Are Seagate HDD's really that bad?

[RCoon]

So I came into work today a little earlier than usual, to find our chief financial officer (she manages who gets paid, and what funding various departments get) complaining about a blue screen on her HP Elite all in one pc (this thing is good, and only 7 months old).
I go over there in a hurry, check the BSOD, error 0x7A, which translated means HDD is dead. Only 7 months old and HDD dies on me, for one of the more important members of staff.
I open her up, and lo and behold it's a Seagate Baracuda 500gb hard drive. Call HP, they say they will send a new one out, luckily, i had a spare so i slung that in instead of waiting until monday, and reimaged the machine.
I have 4TB of games and data on two Seagate Baracuda 2TB 6gbps drives at home, this makes me worried
So my question is, are some people just super unlucky, or are Seagate drives really that unreliable? I've had my two drives for 2 years now, is it time to backup and replace?

 

[natr0n]

They are unreliable. I have more than 20 drives different brands. For me all seagates have failed.
They used to be good long ago, then they bought maxtors curses and now it shows more than ever.

 

[AsRock]

I only had 2 WD's fail on me in the past which is not bad over 20 years how ever i have had 6 seagates fail on me..

But there's many people who have the total different experience were the WD fail rate is worse so i just buy what i seem to have luck with as it seems that's all it seems to be in the end.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

So my question is, are some people just super unlucky, or are Seagate drives really that unreliable? I've had my two drives for 2 years now, is it time to backup and replace?

All mechanical hardware will eventually fail. The brand doesn't matter. You should always keep backups of important data.

Seagate is as reliable as every other hard drive manufacturer.

There's a reason why products are warranteed for at least a year and that is to compenstate for infant mortalities (products that have a manufacturing defect not caught during quality control). Because nature is chaotic, no two objects are exactly alike. Warrantees compensate for that.

 

[Melvis]

Yes there realy that bad, out of all the drives myself and all my friends have had Seagate has died more then any other hands down. The last Seagate i had lasted 6weeks =/

 

[RCoon]

All mechanical hardware will eventually fail. The brand doesn't matter. You should always keep backups of important data.

Seagate is as reliable as every other hard drive manufacturer.

There's a reason why products are warranteed for at least a year and that is to compenstate for infant mortalities (products that have a manufacturing defect not caught during quality control). Because nature is chaotic, no two objects are exactly alike. Warrantees compensate for that.

Fair enough, I've always bought Seagate drives for all my PC's and not had a failure yet. I was about to buy a samsung 512 ssd, then thought it might be a safe bet to get myself 2 replacements for those two drives

 

[Jetster]

No there not. Seagate is not any worse than WD. It just that they sell a lot of drives. Its more like HP is the issue. They have very poor quality control. Im sure they drop her hard drive at some point

Do some research
http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-6/components-returns-rates-5.html

 

[acerace]

Well, I have just one Seagate drive that failed on me, and the funny thing is, it came from a HP PC. How is that?

 

[Fourstaff]

Sometimes the way they pack and ship the harddrives also affects the reliability of the drives, there is a period of time when Amazon decided to ship without adequate packaging, and the failure rate was horrendous.

 

[InnocentCriminal]

I personally don't like Seagate or Western Digital they're as bad as each other. If you've not had a bad experience then continue to use them. Segate now own Samsung's old HDD devision which may be some worth (to you). Apparently, the new WD Red drives are very good.

Now that Samsung don't make mechanical drives anymore I'll be purchasing the largest SSD I can afford.

Their, there and they're.

 

[RCoon]

Well, I have just one Seagate drive that failed on me, and the funny thing is, it came from a HP PC. How is that?

It might help to say, we have completely used up our surplus 2.5 and 3.5 drives within the last few months, we're talking 20+ drives, all of which failed in HP machines and laptops.

 

[acerace]

It might help to say, we have completely used up our surplus 2.5 and 3.5 drives within the last few months, we're talking 20+ drives, all of which failed in HP machines and laptops.

Guess we know who's to blame.

 

[Peter1986C]

All mechanical hardware will eventually fail. The brand doesn't matter. You should always keep backups of important data.

Seagate is as reliable as every other hard drive manufacturer.

There's a reason why products are warranteed for at least a year and that is to compenstate for infant mortalities (products that have a manufacturing defect not caught during quality control). Because nature is chaotic, no two objects are exactly alike. Warrantees compensate for that.

No there not. Seagate is not any worse than WD. It just that they sell a lot of drives. Its more like HP is the issue. They have very poor quality control. Im sure they drop her hard drive at some point

Do some research
http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-6/components-returns-rates-5.html

Well, I have just one Seagate drive that failed on me, and the funny thing is, it came from a HP PC. How is that?

I personally don't like Seagate or Western Digital they're as bad as each other. If you've not had a bad experience then continue to use them. Segate now own Samsung's old HDD devision which may be some worth (to you). Apparently, the new WD Red drives are very good.

Now that Samsung don't make mechanical drives anymore I'll be purchasing the largest SSD I can afford.

Their, there and they're.

Thanks for the link. I think I will use this when folks misspell stuff again.

Guess we know who's to blame.

Yep, especially since it is an AIO (no one should use a 3.5" mechanical in that).

 

[Frick]

No there not. Seagate is not any worse than WD. It just that they sell a lot of drives. Its more like HP is the issue. They have very poor quality control. Im sure they drop her hard drive at some point

Do some research
http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-6/components-returns-rates-5.html

Thank you for posting sense. Alse, here's a more recent link.

- Western 1.48% (against 1.63%)
- Samsung 1.65% (against 1.23%)
- Seagate 1.70% (against 1.89%)
- Hitachi 3.77% (against 3.95%)

With an improved score, Western has taken over from Samsung at the top. Samsung’s returns rate has also got worse. Seagate is hot on the heels of Samsung and Hitachi, as was the case in our last report, brings up the rear with quite a high rate. It is to be hoped that Toshiba, which has taken over Hitachi’s 3.5" hard drive production, will be able to remedy this problem.

4 hard drives have a higher than 5% rate:

- 7.65% for the Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 3 TB
- 6.91% for the Seagate Barracuda XT 2 To
- 5.78% for the Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 160 GB
- 5.30% for the Samsung SpinPoint F3 (HD253GJ) 250 GB

Here now are the stats for the 3 TB drives sold over the period:

- 7.65% for the Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 3 TB
- 4.86% for the Seagate Barracuda XT 3 TB
- 3.36% for the Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 3 TB
- 3.12% for the WD Caviar Green 3 TB

And the 2 TB drives:

- 4.60% for the WD Caviar RE4 2 TB
- 3.91% for the WD Caviar Black 2 TB
- 3.32% for the WD Caviar Green 2 TB WD20EARS
- 2.28% for the Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 2 TB
- 1.94% for the WD AV-GP 2 TB
- 1.46% for the WD Caviar Green 2 TB WD20EARX
- 1.03% for the WD RE4-GP 2 TB

 

[RCoon]

Their, there and they're.

I just ordered the 5 pack for our less than academic english staff

 

[brandonwh64]

I will have to go with others in this thread. I have only had 1 WD fail on me while seagate I have well over 5 fail and one drive failed three times on its own and thats not counting into the 5 for total of 8 RMA's.

Some say they are alittle better now my experiences make me stay clear from their products.

 

[Guitar]

I'm more of a fan of WD than Seagate, but I wouldn't say they are "bad" I guess.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Ive had 3 WD Black fail and zero Seagate. I think they are all the same crap.

 

[Jstn7477]

My Seagate Barracuda Green outlasted my Corsair Force 3 SSD, so I think it is rather random. Half my shipment of 4 WD Black 500GB for a client was dead last year, and I threw out a 2008 Seagate SATA laptop drive, a 2004 Barracuda 7200.7 SATA (was sitting in an unused Dell for several years, likely lasted less than 3 years) and a 2003 Barracuda ATA IV this month. Most of my HDDs are random Western Digitals from 2003-2012 and I think I've had 2 fail and that's it. Original 36Gb and 74GB Velociraptors are still running perfectly.

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

They used to be good long ago, then they bought maxtors curses and now it shows more than ever.

Actually, if anything, the opposite is true. Read Lord Sugar's wikipedia page, for one example. He had a whole line of PCs fail in the marketplace way back in the day due to "unreliable hard disks supplied by Seagate".

They have definitely improved over the years and as far as I can tell are no better or worse than any other brand these days, to which others have also attested in this thread.

 

[Radical_Edward]

Out of HDDs I've RMA in the past 2 years. 30ish have been Seagates, 5 have been WD, 2 have been Hitachi.

 

[newtekie1]

I see just as my WD come into my shop dead as Seagates, and I've seen probably thousands of bad hard drives in the years I've worked/owned this repair shop.

You'll hear plenty of anecdotal evidence in one direction or the other, but I believe in the end from my huge experience with drives, that one brand is not better than the other it is entirely luck of the draw. And anything important you should have backed up.

Edit:

Thank you for posting sense. Alse, here's a more recent link.

Holy f*ck! What is up with the RAID Edition drives?! Aren't those supposed to be WD's most reliable?

 

[NdMk2o1o]

Hitachis were known for being the worse (hitachi deathstars anyone?) anyhow I have been rocking a Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB for a good while now without any issues, I have had to RMA some WD's in the past though but I wouldn't write WD off just on that basis.

Long story short, you have nothing to worry about.

 

[Steevo]

Go read the papers that google did on drives, they show most of the ideas people have about drives is bullshit, while they did not mention brands only one had a higher failure rate, and it was only by a couple percent.


I have used hundreds of hard drives, and failures usually occurred from

Bad cable and the drive gets blamed.
PSU failure caused damage to the drive
Motherboard issues, such as blown or dead caps
User damage.


I use seagate/hitachi/WD and have had no real issues with any. I used Quantum fireball drives for years and sill have some that work.

 

[erocker]

I currently have 10 Seagate drives from 8 to 1 year old all operating in an industrial environment. None have failed.