# Are Seagate HDD's really that bad?



## RCoon (Nov 30, 2012)

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?


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## natr0n (Nov 30, 2012)

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.


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## AsRock (Nov 30, 2012)

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.


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## FordGT90Concept (Nov 30, 2012)

RCoon said:


> 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.


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## Melvis (Nov 30, 2012)

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 =/


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## RCoon (Nov 30, 2012)

FordGT90Concept said:


> 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


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## Jetster (Nov 30, 2012)

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


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## acerace (Nov 30, 2012)

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?


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## Fourstaff (Nov 30, 2012)

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.


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## InnocentCriminal (Nov 30, 2012)

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.


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## RCoon (Nov 30, 2012)

acerace said:


> 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.


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## acerace (Nov 30, 2012)

RCoon said:


> 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.


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## Peter1986C (Nov 30, 2012)

FordGT90Concept said:


> 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.





Jetster said:


> 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 said:


> 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?








InnocentCriminal said:


> 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.



acerace said:


> Guess we know who's to blame.



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


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## Frick (Nov 30, 2012)

Jetster said:


> 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%)
> ...


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## RCoon (Nov 30, 2012)

InnocentCriminal said:


> Their, there and they're.



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


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## brandonwh64 (Nov 30, 2012)

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.


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## Guitar (Nov 30, 2012)

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


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 30, 2012)

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


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## Jstn7477 (Nov 30, 2012)

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.


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## Wrigleyvillain (Nov 30, 2012)

natr0n said:


> 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.


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## Radical_Edward (Nov 30, 2012)

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


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## newtekie1 (Nov 30, 2012)

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:



Frick said:


> 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?


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## NdMk2o1o (Nov 30, 2012)

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.


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## Steevo (Nov 30, 2012)

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.


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## erocker (Nov 30, 2012)

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


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## Fourstaff (Nov 30, 2012)

newtekie1 said:


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



Well given that you get redundancy with RAID ... CONSPIRACY!


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## newtekie1 (Nov 30, 2012)

Fourstaff said:


> Well given that you get redundancy with RAID ... CONSPIRACY!



The funny thing was that I have a co-worker that only buys the RE drives.  He doesn't run them in RAID, but buys them because they are supposed to be better.  He shit himself when I showed him that.


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## Sinzia (Nov 30, 2012)

The only drive I've ever had issues with was from a Compaq notebook bought back in 2002. It was one of those custom jobs so I had assumed they tested everything before shipping.

Turns out it was sent with a bad 40 GB drive, died in less than a week, but I can't remember who was the OEM for Compaq.

I've run every brand, Maxtors, Toshiba, Seagate, WD, and so on. Most of the time they were in raid arrays getting the crap knocked out of them. I consider myself lucky, but I subscribe to the "they're all the same now" train of thought.


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## drdeathx (Nov 30, 2012)

Melvis said:


> 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 =/



LOL, if you have multiple drives fail, I would look at the owner to tell you the truth. Any drive can fail. It is plain and simple. I have never had a seagate drive fail.


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Nov 30, 2012)

I switched to seagate after WD stopped making quiet drives, and it's been pretty flawless, not to mention cheaper.


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## Widjaja (Nov 30, 2012)

It's luck of the drawn in my opinion.

If you have bad experience with one brand try the other.


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## Melvis (Dec 1, 2012)

drdeathx said:


> LOL, if you have multiple drives fail, I would look at the owner to tell you the truth. Any drive can fail. It is plain and simple. I have never had a seagate drive fail.



That could be true as my m8 only buys Seagate drives, he hates any other brand and he has had many of them fail (all brand new bought) Where ive had just two Seagates fail but after my m8 having just a bad run and seeing alot more people on here complain about Seagates i moved to WD (most bought second hand) and none of them have failed on me (this includes ones i sell and are pre installed into customers computers) So for me personally im sticking with WD as here ive seen way more Seagates die then WD, just my personal preference.


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## TRWOV (Dec 1, 2012)

On desktops I've only had an old Maxtor 30GB and a WD 80GB IDE drive die on me. Still using a 6GB Seagate in a POS PC. *knocks wood*

For laptops each one has had to have its HDD replaced at least once.

I have no favorite brand, I buy whatever gives me more GB/$


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Dec 1, 2012)

I think it's funny samsung showed as having a low failure rate because I believe it was their entry into the market that drove down the quality of other brands overall. Their prices were hard to compete with.


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## manofthem (Dec 1, 2012)

TRWOV said:


> I have no favorite brand, I buy whatever gives me more GB/$



This is a good philosophy IMO, and I pretty much go by it. 
Currently running an old Seagate 500gb hdd on WCG, and it's still going strong. My newer yet not new 1.5tb barracuda has reported a few errors, but I haven't bothered to RMA it because I think it passed their test. My hitachi is fine too. 

I'd purchase the best deal, as long as the reviews weren't 1-egg/1-star or the equivalent for trash


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## trickson (Dec 1, 2012)

Seagates suck plain and simple. WD all the way!


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## timta2 (Dec 1, 2012)

Frick said:


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



The problem I have with those articles is that they don't mention numbers of drives sold and returned, only percentages, and minimums of numbers of drives. Statistically that can be deceptive. 10% of 10,000 is a lot more than 10% of 500. It's unlikely that the drives were sold in even numbers, but they expect you to compare the percentages evenly. 

"The statistics by brand are based on a minimum sample of 500 sales and those by model on a minimum sample of 100 sales, with the biggest volumes reaching tens of thousands of parts by brand and thousands of parts by model."


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## newtekie1 (Dec 1, 2012)

timta2 said:


> The problem I have with those articles is that they don't mention numbers of drives sold and returned, only percentages, and minimums of numbers of drives. Statistically that can be deceptive. 10% of 10,000 is a lot more than 10% of 500. It's unlikely that the drives were sold in even numbers, but they expect you to compare the percentages evenly.
> 
> "The statistics by brand are based on a minimum sample of 500 sales and those by model on a minimum sample of 100 sales, with the biggest volumes reaching tens of thousands of parts by brand and thousands of parts by model."



The percentages are all that matter, actual numbers don't matter at all, beyond a certain minimum sample size.  Obviously a larger sample size gives a more accurate percentage.  However, the percentage is still all that matters.  The point is that if a drive was returned 3% of the time, it doesn't matter if 500 drives were sold and 15 were returned, or 5,000 drives were sold and 150 returned.  The important thing is that if you buy the drive, there is a 3% chance you'll have to return it.


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## H82LUZ73 (Dec 1, 2012)

I have used Quantum drives then when Maxtor bought them out,I started using Maxtor`s,Then about 5-6 years ago Seagate bought Maxtor.I have had 1 HD fail in all that time.And it was from a bad firmware.

As for the RE-WD drives those numbers could be inflated from the flood at the plants.I see no difference between WD/Seagate,In performance/reliability,I do see about $20-$30 more for WD drive.


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## trickson (Dec 1, 2012)

All I can say for sure is that the 2 WD driver I have now I have had since 2005, 7 years now and not one problem at all. Just unbelievable! Before that I had used seagate and I had 2 of them got out.


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