stay away from Seagate drives

[ocabj]

Out of curiosity, where was this drive purchased from?

[Cokebottle]

Maxtor was bought by Seagate years ago and is now their "budget line". So if you think Maxtor is better than Seagate...yeah...I don't think so.

The merger was executed at the end of 2005.
My current drives were bought in 2004 (250g and 160g).

Wasn't saying that Maxtor is or was better... just that I've never had a problem with any Maxtor drives in the last 17 years, and I run my drives 24/7. Currently HDD-0 is 26^c and HDD-1 is 29^c... CPU is 35.

Sounds like I need to find a new supplier.


BTW: I think I might have an ST4096 around here somewhere

[nick]

This looks like another case of there being as many opinions and experiences as there're people.

I mostly use Seagates. I've had most drives fail on me (which is inevitable when you deal with thousands of drives), and Seagates have had much fewer failures. I'm mostly talking about SCSI, SAS, and FC drives here, with a few hundred IDE and SATA ones.

Maxtors have been by far the worst ones. Samsungs would take the second worst place. Western Digitals would be the third worst, although I've mostly dealt with desktop (IDE/SATA) WD drives, and I presume they fail more often than the server (SAS/SCSI/FC) drives. Surprisingly, I've had few problems with Hitachi/IBM drives. When I did, their warranty service worked pretty well. The same goes for Seagates, in my experience.

[HUTCH 7.62]

I can't remember a time when their drives were good.

[JDay]

That sucks man.

I would tell the CSR that if they don't honor the warranty, you'll complain to the BBB. If you're really pissed, and have time to spare, file a suit.

They'll probably laugh. Companies pay to be listed by the BBB. They also probably aren't even listed since they're a manufacturer and not a retailer.

[holasrmateo]

Never had a problem with either my Seagate or WD HDD's.

[bigmike82]

"Companies pay to be listed by the BBB."
Unless they get complaints.

This tactic worked for me in getting some overdraft charges dropped from Wells Fargo.

OH! Consumerist is a great place to contact about this issue. They love stories like this.

[sigfan91]

This looks like another case of there being as many opinions and experiences as there're people.

I mostly use Seagates. I've had most drives fail on me (which is inevitable when you deal with thousands of drives), and Seagates have had much fewer failures. I'm mostly talking about SCSI, SAS, and FC drives here, with a few hundred IDE and SATA ones.

Maxtors have been by far the worst ones. Samsungs would take the second worst place. Western Digitals would be the third worst, although I've mostly dealt with desktop (IDE/SATA) WD drives, and I presume they fail more often than the server (SAS/SCSI/FC) drives. Surprisingly, I've had few problems with Hitachi/IBM drives. When I did, their warranty service worked pretty well. The same goes for Seagates, in my experience.

It's not the failure that annoys me. It's the fact that a retail package was listed as OEM in the data base and the company won't honor the warranty.

I've had WD fail before. All my retail WD drives that failed were promptly replaced if under warranty.

[goober]

This looks like another case of there being as many opinions and experiences as there're people.

I mostly use Seagates. I've had most drives fail on me (which is inevitable when you deal with thousands of drives), and Seagates have had much fewer failures. I'm mostly talking about SCSI, SAS, and FC drives here, with a few hundred IDE and SATA ones.

Maxtors have been by far the worst ones. Samsungs would take the second worst place. Western Digitals would be the third worst, although I've mostly dealt with desktop (IDE/SATA) WD drives, and I presume they fail more often than the server (SAS/SCSI/FC) drives. Surprisingly, I've had few problems with Hitachi/IBM drives. When I did, their warranty service worked pretty well. The same goes for Seagates, in my experience.

this^
anecdotal "i bought this drive once and it sucked" stories have some value, especially when there are lots of them, but i'm often amused at how convinced folks are that the company or brand is bad with such limited data.
i too am in a situation where i buy and use literally hundreds of internal and external drives of pretty much all interface flavors, and my experience is that Seagates of the last 5 years or more have been above average.
last time i came across a brand/model that i would actually warn people against it was during the Hitachi/IBM Deskstar (nicknamed "DeathStar") fiasco.

It's not the failure that annoys me. It's the fact that a retail package was listed as OEM in the data base and the company won't honor the warranty.

I've had WD fail before. All my retail WD drives that failed were promptly replaced if under warranty.

your beef may not be w/ Seagate, it may very well be with the vendor. repackaged OEM drives have been known to be sold as retail... it happens.

[sigfan91]

your beef may not be w/ Seagate, it may very well be with the vendor. repackaged OEM drives have been known to be sold as retail... it happens.

With a perfect retail box and matching serial number/model number printed on the outside? That just sounds a little far fetched for a retailer to do. The amount of labor involved quickly kills off the profit. If done on a massive scale to be economical, then it's a serious crime.

[obeygiant]

this^
anecdotal "i bought this drive once and it sucked" stories have some value, especially when there are lots of them, but i'm often amused at how convinced folks are that the company or brand is bad with such limited data.
i too am in a situation where i buy and use literally hundreds of internal and external drives of pretty much all interface flavors, and my experience is that Seagates of the last 5 years or more have been above average.
last time i came across a brand/model that i would actually warn people against it was during the Hitachi/IBM Deskstar (nicknamed "DeathStar") fiasco.




your beef may not be w/ Seagate, it may very well be with the vendor. repackaged OEM drives have been known to be sold as retail... it happens.

This ^^^. Every HD manufacturer has had a bad run of drives. At one point for me it was western digital so I switched to maxtor. Then I had issues with maxtor drives and switched to Seagate. So far the life spans seem to be nearly about the same, 3yrs. On the other hand I've seen server hard drives by Seagate outlast most other brands.

To the OP, sorry to hear you had such a bad experience with them. I've returned a few drives and never had a problem. I might suggest calling until you get a more pleasant person to deal with.

[odysseus]

Same here. I have run pretty much them all. IBM, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Seagate, Samsung, WD, Toshiba, Maxtor, etc. I have had them in everything interfaced from IDE, to all flavors SCSI and FC of all kinds of speeds. There historically has been with several manufacturers certain models that had higher failure rates, but I have not seen anything significantly like that for some time. Seagates have served me well.

If there is one brand I have never liked much is maxtor. They failed a bit more overall in my experience and never seen them do hard work in the enterprise, plus one failure on a telco server device (bad overall design anyway) in particular pretty much burned me on them...

[goober]

With a perfect retail box and matching serial number/model number printed on the outside? That just sounds a little far fetched for a retailer to do. The amount of labor involved quickly kills off the profit. If done on a massive scale to be economical, then it's a serious crime.

that's right, but it has been documented to occur. where'd ya buy it?

[sigfan91]

that's right, but it has been documented to occur. where'd ya buy it?

I bought it at fry's.

I just can't believe fry's would take the time to manufacture a box to sell an OEM drive as retail. I've seen fry's operation. The people working there aren't the ones detailed enough to work up a scheme like this. I know some returned items could sell as brand new with their shrink wrap machine and a new price tag. But this is not a case of returned product being sold as new. This is an OEM product without its own boxes and papers and cable and screws, somehow wound up with a box that has matching numbers and a complete kit.

I understand drives go bad. That's not an IF but a WHEN. I'm just pissed that an OEM product was sold as retail. And I can't believe fry's would take the time to do that.

[indetrucks]

It's a mechanical part with constant moving objects inside (like pistons in an engine)
No HD will last forever, eventually moving parts fail.
Just get a HD with the best reputable warranty and expect to back up your data every 2 years on to a newer HD. But even by doing this, you are guaranteed nothing.