Seagate 3TB high failure rate --Backblaze

[Elixer]

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/
Maybe this is one reason why seagate is having lots of these with a 1 year warranty ?

3 TB Drives Are Not So Great

The HGST Deskstar 5K3000 3 TB drives have proven to be very reliable, but expensive relative to other models (including similar 4 TB drives by HGST). The Western Digital Red 3 TB drives annual failure rate of 7.6% is a bit high but acceptable. The Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 3 TB drives are another story.

 

[Ketchup]

This is very interesting. I was actually looking at a 3 TB drive, and noticed that Seagate does have a very good price (compared to the others) for this size.

I skimmed the article (it seemed like all they were doing is expounding upon what it obvious in the graphs), and wondering if there is more information somewhere about what would be causing such failures in a specific drive?

I wish they had taken more time with the obvious sore thumb of the group. For example, there are several models available at this size (hopefully this link will work for others)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...CH&isdeptsrh=1

 

[smitbret]

Wow, even I can't defend Seagate on that. I am in the market for a couple of 3TB drives and had been looking at the 3TB Barracudas because the 4 2TB Barracudas that I have in my server now have been perfect for the last 2 years. Gonna be steering clear this time I am afraid. Probably just gonna grab some 3TB Toshibas instead.

Backblaze tries to pick up the least expensive model, so the sample is almost undoubtedly heavy on the $109 Barracudas.

 

[ronbo613]

I haven't bought a Seagate drive for a few years, used to like them. Even WD seems to be slipping a bit. My most recent drive purchases have been HGST 4TB units. They may cost a few bucks more but they are good hard drives.

 

[MustISO]

Never owned a modern Toshiba drive but seems like a good idea. I've had a few recent Seagate drives and while they haven't failed I am concerned about their longevity.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Never owned a modern Toshiba drive but seems like a good idea.

I've read enough horror stories about Toshiba customer service and difficulty in getting simple warranty replacements that I'd never touch one.

 

[Charlie98]

My 3TB .14 Seagate is working very well in my HTPC... I'd buy another if I needed one. I've also got a 2TB Seagate in there as well.

FWIW, my new 2TB Red came out of the box with bad sectors... I got a refurb 3TB Red in return... it has been solid as well, even with crappy benchmarks (with the HTPC it doesn't matter.)

That kind of failure rate is a bit alarming, however... The sample size may be a bit bigger, the Seagate price has everyone pretty much beat the past year.

 

[Elixer]

I've read enough horror stories about Toshiba customer service and difficulty in getting simple warranty replacements that I'd never touch one.

Actually, toshiba has a nice RMA policy, if they don't have the item in stock, then will give you a credit for use on their store.
That means, you can get a new product for your RMA.

If they do have the same product in stock for the RMA, then they will ship one out.

This has been my experience with them.

That kind of failure rate is a bit alarming, however... The sample size may be a bit bigger, the Seagate price has everyone pretty much beat the past year.

So, you pay less now, but end up either paying double since the unit failed and you need another one or waiting for a RMA that may fail again.

I rather pay a bit more now and have peace of mind.

 

[Charlie98]

So, you pay less now, but end up either paying double since the unit failed and you need another one or waiting for a RMA that may fail again.

I rather pay a bit more now and have peace of mind.

Yes and no... I didn't see any of those stats up there at '0%' so theoretically you could be 'paying a bit more' for a failure right out of the box... In my case, that's what I got paying a bit more for my 2TB Red.

You pays your money, you takes your chances.... :\

 

[smitbret]

I've read enough horror stories about Toshiba customer service and difficulty in getting simple warranty replacements that I'd never touch one.

Been using a 2TB external for daily backups for 18 months and no issues. Pulled a 3TB out of an external enclosure and use it as the Parity drive for my FlexRAID. It's only been in there about 10 months but no complaints, yet.

 

[Blastman]

The 4TB Seagates (2.6% failure rate) are looking much better than the Seagate 3TB (43.1%) and even better than the WD Red 3TB (6.9%).

I would skip the 7200.14 3TB Seagate and consider the 4TB drives.


It also appears that Seagate has newer models out in 2,3,4TB sizes with serial numbers …

STBD2000201 … 2TB
STBD3000200 ,,, 3TB
STBD4000400 … 4TB

Hopefully the newer 3TB drives are much better than the 7200.14's (ST3000DM001 …series).

 

[Soulkeeper]

I wish they'd tell us if the country of origin for those seagates was all the same

I've got 2 3TB seagates, one made in china one from thailand
no firmware updates for the chinese ones, but the thailand ones do get them.

I do get the sense that they are more sensitive to vibration or hitting of the desk than my previous WD drives.
I can hear them having to reset if I bump the desk.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

My SAN at home has 6 3TB Seagate drives in them. I've replaced 13 of them. Yes, in the three years I've had my SAN, there are only two original drives left, which are the 2 Thailand drives I got. The others were Chinese and have been replaced again and again. First it was the original drives, then Certified Repairs, then the Certifed Repairs also failed. Then buying a few new Seagates, and having them fail.

Enough was enough, and so I've been replacing my Seagates with Hitachi's as they fail. I have another one failing out of warranty, so I just bought another Hitachi for it.

 

[Charlie98]

I wish they'd tell us if the country of origin for those seagates was all the same

I've got 2 3TB seagates, one made in china one from thailand
no firmware updates for the chinese ones, but the thailand ones do get them.

I do get the sense that they are more sensitive to vibration or hitting of the desk than my previous WD drives.
I can hear them having to reset if I bump the desk.

Which ones are more sensitive... the Chinese or the Thailand?

 

[Soulkeeper]

Which ones are more sensitive... the Chinese or the Thailand?

probably the same, dunno

 

[Red Squirrel]

Wow this looks pretty bad for Seagate lol, and it's not the first time such stats come out against them. I think Google had similar stats. You can't really beat these kinds of stats either, it's not like Backblaze does not like Seagate or anything, these are just straight up stats from their experiences and is unbiased (at least it's probably safe to assume so).

I always look at Seagate when I want to build a new raid array because their drives tend to be so much cheaper, but stats like this make me look away. The whole point of raid is that drive failures are less of a big deal, but I don't want to be changing drives all the time either.

Hopefully Seagate will step it up.

 

[R0H1T]

Actually, toshiba has a nice RMA policy, if they don't have the item in stock, then will give you a credit for use on their store.
That means, you can get a new product for your RMA.

If they do have the same product in stock for the RMA, then they will ship one out.

This has been my experience with them.


So, you pay less now, but end up either paying double since the unit failed and you need another one or waiting for a RMA that may fail again.

I rather pay a bit more now and have peace of mind.

Yup this is precisely why I prefer to pay more for long(er) term warranties on essentially anything electrical or electronic I buy these days cause generally speaking the price premium is often times worth it.

 

[redzo]

http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/internal-hard-drives/nas-drives/enterprise-capacity-3-5-hdd/#features
Aren't this a better fit for that use case?

Aren't they suppose to use enterprise grade hdds? Most of those seagate hdd models seem to be designed for high performance desktop use cases. I understand that they are trying to reduce cost/GB, but I do not think that most of his hdd's are designed to be dropped and used under those conditions.

 

[fleshconsumed]

My SAN at home has 6 3TB Seagate drives in them. I've replaced 13 of them. Yes, in the three years I've had my SAN, there are only two original drives left, which are the 2 Thailand drives I got. The others were Chinese and have been replaced again and again. First it was the original drives, then Certified Repairs, then the Certifed Repairs also failed. Then buying a few new Seagates, and having them fail.

Enough was enough, and so I've been replacing my Seagates with Hitachi's as they fail. I have another one failing out of warranty, so I just bought another Hitachi for it.

Ouch, that sucks. I've rebuilt my fileserver at the end of 2013 with 10 Seagate 4TB 5900RPM ST4000DM000 drives. I got all of them from ebay, 8 were OEM retail and 2 were externals that I shucked. They were a mix of Thailand and China, all of them park heads like crazy, but every single one is still alive. I guess I need to thank my lucky stars I went with 4TB instead of 3TB. I do have to wonder why the 3TB model is so unreliable compared to other capacities.

 

[Ketchup]

...all of them park heads like crazy, but every single one is still alive....

See, I don't get the head-parking thing, as I can hear the Seagate in my file server doing the same thing every now and then. I have a hard drive in my lab at work that is about 15 years old, and it runs just fine, without feeling the need to constantly park the darn head!

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Ouch, that sucks. I've rebuilt my fileserver at the end of 2013 with 10 Seagate 4TB 5900RPM ST4000DM000 drives. I got all of them from ebay, 8 were OEM retail and 2 were externals that I shucked. They were a mix of Thailand and China, all of them park heads like crazy, but every single one is still alive. I guess I need to thank my lucky stars I went with 4TB instead of 3TB. I do have to wonder why the 3TB model is so unreliable compared to other capacities.

Yeah, It's one of those hindsight 20/20 things. Definitely wouldn't have done it had I known, but back then, the drives were an unknown and pretty much the only affordable drive after the Thailand floods. If I'd have gotten the 4TB drives, I probably would have been doing a lot better, but back then, they were $250-$280 a piece and so I couldn't really justify it at the time when I knew I needed at least 6 to get the IOPS needed.

 

[futurefields]

my 3tb wd black is the noisiest hard drive ive ever heard

wouldnt be surprised if it fails within warranty

 

[Hulk]

I have a 3TB Seagate external that's been running 24/7 for about 2 years now as a media server. I have it backed up for when it gives up the ghost!
I'll report back to this thread when it dies.

 

[bigboxes]

It's a good thing I have been slowly transitioning from 1.5/2TB drives to the 4TB models. I had a 2TB WD fail and a couple of Seagate ones fail. I'm not sure about HGST drives because I haven't bought any since the "Deathstar" fiasco over ten years ago. I have one Samsung still in service as well as a Maxtor. I really believe they all fail and I am religious about backups. Now, this 3TB failure rate of Seagate is unacceptable. I don't know what to think about that except that I'm glad that I don't have any of those drives.

 

[jjmIII]

"Seabait"