Seagate: 50% failure rate - GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum

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rowan

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#1

Seagate: 50% failure rate

03-18-2007, 07:32 PM

Ok, I admit the stat in the title is sensationalist, but the truth of the matter is that out of 6 drives I've had 3 fail.

- Oct 2005: One was DOA.
- Oct 2005: One started complaining about SMART errors less than 24h after I purchased it.

Both these drives were replaced by the retailer.

- Mar 2007: One has recently developed a bunch of bad sectors which apparently cannot be repaired. Windows crashes when attempting to back it up.

So out of 6 drives total, 3 never did/no longer work.

Seagate 300Gb SATA, FWIW
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Jace

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#2

03-18-2007, 07:38 PM

never tried the SATA drives, but I did buy one and I couldn't get it to work fresh out of the box

Western Digital has to be the worst drive maker in the world though, I have NEVER had one last longer than 2 years, they ALWAYS fail
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NemesisEnforcer

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#3

03-18-2007, 07:39 PM

It's not you. I had the same problem with a Seagate 300 Gb HD.

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rowan

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#4

03-18-2007, 07:45 PM

Oh yeah, to clarify: I originally purchased four, two were replaced, thus the total drives I've had in my possession is six.
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rowan

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#5

03-18-2007, 07:49 PM

Originally posted by NemesisEnforcer

It's not you. I had the same problem with a Seagate 300 Gb HD.

Wouldn't happen to be the model ST3300831AS? If it's a problem with the model then I'm fucked, because I have four of them in a RAID array!
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avalanche

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#6

03-18-2007, 07:51 PM

Sorry to hear that! I've got over a dozen in different configurations from 300gb to 750 gb and never had a single problem!

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Jarmusch

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#7

03-18-2007, 07:55 PM

I say that's a freak occurrence. Did those hard drives get any airflow in the case and what kind of temperatures did they run at? (if you even bothered to monitor them)
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BSleazy

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#8

03-18-2007, 07:55 PM

I've never had a drive fail ever.

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rowan

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#9

03-18-2007, 07:59 PM

Originally posted by Jarmusch

I say that's a freak occurrence. Did those hard drives get any airflow in the case and what kind of temperatures did they run at? (if you even bothered to monitor them)

I have a full tower with 4 chassis fans, plus two fans sitting in front of the two HD cages. The 4 current drives have max temperatures ranging between 45 to 55 degrees C.

Extreme heat doesn't explain why one never worked, and another failed so quickly.
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Brad Mitchell

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#10

03-18-2007, 08:01 PM

I have over a thousand drives in service - they all fail unpredictably, sooner or later. In general, we have had a superb service record with Seagate. My advice, if you want a good hard drive buy an enterprise model - WD Raptor on the consumer side or anything SCSI.

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Jarmusch

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#11

03-18-2007, 08:06 PM

Originally posted by rowan

Extreme heat doesn't explain why one never worked, and another failed so quickly.

True, it doesn't. But those are some high temperatures you have for those hard drives considering there's fans in front of them, it must be really hot down there? I would start to worry if my hard drives ever went over 40ºC.
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Grapesoda

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#12

03-18-2007, 08:08 PM

Originally posted by rowan

I have a full tower with 4 chassis fans, plus two fans sitting in front of the two HD cages. The 4 current drives have max temperatures ranging between 45 to 55 degrees C.

Extreme heat doesn't explain why one never worked, and another failed so quickly.

I've lost about 5 drives over the past 3-4 years . . . the IT guy says it's because I have a busy network . . . been a real problem for me . . now I have a drive that just ghost my c: drive every nite . . and I monitor all my drives . . .
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VIPimp

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#13

03-18-2007, 08:14 PM

I was just about to purchase another seagate external drive... whats a good external drive brand to buy?
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rowan

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#14

03-18-2007, 08:17 PM

Originally posted by Brad Mitchell

I have over a thousand drives in service - they all fail unpredictably, sooner or later. In general, we have had a superb service record with Seagate. My advice, if you want a good hard drive buy an enterprise model - WD Raptor on the consumer side or anything SCSI.

Brad, do you keep any statistics on the failure rate of your drives?

As a "consumer" I think I've only ever had one drive fail prior to this, an IBM Deskstar. It wasn't what you'd expect either - it was not a DeathStar, rather a firmware bug that energised the write/erase heads while they were still seeking. The mechanics are fine and it low level formats, but it's useless because the same bug could wipe out my data again.

When I built this workstation about 18 months ago I planned for redundancy from the start, so there are 7 drives in total associated with it (two RAID arrays and an external standalone). The probability of ANY ONE drive failing is likely to be higher because of the multiple drives, I just didn't expect the actual failure rate to be so high.

Seagate have replied and confirmed that my testing is sufficient to mark the drive as faulty. I'll return it today.
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Mr Bond

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#15

03-18-2007, 08:19 PM

I use Western Digital Raptors - ONLY for the last 3 years.

Only had 1 DOA out of about 18 totoal

Key is Raptor... all other Western Digital Drives I have had... SUCK!!!!

People bitch about the price of the Raptor.... but what costs more....??? The drive... or the headache, stress, dataloss and everythig else involved in moving drives around... especially TIME.

.
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crockett

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#16

03-18-2007, 08:22 PM

I'd never buy a seagate they are one of the worst. I run the WD Raptor drives.. 10k RPM

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rowan

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#17

03-19-2007, 09:13 AM

bump

Next array will have enterprise drives, but I don't plan to replace it for at least a couple more years... that's unless all the other drives fail!
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DirtyDanza

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#18

03-19-2007, 09:32 AM

I run nothing but seagates internal and external out of 26 drives I have had ZERO fail on me... now you fuckers are making me knock on wood huh... thanks dicks...

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cranki

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#19

03-19-2007, 09:36 AM

can't go wrong with samsung... they make the best HDs imho!
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Redmanthatcould

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#20

03-19-2007, 09:39 AM

I have been on the Seagate band wagon for years... once they threw in the 5 year warranty across the board, I've never even thought of another company. I've had Samsung, Maxtor, WD, and Quantum drives fail on me, but still 100% on Seagate.
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96ukssob

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#21

03-19-2007, 09:42 AM

Originally posted by NemesisEnforcer

It's not you. I had the same problem with a Seagate 300 Gb HD.

FooUCK. I have 2 of these backing up crutial data. They are IDEE hdd tho, not SATA. Ive had problems with WD tho, so I moved to these. Damn, looks like ill be making a trip to Frys tonight

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rowan

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#22

03-19-2007, 10:41 AM

Originally posted by bossku69

FooUCK. I have 2 of these backing up crutial data. They are IDEE hdd tho, not SATA. Ive had problems with WD tho, so I moved to these. Damn, looks like ill be making a trip to Frys tonight

If it's a backup then it shouldn't matter if it dies, right?

I deliberately used a different brand for my backups: Seagate for my main RAID array, WD for my backup.

BTW, the mechanics of EIDE vs. SATA are probably identical or very similar, it's only the interface that differs...
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rowan

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#23

03-19-2007, 12:55 PM

RAID10 rocks, my array is officially "degraded" with a missing drive but I don't even notice any difference. With RAID5 it thrashes horribly when there's a missing drive.
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