Seagate Harddrive Safe to buy?

[YueHong]

I am planning to get a 1.5TB Seagate hard drive very soon. But, after the firmware incident, I am wondering is it safe to get a Seagate hard drive now? Thinking of alternative, 1TB hard drive is a little bit too small for me, and 2TB WD hard drive is too expensive for me. Is the firmware bug has been solved? Has anyone recently bought Seagate drive?

 

[Blain]

Safety is in the eye of the beholder. :laugh:
Many people will buy Seagate drives no matter what.
Many others will never buy a Seagate drive again.
Some people only buy based on $$ per GB.

 

[wwswimming]

Originally posted by: YueHong
I am planning to get a 1.5TB Seagate hard drive very soon. But, after the firmware incident, I am wondering is it safe to get a Seagate hard drive now? Thinking of alternative, 1TB hard drive is a little bit too small for me, and 2TB WD hard drive is too expensive for me. Is the firmware bug has been solved? Has anyone recently bought Seagate drive?

yes, it's been solved - OK, i admit that i'm going on the assumption that Seagate is not suicidal.

i had 2 of the affected drives in my main system (which has - 2 drives.)

i downloaded the utility from Seagate to find out the Serial # of the drives in my Q9550 system.

as it turned out, my 2 drives were outside the serial # range of the affected drives. but it was not a good feeling !

so, i guess the question is, would Seagate knowingly sell more drives, without completely nailing down the problem that caused the problem on the 640 GB ST3640323AS drives ?

probably only Seagate drive techs and some Seagate managers know the answer to that.

i would say, maybe Google and the NSA know, because they buy drives in large volumes, so they have some good drive stats - but they don't share their drive stats !

it's sort of like a politician that's been caught cheating on his wife and has fessed up. does that mean he'll never do it again ? no.

could the same thing happen at WestDig ? yes.

good argument for backing up your system regularly, though.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: YueHong
Has anyone recently bought Seagate drive?

After much soul-searching, I bought a Seagate 1.5 TB drive in one of those $85 Dell deals last month. But I'm using it in a USB docking station only for making backups of other systems. At this time, I don't trust it for anything else.

My newest drives (the largest) always go into my backup systems anyway. When newer, larger, drives are released, I move the backup drives into roles as active drives.

There are likely two different issues with the 7200.11 Seagates:
1) Basic mechanical issues affecting drive reliability
2) Firmware issues

New firmware has likely fixed the second problem, but not the first problem. Only Seagate knows for sure if the first "problem" is real. But, based on word-of-mouth, it seems that Seagate is having a harder time than other manufacturers getting out reliable new 1 TB+ drive designs.

Regardless of what drive you choose, if you follow the rule of never trusting a single drive or array with your only copy of important data, a drive failure is seldom more than an inconvenience.

 

[Jumpem]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
After much soul-searching, I bought a Seagate 1.5 TB drive in one of those $85 Dell deals last month. But I'm using it in a USB docking station only for making backups of other systems. At this time, I don't trust it for anything else.

What docking station are you using? I want to use a couple of external drives for backups, and just connect them via a docking station of some sort once a week, and then put them back in the safe.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Jumpem

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
After much soul-searching, I bought a Seagate 1.5 TB drive in one of those $85 Dell deals last month. But I'm using it in a USB docking station only for making backups of other systems. At this time, I don't trust it for anything else.

What docking station are you using? I want to use a couple of external drives for backups, and just connect them via a docking station of some sort once a week, and then put them back in the safe.

Right now, I've got one USB-only station from Geeks.com ($25), and one eSATA/USB station from Thermaltake (BlacX) ($30 A.R). The power light on the Geeks.com unit quit working after a day, but the station is functional.

So far, for my purpose (backup), I like these a lot. Over the years, I've purchased many USB and eSATA housings and the cost is high. I also bought ten plastic drive storage cases (anti-static) for holding my drives. These were about $6 each, which I hated to spend, but I hate leaving 1 TB or 1.5 TB drives laying naked on a table or shelf with zero protection.

 

[Jumpem]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Right now, I've got one USB-only station from Geeks.com ($25), and one eSATA/USB station from Thermaltake (BlacX) ($30 A.R). The power light on the Geeks.com unit quit working after a day, but the station is functional.

So far, for my purpose (backup), I like these a lot. Over the years, I've purchased many USB and eSATA housings and the cost is high. I also bought ten plastic drive storage cases (anti-static) for holding my drives. These were about $6 each, which I hated to spend, but I hate leaving 1 TB or 1.5 TB drives laying naked on a table or shelf with zero protection.

Thanks, I will look at the BlacX. Link to the cases you mention?

 

[soflawill]

back in January bought the seagate 1.5 drive-it lasted a week. Returned it, got the 1.0 tb drive, updated the firmware and bricko city. Took that one back and said forget it Seagate. Bought a 1tb caviar black from newegg, then followed that with the 640g caviar black. Both awesome drives!! Go WD

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Jumpem
Thanks, I will look at the BlacX. Link to the cases you mention?

Wiebetech Anti-Static Drive Case for Bare Drives
Wiebetech sells storage systems that accept bare drives, hence their marketing of cases for them. They shipped quickly last week, but now it looks like they are out of stock.

There may be better solutions. Wiebetech lists a Pelican foam-lined case for ten drives, but that doesn't help much in transporting a single drive. My clients use padded camera cases for transporting their tray-enclosed backup drives, but those are metal trays that help shield the PCB boards from static discharge.

 

[Blieb]

Originally posted by: soflawill
back in January bought the seagate 1.5 drive-it lasted a week. Returned it, got the 1.0 tb drive, updated the firmware and bricko city. Took that one back and said forget it Seagate. Bought a 1tb caviar black from newegg, then followed that with the 640g caviar black. Both awesome drives!! Go WD

I bought a WD drive and it ate shit after 6 hours (4 of which were spent formatting) this weekend. It was a Caviar Green 1tb.

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: Blieb

Originally posted by: soflawill
back in January bought the seagate 1.5 drive-it lasted a week. Returned it, got the 1.0 tb drive, updated the firmware and bricko city. Took that one back and said forget it Seagate. Bought a 1tb caviar black from newegg, then followed that with the 640g caviar black. Both awesome drives!! Go WD

I bought a WD drive and it ate shit after 6 hours (4 of which were spent formatting) this weekend. It was a Caviar Green 1tb.

And this is basically exactly why we always say any drive can fail...

I've personally had more Seagates fail than other drives (actually just RMAed two of my 500 GB ones), but i've also owned more Seagates than other brands.
I've seen every single brand fail countless times at work fail...they all do, it's really just a matter of luck mostly, other than certain times when certain batches/models are more prone for failing (which does happen sometimes).

 

[Blieb]

Originally posted by: n7

Originally posted by: Blieb

Originally posted by: soflawill
back in January bought the seagate 1.5 drive-it lasted a week. Returned it, got the 1.0 tb drive, updated the firmware and bricko city. Took that one back and said forget it Seagate. Bought a 1tb caviar black from newegg, then followed that with the 640g caviar black. Both awesome drives!! Go WD

I bought a WD drive and it ate shit after 6 hours (4 of which were spent formatting) this weekend. It was a Caviar Green 1tb.

And this is basically exactly why we always say any drive can fail...

I've personally had more Seagates fail than other drives (actually just RMAed two of my 500 GB ones), but i've also owned more Seagates than other brands.
I've seen every single brand fail countless times at work fail...they all do, it's really just a matter of luck mostly, other than certain times when certain batches/models are more prone for failing (which does happen sometimes).

lol yeah, I just thought it was funny because I was so worried about Seagate ... I've never had a drive fail on me (new) ... I'm not saying anythin bad about WD, these things happen. A buddy of mine got the drive also and he's been cooking it for 2 days with no problems.

 

[Binky]

I've had Samsung, WD, and Seagate failures in the last few years (haven't owned Hitachi recently). I've also had all three brands work perfectly for years. Hell, I had an old IBM "Deathstar" that worked perfectly for 5+ years. No brand really seems better or worse over time. They all have their problem drives...

Seag 7200.11 - firmware problems, bricks, failures
WD 500 RE2/AAKS - high early failure rate when they were introduced (mine included!)
Samsung 1TB - lots of odd problems reported in early drives

Many of these problems may be related to user stupidity. Let's not forget that.

 

[Anosh]

I just got a Seagate 1.5TB and made sure it had firmware CC1H and I can tell you that I don't have any problems and I keep a good eye on the drive with Sentinel.
The problems they had with the 1.5TB were the ones made in Dec-Jan.

 

[bakantor]

All drive lines have failuers. In general, I wouldn't be too worried about buying from any of the manufacturers right now... and I say this having just RMA'd a Seagate 1TB yesterday (SD04 firmware). After a year of operation it's started throwing errors all over the place. There doesn't seem to be any data loss... just remapped sectors and really slow performance.

Nothing has changed in the last 25 years... if it's important back it up. Once in a blue moon there are designs which tend to fail at greater rates... early WD caviars (when 1GB was big) had head crashes at an alarmingly high rate. I lost two deathstars within a week of each other with bearing failures. It happens.

Of course, right now I'm pretty happy with 3 WD Black drives I have...

Good luck.

 

[Doggiedog]

Are the more expensive server type Seagates any more reliable?

I have never had a Seagate fail on me and switched to them after the IBM Deathstar debacle but the last two Seagate 1TB drives I bought failed on me. One in a RAID setup which was horrible and the other about 2 days after using it.

Is there anything safe out there?

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Doggiedog
Is there anything safe out there?

Yup. They are called "backups".

 

[octopus41092]

I got a Seagate and I think it's just fine. If you really want "safe" run it in RAID 6 or run mirrored drives.