Min/Max 21/40)
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       5
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       11
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   039   040   000    Old_age   Always       -       39 (0 21 0 0 0)
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
240 Head_Flying_Hours       0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       4h+62m+17.254s
241 Total_LBAs_Written      0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       1502231040
242 Total_LBAs_Read         0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       760

Should I RMA these or could they end up lasting a long time? Their work load will involved being off most of the time, with periods of heavy writing. They are backup drives as part of my regular offsite backup rotation. So they're not super critical like drives in an active raid array but still important enough.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Replace the SATA cable first and try a different port.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Oh could this be a cable issue? Using a USB to SATA/IDE converter adapter. I don't have any other errors though, like dd is not outputting anything, nothing in dmesg either.

 

[Soulkeeper]

That is normal output for a healthy seagate drive.
Reallocated_Sector_Ct Runtime_Bad_Block Current_Pending_Sector are what you should be concerned about.

Raw_Read_Error_Rate and Seek_Error_Rate will go up basically everytime you use the drive.
Don't be alarmed by these, they are considered fixable errors caught by the drive. WD has something similar, but doesn't expose them as a smart attribute.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Hmm that's good to know. I wont worry too much about it then given the drive seems to be working ok other than that.

 

[BFG10K]

That particular model is notorious for widespread failures (e.g. Backblaze, Apple). Back them up frequently to a different drive.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Oh could this be a cable issue? Using a USB to SATA/IDE converter adapter. I don't have any other errors though, like dd is not outputting anything, nothing in dmesg either.

I had some bad cables that caused my lifetime read/write errors to fly off the charts. (Along with crashes, etc.)

Swapped 'em and the numbers haven't budged since.

It's not a sure thing, and an occasional glitch is a fact of life, but I'd still try new cables and see if that helps keep the number lower.

 

[Red Squirrel]

That particular model is notorious for widespread failures (e.g. Backblaze, Apple). Back them up frequently to a different drive.

Yeah found this out after the fact... I knew they were bad in general but this one has like a 50% failure rate. Both drives will be mirrors of the same backup job, and I also have some 1TB drives that handle the same jobs (but I keep having to take some off as the drives are too small) so I think I should be ok for a while.

Eventually I want to get some of the 8TB drives when they come down in price so I don't have to be as selective as to what I backup.

 

[Oyeve]

Nah, seagate stinks. I have 2 8TB nas drives. Each has 4x2tb seagates in them and I swear, I replace at least one every 2 months. If it was for the warranty I would have tossed the whole shebang long ago. All recent NAS systems deployed since are Samsung SSD based.

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

Nah, seagate stinks. I have 2 8TB nas drives. Each has 4x2tb seagates in them and I swear, I replace at least one every 2 months. If it was for the warranty I would have tossed the whole shebang long ago. All recent NAS systems deployed since are Samsung SSD based.

Correction Seagate's consumer drives stick. They make great enterprise drives. I still have several Seagate Cheetah (10K/15K SCSI) drives that are almost 10 years old and still work. If you take a look at my sig below you will see that my six year old Barracude ES.2 (nearline enterprise) still works as well as my newer Constellation ES.3 (also nearline enterprise). They do have a habit of releasing buggy firmware from time to time, my Barrucuda ES.2 had a bug fix firmware released after it came out. But I have replaced a lot of busted seagate consumer drives when I was a tech.

 

[Aikouka]

I own quite a few Seagate drives, and I don't really have an issue with them. I usually scan my drives for errors prior to using them, so I catch any drives with existing problems. As for drives that have problems... that's not too common. The last two drives of mine that died were my fault: one stuffed in a case with terrible ventilation (got too hot) and the other was sitting on top of a case until I knocked it off. The latter one dying surprised me because the drive was turned off and it fell only about a foot onto carpet. The drive kind of worked, but you could never use it long enough to pull data off.

 

[Charlie98]

I've got one of those evil Seagate 3TB's in my HTPC... it's been running fine, but I have relegated it to backup duty as a precaution, installing a 5TB Toshiba as the primary data drive.

The only bad HDD I've ever had OOB was a 2TB Red, with bad sectors. I've not had a lick of problems out of all my Seagates... that's 5 USB portables and about 6 internal drives, including a 1TB with 22K+ hours and a 500GB portable with 27K+ hours. YMMV, of course.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

A little over 3 years ago I build a datastore out of 6, 3TB consumer Seagate drives (ST3000DM001). Fast forward to now, and I have replaced 13 drives. Yes, that means that the original drives, and then their replacements failed as well

I currently have 1 original Seagate drive left in the Datastore. All the other drives that fell out of warranty were steadily replaced with Hitachi's. I haven't had a single drive failure from those yet.

 

[master_shake_]

those 3tb seagates are crap.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-for-q2-2015/

 

[bononos]

And WD's 3Tb isn't good as well edging up to 10% failure rate.

 

[XavierMace]

No failures as of yet, oldest drives (the ST2000DL003's) are at 36,520 hours. One of the ST2000DL003's is starting to show some prefailure warnings but the rest of them are running great. I wouldn't hesitate to buy more of them.

 

[jimhsu]

Have one of those (rather, the 4TB model) in an external - after getting failures, I dug the drive out of the external casing and started using it as an internal backup drive. After the 500th reallocated sector or so, it wasn't good for even that (causing backups to fail every few days), and has since been retired permanently.

Switched to HGST for all new drives for now based on the Backblaze stats data.

 

[JimmiG]

A little over 3 years ago I build a datastore out of 6, 3TB consumer Seagate drives (ST3000DM001). Fast forward to now, and I have replaced 13 drives. Yes, that means that the original drives, and then their replacements failed as well

I currently have 1 original Seagate drive left in the Datastore. All the other drives that fell out of warranty were steadily replaced with Hitachi's. I haven't had a single drive failure from those yet.

Same experience here. At work they only had ST3000DM001's in the NAS (maybe ~15 drives in total) bought a few years ago. They've been failing at a rate of about 1 every month recently, sometimes more. Not many left of them. In fact I had to rush back to the office during the holidays to replace one failed drive in a RAID 1 array. Looking forward to the day they've all failed and been replaced so I can relax during my time off work.

 

[MongGrel]

I've personally not went near a Seagate HDD in decades. Those were old Barracudas, but I swore off them in general myself.

Just my two cents.

 

[Elixer]

Have one of those (rather, the 4TB model) in an external - after getting failures, I dug the drive out of the external casing and started using it as an internal backup drive. After the 500th reallocated sector or so, it wasn't good for even that (causing backups to fail every few days), and has since been retired permanently.

Switched to HGST for all new drives for now based on the Backblaze stats data.

Hmm, could have swore they made it so you couldn't use these drives with normal SATA connections.
You have had a old stock model.

 

[Cerb]

Hmm, could have swore they made it so you couldn't use these drives with normal SATA connections.
You have had a old stock model.

The Backup Plus models, at least, seem to have been regular drives in enclosures, just needing repartitioing to use internally. 2.5" have almost all gone to native USB, though.

 

[Charlie98]

The Backup Plus models, at least...

Including the current models? I pulled a 2TB Seagate out of an enclosure a few years ago... it dropped right in and is still working well today. But I'm always nervous... saving $20 on a drive that won't work once I break it out of the case (and void the warranty) doesn't appeal to me.