What's going on with Seagate?

I ignored most the failure reports on newegg about the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB drive that I purchased. I have had nothing but success with WD and Hitachi, but could not resist the 7200 rpms spec staring me down when I visited newegg. Firstly, the drive was loud and clunky while sitting on my desk idling in my office as I labored away my desktop. Lastly and most notably, the darned thing died in 9 days. 9 DAYS! It is on its way back to newegg now. Seagate needs to get on the ball and correct the problem(s) with these drives as the drives are really hurting their reputation. I may never buy or use another Seagate, unless of course its used by the OEM. </rant>

 

I don't know what Seagate is thinking recently. They lowered their warranty from 3 years to 5 and then there are all these reports of drive failures(though most of the ones I read are for the desktop, didn't look into the laptop drives). I think I read that the problem is that there is something faulty in the firmware of the drives, that causes them to burn up. They claimed to have released another firmware to fix this, but maybe the problem is still going on? In any event I am sticking with Hitachi or WD for now.

 

You can't judge a whole brand by certain series of hard drives. Seagate has had a few notable issues, but then so did samsung.

There are just hiccups. And anyways my rule of thumb for a drive that isn't in raid is to use it for a couple weeks to see if there are any issues and then "relying" on it.

Also newegg does not handle hard drives well and ships them poorly packed.

 

Nothing wrong with the packaging in my case... besides, they don't package hard drives differently. Seagate's are failing at a high rate and other brands are not. If you take a look at newegg's recent reviews for Seagate's latest hard drives, you'll note that this is not a sporadic occurrence rather one that is bordering on systematic. I hate to see this sort of decline in quality from a reputable company. Hopefully they take corrective action soon. Thanks for your comments though.

 

Yeah, I've been scared off from Seagate for the time being. The way their drives were locking up was one thing, but then the way the company responded... deleting threads from their site talking about the issue. That ain't cool.

 

For notebook drives newegg isn't so bad but otherwise newegg is known for not handling drives well.

Handling of drives and packaging is hugely important even if you think it is within its proper tolerances.

I am not saying seagate is great or not. Just every company usually has a few bad runs and series that everyone will remember them by (though arguably seagate has had a few mishaps with firmware too as you mentioned). So aside from specific instances of faulty drives, don't judge a whole brand by it as an absolute. I know plenty of people who hate WD or who hated maxtor, etc.

Just practice good redundancy and backup techniques. Because when it comes down to it you are the only one who can keep your data safe.

 

What a coincidence. My Seagate drive just die after 1 year of usage. It's a PATA 500GB 7200rpm. Because it contains personal info, I'm not going to send it in for replacement. However, I think I'll steer clear of Seagate from now on.

 

How messed up is the drive? Seagate lets you do advanced replacements if you give them your CC. Mounting it in linux and doing a bit level copy might work then you could destroy the data on it.

But drives are also so cheap might be more trouble than it is worth.

 

Yeah that's the point. It only costs me around $40 so it's not worth it.

 

It's free vs paying for the replacement. How is it not worth it? The CC is only a deposit to ensure that you return the defective drive.

 

Just to support the other side, while I concur that Seagate has had some slip ups recently, I can say that, by far, all the Seagate notebook HDs that I’ve purchased over the last several years have been significantly more reliable than their Toshiba, Samsung and WD counterparts. On top of that, all of them have five-year warranties (though they recently changed this)—whereas the vast majority of notebook HDs from the other vendors are warrantied for three or less years.

 

The Seagate warranties are 3 years now.