Seagate 3TB ST3000DM001 price drop

[FAUguy]

I've been looking at the ST3000DM001 and ST2000DM001 online for the past few weeks. Most places have been selling the 3TB model for $250-290 and the 2TB for $160-170. Now I see that Amazon has the 3TB listed for $175 (lowest price I've seen), the 2TB model for $169 and 1TB for $149 (which seems too much next to paying $ more for the 3TB).
I'm going to order two of the 3TB drives, as I'm not sure how long these prices will last. I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon increase it back to $250 like it was a few day ago.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...=ATVPDKIKX0DER

 

[Burner27]

I don't think any of the 3TB drives from any manufacturer are very reliable right now. If you value your data, you may want to look at the 2TB HDDs that have more mature manufacturing.

 

[FAUguy]

I don't think any of the 3TB drives from any manufacturer are very reliable right now. If you value your data, you may want to look at the 2TB HDDs that have more mature manufacturing.

From looking at the tech files on the 3TB and 2TB models, both are 3 platters, but the 3TB has 5,860,533,168 sectors and the 2TB models has 3,907,029,168 sectors. That is the only difference, which allows for the extra 1TB of capacity.
http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/docs/manual/desktop/Barracuda 7200.14/100686584c.pdf

 

[jacktesterson]

I don't think any of the 3TB drives from any manufacturer are very reliable right now. If you value your data, you may want to look at the 2TB HDDs that have more mature manufacturing.

Can you explain?

I've been using as much as 4 Hitachi 3TB 5400 RPM drives for close to a year without issue..

 

[Burner27]

Can you explain?

I've been using as much as 4 Hitachi 3TB 5400 RPM drives for close to a year without issue..

You are probably one of the very lucky ones then. I have been reading reviews of the drives on eTailer websites as well as going to to WD's and Seagate's forums and have seen many issues about drives dying, corruption, DOAs....etc. I just think manufacturing is to blame at this point.

 

[jacktesterson]

Never knew about any issues...

I've got my life long collection of everything on these drives so I'm a tad concerned.

I upgraded from 2TB drives to 3TB drives (Media collection basically) luckily before the crazy price increases.

 

[AdamK47]

You are probably one of the very lucky ones then. I have been reading reviews of the drives on eTailer websites as well as going to to WD's and Seagate's forums and have seen many issues about drives dying, corruption, DOAs....etc. I just think manufacturing is to blame at this point.

The people with the problems are the ones who are most willing to post a review complaining about it. The ones with zero problems generally don't write about it. Getting failure rates based off of Amazon/Newegg reviews or any collection of forum posts is the wrong way to go about it. The problem gets compounded even further if there are large quantities of the drives sold vs smaller quantities of other drives. The number that are sold vs the number of RMAs is a far better way to measure it.

 

[Burner27]

The people with the problems are the ones who are most willing to post a review complaining about it. The ones with zero problems generally don't write about it. Getting failure rates based off of Amazon/Newegg reviews or any collection of forum posts is the wrong way to go about it. The problem gets compounded even further if there are large quantities of the drives sold vs smaller quantities of other drives. The number that are sold vs the number of RMAs is a far better way to measure it.

Can you advise me as to how I might be able to get the number of sold drives vs the number of RMA'd drives please? I will gladly withdraw my comments if that data proves otherwise. Otherwise, I can only go by what is seen on reviews and forums as it is the only data available to me.

 

[AdamK47]

Can you advise me as to how I might be able to get the number of sold drives vs the number of RMA'd drives please? I will gladly withdraw my comments if that data proves otherwise. Otherwise, I can only go by what is seen on reviews and forums as it is the only data available to me.

I certainly can. You can call the hard drive manufacturer and empthatically demand they divulge their sales numbers along with their RMA numbers. If they do not, tell them you'll go on a boycotting campaign on the AnandTech forums. Make it a sticky too. You're a moderator. Otherwise you can only go by what the company freely releases or go by what retailers experience first hand.

Don't withdraw your comment. Hearsay trumps facts in a lot of peoples buying decisions. Don't believe me, Google it. There are many blogs and forum posts that would agree with this assessment. Facts?... pffft.

I was simply stating that you cannot believe what's being posted on the Internet as truly viable means of determining failure rates. You can go by whatever means you want to determine it, however loose or solid the foundation of that basis is.

 

[Burner27]

My comment was not meant as sarcastic or mean in any way towards you. I really do want to see if i can get these numbers. I understand your reasoning and it is sound. I have to agree with you that I don't think any company will divulge that information.

 

[FAUguy]

RAID Question...

Right now my main HDD is a WD 1TB. It has 5 partitions with Windows XP, Vista, and Win 7 x64 Ultimate set up as a tri-boot. Before you ask, yes I need all three versions of Windows since I have specific phone-tools programs that will only work in them.

Now that I have the two Seagate 3TB drives coming this Friday, I was first thinking about just using a disk cloning program to migrate all the data from the old 1TB drive to one of the new 3TB (so I wouldn't have to do 3 fresh Windows installs). But with people saying the drive *might* not be reliable, I'm wondering if a RAID 1 mirroring can be done with the two 3TB drives....again without me having to reinstall 3 versions of Windows + programs.

Thanks.

 

[Old Hippie]

I have to agree with you that I don't think any company will divulge that information.

Of course they won't and while website/forums/Newegg reviews are not the best source of info they are another tool used to make a decision.

Even at it's most basic element you can compare (after throwing out the shipping/price/manfgs. slant) the amount of negative comments for the same size drives to determine the least favorite.

This comparision wouldn't take into account the number of drives sold but ya can't have everything. LOL!

AAR, these ratings can be a tool to assist in a final decision.

 

[FAUguy]

I've been looking at the ST3000DM001 and ST2000DM001 online for the past few weeks. Most places have been selling the 3TB model for $250-290 and the 2TB for $160-170. Now I see that Amazon has the 3TB listed for $175 (lowest price I've seen), the 2TB model for $169 and 1TB for $149 (which seems too much next to paying $ more for the 3TB).
I'm going to order two of the 3TB drives, as I'm not sure how long these prices will last. I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon increase it back to $250 like it was a few day ago.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Looks like all the 3TB drives have sold-out on Amazon.
Glad I ordered when I did.

 

[BFG10K]

Can you explain?

In the case of the ST3000DM001, the 2 year warranty doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

 

[jacktesterson]

Well,

I can't believe it.

I woke up this morning, 1 of my 3TB Hard Drives is corrupted. It's my Data drive (Documents, Pictures, Music, etc)

Running Recover my Files right now.

FACK!!

1 day after vouching for these things!!

 

[FAUguy]

Well,

I can't believe it.

I woke up this morning, 1 of my 3TB Hard Drives is corrupted. It's my Data drive (Documents, Pictures, Music, etc)

Running Recover my Files right now.

FACK!!

1 day after vouching for these things!!

Was it this exact same Seagate drive ST3000DM001 that went bad, or a different model?
How long have you been using it?
I have two showing they are being delivered today, along with a Samsung 830 256MB SSD that I orded from Amazon earlier this week.
Now I'm starting to wonder if I should even fool with these 3TB drives.

 

[Old Hippie]

Well,

I can't believe it.

I woke up this morning, 1 of my 3TB Hard Drives is corrupted. It's my Data drive (Documents, Pictures, Music, etc)

Running Recover my Files right now.

FACK!!

1 day after vouching for these things!!

Ain't that a poke in the eye!

Is Recover my Files working out for ya?

I'm not sure if they advertise recovery is possible thru a USB cable.

I've only tried recovery with the drive connected directly to the MB.

Good Luck!

 

[jacktesterson]

Mine are Hitachi 5400 RPM Drives.

I've got 4 of them running. 10 months old.

 

[Elixer]

Well,

I can't believe it.

I woke up this morning, 1 of my 3TB Hard Drives is corrupted. It's my Data drive (Documents, Pictures, Music, etc)

Running Recover my Files right now.

FACK!!

1 day after vouching for these things!!

You think that is bad, how about a failure, and then a failure on your backup as well ?
At least you are lucky that you can attempt to recover files, though, that may actually make it worse, depending on what kind of failure it was.

Always have multiple copies of whatever is important, or it just might vanish in the bit bucket.

For what it is worth, I have had drives fail on day 1 - 8 years (the 8 year drive that is still running is a maxtor).
Brands don't really seem to matter either.
Recertified drives that got back from a warranty replacement have also been DOA or failed shortly after using them as well.

 

[FAUguy]

Just got in the two Seagate ST3000DM001 drives, shows they are made in China, not Thailand.

 

[FAUguy]

Update:

After using the two Seagate 3TB Barracuda ST3000DM001 drives for two days, I've started to get a "clicking" sound that has become louder and more frequent over that time. It sounds like a needle moving across a vinyl record, or the drive head is hitting something inside. I'm not sure if this sound is "normal" for these Seagates, but it sounds loud to me, and is happening more frequent. Also, since I've tried to use Norton Ghost to clone the Windows 7 C: partition from the HDD to the Samsung SDD a few times and make changes to the boot manager, the SSD is now "locked" and I can't get it to work right either.

So I'm formatting everything and doing a secure erase and returning them all back to Amazon.

I've ordered two Western Digital 2TB Black drives instead. Hopefully those will work better than the Seagate. My current 4 drives that I was looking to replace are Western Digital, and I haven't had any problems with them, but they range between 5-7 years old, so needed something newer and larger. After I get the two 2TB WD Black drives installed and make sure they are working OK, then I "might" look at SSD again. But I guess the next time around I'd just have to do a fresh install of Windows 7, since doing a clone doesn't seem to work that well.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Ouch. Just from my gut, I feel that the high-capacity drives might be temperamental in general for awhile. It may be worth it to chance 2TB drives now that they've been around for awhile, but it really seems anecdotally that anything bigger is a risk - a small but real risk. Maybe in another year or so. The drive companies' chopping of their warranty terms also bugs me. Barracudas only getting a year's warranty? Are you kidding me?

 

[FAUguy]

Ouch. Just from my gut, I feel that the high-capacity drives might be temperamental in general for awhile. It may be worth it to chance 2TB drives now that they've been around for awhile, but it really seems anecdotally that anything bigger is a risk - a small but real risk. Maybe in another year or so. The drive companies' chopping of their warranty terms also bugs me. Barracudas only getting a year's warranty? Are you kidding me?

These two Seagate 3TB drives are being sent back to Amazon on Monday, and I've already ordered two Western Digital Black 2TB drives from Amazon as a replacement. What's weird is that Seagate 3TB was $175 last week when I ordered it on Amazon, but they now has it listed at $208, while the W.D. Black 2TB drive is $204. So it's like loosing 1TB per drive, but if it's made better and lasts - that's what's important. At least the W.D. has a 5 year warranty while the Seagate is only 2 years (I had to enter in the drives S/N on the Seagate site, which said it was good through Jan 2014).

 

[SonicIce]

wow i can't believe people are paying these prices

 

[Chainspell]

Seagates are crap... if you work with alot of computers, take a note of hard drive failures and note the brand... I promise you Seagate will be #1 on that list and probably the only one in that list...

-Sent from my phone.