Seagate not a reliable company anymore?

[Moribund]

Bought a new external Seagate 4TB drive at Canada Computers. It tested horribly for a new drive Its S.M.A.R.T. parameters were 85%. I posted here for advice and had a Seagate person contact me. Said he would send me a new drive.

Yeah he sent me a new (internal 6TB drive. And it even tested 100% on extended test. But in only a few days it died. . New drive!!! Seagate software gave it a long pass before this happened. I tried it as SATA in my PC. Tried it with USB to SATA adaptor in another PC. Finally took a 3rd USB to SATA (just in case my hardware is faulty somehow) and plugged it into my laptop. "USB device has malfunctioned and Windows doesn't recognize it". On the third or 4th try it finally came online and I could hear the reading head clicking. So just in case I reformatted it. Plugged it back into my main desktop and.... not visible on Refresh in Device manager and... my PC won't reboot while it's plugged in as SATA . I just get perpetual Windows loading screen. Pulled it out, rebooted - PC reboots fine as long as it's unplugged. I seem to be able to get it to work on 3rd or 4th try as USB to SATA. But it goes offline whenever it wants to, intermittently... obviously I will not put my data anywhere near this drive now...

What's worse, - even the Seagate drive I exchanged my originally bought one at Canada Computers is testing below 90% I am on my way there to exchange it for WD if they allow it. I cannot trust Seagate any more. Wasted money and weeks of wasted time. And I can no longer trust mine and my customers' data to something like Seagate. my trust is 100% gone. Yeah, maybe it's a fluke, and it's just one bad drive after another, and yes maybe this "could happen to anyone" or "any drive make" - but I honestly just feel like it's one coincidence too many...

The Seagate software gave a pass on the Long Test to all those drives. I can only conclude the software is not reliable. Now I feel that their hardware is not reliable. I would think that if a company sends you a replacement drive, they would at least try to SEND THEIR BEST - so that this situation wouldn't happen. Apparently not. I bought hundreds of different drives over the years, working as a PC builder and technician. I have never had this kind of situation with another manufacturer. NOT WITH NEW UNBOXED DRIVES, that just came from the store.

If something like this happened to you - please let me know. This situation is horrendous, I don't want this to happen to anyone else, especially if we're talking data loss.

 

[RealBeast]

Sorry to hear about your bad experience but you need to put it into proper perspective.

While I am primarily an HGST user, the latest to date Backblaze numbers really only make one Seagate drive look like a problem -- the ST4000DM000 4TB (and WD had one really poor performer, the WD60EFRX 6TB). Otherwise all drive tested had under a 2% annual failure rate.

While anecdotes like yours are aggravating for the individual, shipping is often a major part of the problem. I buy my HGST drives primarily in the 20 unit case and so shipping is rarely an issue.

HERE is the link to the latest update that has 5.5 years of drive data for specific used models at the bottom of the blog.

Hope you have some better luck ahead.

 

[Moribund]

Sorry to hear about your bad experience but you need to put it into proper perspective.

While I am primarily an HGST user, the latest to date Backblaze numbers really only make one Seagate drive look like a problem -- the ST4000DM000 4TB (and WD had one really poor performer, the WD60EFRX 6TB). Otherwise all drive tested had under a 2% annual failure rate.

While anecdotes like yours are aggravating for the individual, shipping is often a major part of the problem. I buy my HGST drives primarily in the 20 unit case and so shipping is rarely an issue.

HERE is the link to the latest update that has 5.5 years of drive data for specific used models at the bottom of the blog.

Hope you have some better luck ahead.

Thanks.

Actually I am familiar with statistics and a minimal sample of 45 drives, itself sounds like hardly better than an anecdote. LOL I don't think I would rely on the accuracy of those numbers that much, that's just my personal take, don't be offended.

The whole experience was too stressful so I will definitely go with the option of switching manufacturers. I almost completely ignored other makers for years. As for the 6TB drive, I suspect defective electronic components, based on its behaviour, which would not have been detected by drive surface-testing software. I might figure it out, I might not, but the bottom line is: if a drive spontaneously goes offline like this even once, and you don't have 100% certainty why, - it's not a good idea to continue using it.

I gave you the solution because there is no real solution. Except forget about the highly stressful last 2 weeks and get entirely different make and model, possibly older models if still available, or these little beauties in link below. I don't normally buy drives in bulk because sadly, or maybe fortunately - building is roughly 20% of what I do, so I just keep my stock at minimal mostly for occasional replacement or upgrade. https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149697&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwordsCA&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwordsCA-_-DSA-_-CategoryPages-_-NA&gclid=CjwKCAjwpKveBRAwEiwAo4Pqm5MXnURB3tkuNVjx6P9o3vo8GRR3BbvfT_if_bLEOe8AuuCWlsVKERoCcQIQAvD_BwE

 

[RealBeast]

I think that the Toshiba are great drives, but look at the HGST. While I usually buy a lot of He8 and He10 models, I just grabbed two of the HGST NAS 10TB consumer model drives off Newegg for $275 each. The reports look good on them.

 

[smorizio]

a few things that may have happened to you. your first drive if it was a oem drive that comes is flat of 10-20 drives the box may have be dropped by the shipper going to the parts store. When working at micro center in boston we had a few cases come in where the usp guy tossed the drives onto the shipping doc and drove off. the guys in shipping did not see the driver toss the boxes if they did they would have sent them back. they got onto the sales floor and one local guy got the bad batch of drives. the first two or three sounded like a hand sander. i had to pull 100 drives and test them. found out that they just came in and were dropped. (after getting 10 to fail we sent the whole lot back as dropped drives and gave the customer a bigger drive thta was not one of the dropepd units. on the second unit the unit may have been new or used. if you read seagates rma they can send you a used repair drive as the replacment has less of a warnty then the new drive has. also with seagate there knon to have firmware issues. when i use them i make sure the drives have the newest firmware on them. the last issue is as ssd are taking over the market vendors like seagate are using cheaper parts on there drives.

 

[Moribund]

a few things that may have happened to you. your first drive if it was a oem drive that comes is flat of 10-20 drives the box may have be dropped by the shipper going to the parts store. When working at micro center in boston we had a few cases come in where the usp guy tossed the drives onto the shipping doc and drove off. the guys in shipping did not see the driver toss the boxes if they did they would have sent them back. they got onto the sales floor and one local guy got the bad batch of drives. the first two or three sounded like a hand sander. i had to pull 100 drives and test them. found out that they just came in and were dropped. (after getting 10 to fail we sent the whole lot back as dropped drives and gave the customer a bigger drive thta was not one of the dropepd units. on the second unit the unit may have been new or used. if you read seagates rma they can send you a used repair drive as the replacment has less of a warnty then the new drive has. also with seagate there knon to have firmware issues. when i use them i make sure the drives have the newest firmware on them. the last issue is as ssd are taking over the market vendors like seagate are using cheaper parts on there drives.

Yeah, you are right on the money there with firmware issues. Over the years I did have a number of hurdles with Seagate firmware. Long while ago I recall we used the old COM ports and adaptors to fix these, it was really something. You got me wondering there for a second about how hard one would have to drop a drive enclosed in a protective inflatable bag and a box for there to be issues, it almost seems like it should be immune to a couple of Gs. But probably isn't...