Question Question for Seagate Expansion drive owners

[SuperChuchu]

I just got an external Seagate Expansion 16 TB hard drive to use as backup for important things that are too large to burn to BD-Rs. I don't trust hard drives very much, but I spent too much money already on 4 TB SSDs. I just hope that the Seagate recovery whatever program is legit, since it was my main reason behind the purchase.

Now, I tend to trust Seagate drives because in both internal and external versions, they have been the most reliable for me. Not every one of them survived, but I had Western Digital drives die on me in less than a year, and Seagate drives have lasted much longer, many of them several years.

But all the external Seagate drives I have make a more or less typical hard drive noise when writing or reading lots of small files. You can hear them if the room is quiet, but they're not loud. That's why I'm a bit concerned about this Seagate Expansion drive. The noise it makes it's about three times as loud as the other drives. I also don't like too much that it seems to be designed to be placed vertically, since the rubber feet are only on one of the short sides. But perhaps it is meant to be that way. I also don't know if the noise is standard for this model, since I only had the regular Seagate Backup Plus series.

So if you have this drive, do you think it's noisy for a hard drive? And generally speaking, is it good for a hard drive to be positioned vertically?

 

[CountMike]

I just got an external Seagate Expansion 16 TB hard drive to use as backup for important things that are too large to burn to BD-Rs. I don't trust hard drives very much, but I spent too much money already on 4 TB SSDs. I just hope that the Seagate recovery whatever program is legit, since it was my main reason behind the purchase.

Now, I tend to trust Seagate drives because in both internal and external versions, they have been the most reliable for me. Not every one of them survived, but I had Western Digital drives die on me in less than a year, and Seagate drives have lasted much longer, many of them several years.

But all the external Seagate drives I have make a more or less typical hard drive noise when writing or reading lots of small files. You can hear them if the room is quiet, but they're not loud. That's why I'm a bit concerned about this Seagate Expansion drive. The noise it makes it's about three times as loud as the other drives. I also don't like too much that it seems to be designed to be placed vertically, since the rubber feet are only on one of the short sides. But perhaps it is meant to be that way. I also don't know if the noise is standard for this model, since I only had the regular Seagate Backup Plus series.

So if you have this drive, do you think it's noisy for a hard drive? And generally speaking, is it good for a hard drive to be positioned vertically?

Yah, Seagate drives tend to be noisy.

 

[Misgar]

And generally speaking, is it good for a hard drive to be positioned vertically?

Not if there is the slightest chance of you knocking it over when the disks are spinning. Head crashes are likely and could kill your drive.

the rubber feet are only on one of the short sides. But perhaps it is meant to be that way

Probably to stop the drive getting even hotter if you lay it down in a more stable orientation and cover the so-called "ventilation" slots on one side.

I have at least 10 Seagate and WD external 3.5" USB3 desktop drives gathering dust in a cupboard. I no longer use them for backups. They run far too hot for my liking (+55°C/131°F) unless I point a desk fan over them for increased airflow.

USB housings may contain SMR (shingled) drives which slow down after a few weeks/months of intensive use, especially if you delete a lot of files. These days I buy only CMR/PMR drives. A lot depends on your usage pattern as to whether SMR will be a nuisance or not.
https://www.howtogeek.com/803276/cmr-vs.-smr-hard-drives-whats-the-difference/

backup for important things that are too large to burn to BD-Rs

I switched from single layer 25GB BD-R to 800GB LTO4 tape back in 2018. A pair of second-hand Quantum external LTO4 SAS tape drives cost me $100 each. Less than $20 for an LSI SAS controller card and $15 for a SAS cable. After buying a few boxes of expensive brand new 800GB tapes, I got a good deal on barely used tapes at $2 each.

I can now make multiple backups on several tapes, splitting the risk of failed media. LTO4 800GB native is enough for 650GB+ of RAW + JPG + MP4 files taken on a 4-week vacation. You do need a free PCIe slot for the SAS controller, but ex-server SAS 2 cards are cheap.

My other backups include multi-disk RAID-Z2 TrueNAS core arrays. In theory (but not always in practice) I can tolerate 2 drives failing in each array, without losing any data. Contrast this with a single point of failure with one portable USB3 drive.

I had Western Digital drives die on me in less than a year,

Drives can fail at any time, be they SSDs or hard disks. I have a large number of WD drives and the modern ones seem OK (so far). The WDs that failed me most often were "Deathstars" from way back.

I just hope that the Seagate recovery whatever program is legit, since it was my main reason behind the purchase.

I don't place too much trust in manufacturers' "Recovery" promises. If a drive dies and you return it under warranty, all kinds of mechanical damage could prevent data retrieval. Far better to make multiple copies on different devices/media and store them in several locations.

If a single 16TB drive fails and it's your only file repository, bang goes all your data. If you have one copy on your PC and the only other copy is on a 16TB external drive, consider storing a third copy somewhere else.