Seagate Streamlines Barracuda Product Family; Simplifies Selection for Consumers

[btarunr]

Seagate is streamlining its flagship family of desktop drives under a single product that hones in on performance and big capacities to help satisfy the explosive growth in content creation and consumption by businesses and consumers worldwide. The new Barracuda family makes it easier for consumers to find the product they need and reduces costs for Seagate's original equipment manufacturer and distribution channel customers by reducing the number of product qualifications and amount of inventory they need to manage.

"A simpler desktop drive product family is exactly what Seagate customers are asking for," said Scott Horn, vice president of Marketing at Seagate. "The new Barracuda family reflects the reality that end-users want a full range of hard drive capacities and as much performance as we can give them to help manage and store massive amounts of digital content. In addition, our OEM and channel customers want to reduce overhead costs by having fewer product lines to qualify and manage in their inventory."



Desktop PC performance is growing in importance as computer users consume and otherwise use more and more multimedia - a blend of text, audio, images, animation and video - and other rich-content files in areas as diverse as business, advertising, art, education, entertainment, engineering, medicine, mathematics and science. Higher hard drive performance often means a faster computer and quicker access to this content.

The new Barracuda hard drive - to be available first at online retailers Amazon, CDW, Newegg and TigerDirect - is designed for desktop, tower or all-in-one personal computers; workstations, home and small business servers; network-attached storage devices; direct-attached storage expansion; and home and small-business RAID solutions. Capacities of the family range from 250GB to a massive 3TB.

The simplification of the Barracuda family comes as Seagate begins volume shipments of its 1TB-per-disk Barracuda hard drive. Seagate plans to end production of its Barracuda Green drive in February 2012. Seagate analysis shows that its new Barracuda drives have a nearly identical power-consumption profile as energy-efficient desktop drives but deliver much higher performance. Barracuda XT, Seagate's fastest desktop hard drive, will be folded into the new Barracuda family and re-emerge, in name, as the company's desktop solid state hybrid drive.

Technical Specifications
The new Barracuda hard drive features a SATA 6 Gb/s interface, 7200 RPM spin speed and up to 64 MB cache to deliver high performance across all capacities. Seagate's SmartAlign technology, a feature of Seagate's Barracuda Green drives, will continue to ship with the flagship Barracuda drives to help the hard drive industry segue from the current 512-byte sector standard for hard drives to the new 4096-byte sector size. The new 4K standard enables the use of stronger error correction algorithms to maintain data integrity at higher storage densities and capacities.

Environmental Commitment
Seagate is committed to building hard drives to the highest quality and environmental standards. More than 70 percent of materials used in its storage products are recyclable, and all of its products are halogen-free and comply with the rigorous REACH standard. These and other initiatives at Seagate are what truly make a difference to the environment.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[m4gicfour]

Not to mention we're experiencing shortages in all areas, so we figured; Hey, why not? Let's make this natural disaster work for SEAGATE.

 

[Radical_Edward]

The supplier for work told me to expect a shortage on drive for a month to 2 months.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

we dont need more streamliners and simplification - we need more reliablity because your MTBF falls very very very short of the quoted specifications!

 

[Fx]

all I read was blah blah blah- we are dropping our green line- blah blah blah

 

[AsRock]

all I read was blah blah blah- we are dropping our green line- blah blah blah

Pretty much this
http://youtu.be/XrbumvF-Oe4

 

[newtekie1]

Barracuda XT, Seagate’s fastest desktop hard drive, will be folded into the new Barracuda family and re-emerge, in name, as the company’s desktop solid state hybrid drive.

Finally! I'm hoping the desktop version have more than 4GB of SSD space.

we dont need more streamliners and simplification - we need more reliablity because your MTBF falls very very very short of the quoted specifications!

Seagate drives are just as reliable as anyone else.

 

[Am*]

So...I know this is a bit off-topic, but does anyone know if with the Seagate/Samsung buy out, will they stop manufacturing the 2TB F4/1TB F3 drives or continue and just phase them out eventually? Or are they no longer in production? Shops seem to still stock them, I'm hoping after the prices drop back down and the supply issues are over that the Samsung drives are still for sale, they've been a lot more reliable than any Seagate drives I've had.

 

[Fx]

Pretty much this
http://youtu.be/XrbumvF-Oe4

lol. nailed it

So...I know this is a bit off-topic, but does anyone know if with the Seagate/Samsung buy out, will they stop manufacturing the 2TB F4/1TB F3 drives or continue and just phase them out eventually? Or are they no longer in production? Shops seem to still stock them, I'm hoping after the prices drop back down and the supply issues are over that the Samsung drives are still for sale, they've been a lot more reliable than any Seagate drives I've had.

aye, the samsung 2TB F4's are damn good drives. I bought 2 of them 2 months ago for a total of $152 including tax + shipping from newegg. now that same drive is listed at $230 excluding shipping + tax...

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Finally! I'm hoping the desktop version have more than 4GB of SSD space.



Seagate drives are just as reliable as anyone else.

I have heard of more seagate failures then any other brands.

and if you google 'seagate failure rate' it will pull up literally hundreds of hits about broken hard drives revolving around the barracuda line - Inquirer done a news post about it

most sites are saying seagates have a 25-35% failure rates.

Its not just me saying this - the whole of the internets is.

so where is your proof that they are just as reliable as anyone else?

I dont hear this much negativity about Samsung or WD - I know for a fact that WD get a fair bit of flack, but no where near as much as seagate.

 

[newtekie1]

I have heard of more seagate failures then any other brands.

That is nice, I've been running a repair shop for about 6 years now, and see a pretty even number of WD and Seagate drives come in.

and if you google 'seagate failure rate' it will pull up literally hundreds of hits about broken hard drives revolving around the barracuda line - Inquirer done a news post about it

And if you google "WD Failure Rate" you will get the same. The Inguirer article turned out to be a firmware issue, the notorious firmware issue actually, so that doesn't really apply to the entire line of drives, especially since it has been fixed a long time ago. And don't forget WD hasn't been immune to their fair share of firmware issues, like their Green Edition drives causing SMART to go apeshit...

most sites are saying seagates have a 25-35% failure rates.

Any site that doesn't have a number from seagate or deals in millions of drives is totally full of shit.

Its not just me saying this - the whole of the internets is.

And the whole internet is saying the same things about WD. People will complain when they get a bum drive, that is the fact. It doesn't mean they are unreliable just because a minor percentage have problems.

so where is your proof that they are just as reliable as anyone else?

Besides my experience, I think I've pretty much proved that all of your evidence applies to WD as well, so my question is where is your proof that they aren't? "Random people on the internet says so" isn't a valid excuse.

I dont hear this much negativity about Samsung or WD - I know for a fact that WD get a fair bit of flack, but no where near as much as seagate.

Interesting, and you know Samsung is Seagate...right... Kind of disproves your whole argument when you say "I haven't heard the same about Samsung" when Samsung is owned by Seagate. If your entire argument hinges on "the internet says so" it kind of kills it to say "the internet doesn't say so" about the very company you just said the internet did say so... You just contradict yourself.

Oh, and yeah, as I said, there are plenty of bad press about WD out there too. You just seem to ignore it I guess.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Interesting, and you know Samsung is Seagate...right... Kind of disproves your whole argument when you say "I haven't heard the same about Samsung" when Samsung is owned by Seagate. If your entire argument hinges on "the internet says so" it kind of kills it to say "the internet doesn't say so" about the very company you just said the internet did say so... You just contradict yourself.

youre talking like Samsung never made their own hard drives at all.

well....FYI - Yes they have. and I am fully aware that Seagate has bought samsungs HDD department, but the whole move hasnt taken place yet and wont till the end of this year. otherwise Samsung are still making their own hard drives

There are members here in the forum that have had a lot of failed seagate hard drives, not just relating to firmware issues that you have pointed out. Im talking about the kinda failure that results in an RMA.

So what if you own a tech shop?? Oh great, Just because you own a tech shop that automaticly means you speak for every single consumer?? get off your high horse.

I am happy for you that you havent had to deal with many returned and faulty hard drives, but that still doesnt speak for everyone else unless youve suddenly become the one and only one stop shop on the internet and on the street for pc hardware and everyone has to go through you???

So what if i choose to follow the internet?? Isnt that what you do before buying new hardware? Look for reviews. Im not saying i follow them for everything. but then If theres loads of people saying a certain brand, component or peripheral etc etc is bad then i wont buy it, simple as that.

I dont just buy things at random with my eyes closed and cross my fingers hoping it wont break for two weeks as i go through paypal to make my payment.


Its great you got your own opinion about Seagate. but I'll stick to mine and i will continue to not recommend them to anyone who is looking for advice or who I am building a system for.

 

[newtekie1]

youre talking like Samsung never made their own hard drives at all.

well....FYI - Yes they have. and I am fully aware that Seagate has bought samsungs HDD department, but the whole move hasnt taken place yet and wont till the end of this year. otherwise Samsung are still making their own hard drives

Samsung stopped making drives when Seagate bought them, Seagate makes the drives now. Might still be in factories that used to be Samsung factories, but they are Seagate factories now. And where do you think Seagate got their new 1TB platter technology from? Samsung. So Seagate drives are going to be more Samsung than Seagate from now one, that is kind of the point of this news article.

There are members here in the forum that have had a lot of failed seagate hard drives, not just relating to firmware issues that you have pointed out. Im talking about the kinda failure that results in an RMA.

And there are plenty of members that have had WD drives fail I'm sure. In fact, I seem to remember that last HD failure thread I read on here was a WD drive. Anecdotal evidence doesn't help your argument any either way though.

So what if you own a tech shop?? Oh great, Just because you own a tech shop that automaticly means you speak for every single consumer?? get off your high horse.

No, it means I've likely got a lot more experience with a large volume of hard drives and hard drive failures. Just because you read a few articles online that means you speak for every single customer? Get off your high horse there bud.

I am happy for you that you havent had to deal with many returned and faulty hard drives, but that still doesnt speak for everyone else unless youve suddenly become the one and only one stop shop on the internet and on the street for pc hardware and everyone has to go through you???

That is where you are wrong, I have had to deal with many returns and faulty hard drive, it makes up a very large portion of my break/fix business. Probably 2-3 machines a week with failed drives.

But see that is where you went wrong. You obviously have very little actual experience with the subject, so you assume that everyone else does as well. You assume that my argument is that Seagate doesn't have any failure, which is wrong. My argument is that Seagate has just as many failures as everyone else, or if you prefer everyone else has just as many failures as Seagate. And I say that based on my very large experience with failed drives and the fact that I see a pretty equal number of WD and Seagate drives come into my shop failing or failed.

So what if i choose to follow the internet?? Isnt that what you do before buying new hardware? Look for reviews. Im not saying i follow them for everything. but then If theres loads of people saying a certain brand, component or peripheral etc etc is bad then i wont buy it, simple as that.

Sure I read reviews before buying hardware. However, a bunch of random people complaining about their drive dying isn't a review, now is it? And as I said, you can find that for pretty much every manufacturer, and you can find actual articles for every manufacturer too. So if you plan is to not buy anything anyone says something bad about, then good luck with never buying a hard drive again. Just google WD Failure, and 6 of the first 10 results are people complaining about a failed drive, and another result is a site offering to recover data from failed WD drives.

I dont just buy things at random with my eyes closed and cross my fingers hoping it wont break for two weeks as i go through paypal to make my payment.

Good for you, I'm glad you will let random people on the internet make those tough decisions for you. I bet you rely on newegg reviews too.

Its great you got your own opinion about Seagate. but I'll stick to mine and i will continue to not recommend them to anyone who is looking for advice or who I am building a system for.

That is nice, no matter how stupid your logic is, at least you are willing to stick behind it!

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Samsung stopped making drives when Seagate bought them, Seagate makes the drives now. Might still be in factories that used to be Samsung factories, but they are Seagate factories now. And where do you think Seagate got their new 1TB platter technology from? Samsung. So Seagate drives are going to be more Samsung than Seagate from now one, that is kind of the point of this news article.



And there are plenty of members that have had WD drives fail I'm sure. In fact, I seem to remember that last HD failure thread I read on here was a WD drive. Anecdotal evidence doesn't help your argument any either way though.



No, it means I've likely got a lot more experience with a large volume of hard drives and hard drive failures. Just because you read a few articles online that means you speak for every single customer? Get off your high horse there bud.



That is where you are wrong, I have had to deal with many returns and faulty hard drive, it makes up a very large portion of my break/fix business. Probably 2-3 machines a week with failed drives.

But see that is where you went wrong. You obviously have very little actual experience with the subject, so you assume that everyone else does as well. You assume that my argument is that Seagate doesn't have any failure, which is wrong. My argument is that Seagate has just as many failures as everyone else, or if you prefer everyone else has just as many failures as Seagate. And I say that based on my very large experience with failed drives and the fact that I see a pretty equal number of WD and Seagate drives come into my shop failing or failed.



Sure I read reviews before buying hardware. However, a bunch of random people complaining about their drive dying isn't a review, now is it? And as I said, you can find that for pretty much every manufacturer, and you can find actual articles for every manufacturer too. So if you plan is to not buy anything anyone says something bad about, then good luck with never buying a hard drive again. Just google WD Failure, and 6 of the first 10 results are people complaining about a failed drive, and another result is a site offering to recover data from failed WD drives.



Good for you, I'm glad you will let random people on the internet make those tough decisions for you. I bet you rely on newegg reviews too.



That is nice, no matter how stupid your logic is, at least you are willing to stick behind it!

No i dont rely on newegg reviews - I rely on techsite reviews like guru3d, TPU & Hardwarehaven etc etc. I do look at Newegg reviews but i dont take them seriously Just like I would yours.

as for my 'stupid logic' - I would be even more stupid to buy something thats known to have a high failure rate. I dont like losing data or constantly having to deal with RMA's. rather be safe then sorry.

Im sorry i dont fit your critera.

 

[Am*]

That is where you are wrong, I have had to deal with many returns and faulty hard drive, it makes up a very large portion of my break/fix business. Probably 2-3 machines a week with failed drives.

But see that is where you went wrong. You obviously have very little actual experience with the subject, so you assume that everyone else does as well. You assume that my argument is that Seagate doesn't have any failure, which is wrong. My argument is that Seagate has just as many failures as everyone else, or if you prefer everyone else has just as many failures as Seagate. And I say that based on my very large experience with failed drives and the fact that I see a pretty equal number of WD and Seagate drives come into my shop failing or failed.

Can I ask what sort of systems you fix, whether it's mostly business systems/custom builds or OEM pre-builts for home consumers? I tend to find Seagate to have a very good reliability with their SCSI and business-grade drives (as do WD), but A LOT of their consumer end drives have very poor reliability and I mean hardware-wise, not firmware. All HDD manufacturers had issues with firmware at some point (WD/Seagate and even Samsung with their pre-February 2011 2TB F4s). Same goes for WD drives -- I have 640GB WD Blues known for their great reliability that never have problems; their external/OEM pre-built used drives, on the other hand, have had pretty bad reliability in my experience. I personally ran four WD10EARS drives for a while -- 1 died before the year was up (I got a replacement that still works), 3 of those died shortly after.

I'm not trying to defend either of them, but the only thing I will say is that I can see why Samsung lost money on their HDD division: they seem to be the premium consumer-end HDD manufacturer for the most part -- kind of like a CPU company that only sells to the enthusiast/high-end market, the return isn't there compared to WD or Seagate that bin their failed retail drives to use in budget external drives/OEM systems, which I never saw Samsung do and which is no doubt where the money is.

 

[NC37]

Hard drives fail, that is just a given. None are going to be perfect.

Both Seagate and WD have had problem years. Take note of which models people are flaming about and you'll prolly see this. Personally, I've used both, liked both. Course when I've had to get one, I've seemingly bought either before or after the problem year.

Just gotta learn to look for that when you buy one. Last 1TB drive I got, I had to do a full search looking at the reliability on the model years. Settled on Seagate because WD at the time was having some issues and I haven't been disappointed.

Only been one manufacturer that I've had the most problems with. That was Maxtor. Dealt with a lot of their drives in Macs that I would work on. Terrible quality. Then I'd dig in e-waste bins at my college and sure enough most of the drives listed as dead were Maxtors. Glad they aren't around anymore.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Then I'd dig in e-waste bins at my college and sure enough most of the drives listed as dead were Maxtors. Glad they aren't around anymore.

Maxtor was bought by seagate in 2006

 

[newtekie1]

No i dont rely on newegg reviews - I rely on techsite reviews like guru3d, TPU & Hardwarehaven etc etc. I do look at Newegg reviews but i dont take them seriously Just like I would yours.

as for my 'stupid logic' - I would be even more stupid to buy something thats known to have a high failure rate. I dont like losing data or constantly having to deal with RMA's. rather be safe then sorry.

Im sorry i dont fit your critera.

So, let me get this straight, you won't buy a hard drive that has a "known" high failure rate. You base your opinion that Seagate has a high failure rate on the fact that you can google for Seagate Failure and you get results. So when you do the same with WD you get a bunch of results too, so does that mean you don't buy WD either? So what drives do you buy?

Can I ask what sort of systems you fix, whether it's mostly business systems/custom builds or OEM pre-builts for home consumers? I tend to find Seagate to have a very good reliability with their SCSI and business-grade drives (as do WD), but A LOT of their consumer end drives have very poor reliability and I mean hardware-wise, not firmware. All HDD manufacturers had issues with firmware at some point (WD/Seagate and even Samsung with their pre-February 2011 2TB F4s). Same goes for WD drives -- I have 640GB WD Blues known for their great reliability that never have problems; their external/OEM pre-built used drives, on the other hand, have had pretty bad reliability in my experience. I personally ran four WD10EARS drives for a while -- 1 died before the year was up (I got a replacement that still works), 3 of those died shortly after.

I'm not trying to defend either of them, but the only thing I will say is that I can see why Samsung lost money on their HDD division: they seem to be the premium consumer-end HDD manufacturer for the most part -- kind of like a CPU company that only sells to the enthusiast/high-end market, the return isn't there compared to WD or Seagate that bin their failed retail drives to use in budget external drives/OEM systems, which I never saw Samsung do and which is no doubt where the money is.

Most of what I fix are consumer pre-builts.

Personally, I bought 3 WD 400GB RE2 Enterprise drives to run in RAID5, within 6 months 2 had failed and needed to be RMA'd. I just bought two RE4 500GB drives for a RAID1 array. One came totally DOA. It came sealed in a WD box, but there was a small tear in the ESD bag, and a dent in the top of the drive! So somewhere after the ESD bag was put on the drive, but before it was boxed up a the WD factory, something was either dropped on the drive or the drive was dropped.

Then there was the WD Raptor firmware issue that caused the drives to totally brick themselves after 50 days of running straight. And it took 10 Months for WD to finally release a fixed firmware...

I'm not saying you are wrong, the enterprise drives definitely are more reliable generally, just pointing out a few examples of WDs having problems, sometimes major. Desktop drives are generally less reliable, but honestly I wouldn't put extra money into an enterprise drive at this point, because they aren't that much more reliable.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

So, let me get this straight, you won't buy a hard drive that has a "known" high failure rate. You base your opinion that Seagate has a high failure rate on the fact that you can google for Seagate Failure and you get results. So when you do the same with WD you get a bunch of results too, so does that mean you don't buy WD either? So what drives do you buy?

Not just that i can google it - but word of mouth my friend. even though googling WD failures pulls up a lot of stuff. I have heard a lot more about seagate then WD. Sure random people can bitch about anything they think is wrong with the drive - but if they all bitch about a certain thing in particular - does that make them all liars?

for example - you go on holiday to an exotic country and you have no idea where you are but you need to get to your hotel which is roughly located in the area so you ask for directions - 15 people point towards north, 2 people point towards the west.

are the 15 people that point north liars because they are random people??

your 'logic' doesnt make much sense either :shadedshu

and what do i buy you ask??? My pre-seagate samsungs are still working just great thanks. Im still rocking an older F1 in my rig and it has been flawless.

When one of them does choose to die. I will attempt to get another pre-seagate samsung but if that fails then I will most likely head over to WD for lack of a better option or give Toshiba a go.

I have WD Scorpio blacks in both my laptops and they run great.

 

[YoukY63]

most sites are saying seagates have a 25-35% failure rates.

Its not just me saying this - the whole of the internets is.

so where is your proof that they are just as reliable as anyone else?

I will answer for him. Check at this (french only, sorry): http://www.hardware.fr/articles/843-6/disques-durs.html

On this website they analyzed the sells of one of the major e-shop in France, and calculated the failure rates for hard drives, motherboards, power supply, etc... for each brand and each models. The sample number for hard drives exceeds >10,000s, so their is no problem on the reliability of their numbers (and that is wayyyyy more accurate than your methodology).
Results: failure rates for hard drives sold between October 1st 2010 and April 1st 2011, analyzed from October 1st 2010 to October 1st 2011 (that means disks between 6 months to 1 year old)
-Samsung: 1.5%
-Seagate: 1.8%
-Western Digital: 2%
- Hitachi: 3%

The same analysis 1 year earlier:
-Samsung: 1.8%
-Seagate: 2%
-Western Digital: 1.5%
- Hitachi: 3.1%

The give the full details, they even add that for this year, if they remove the sells of Seagate 7200.11 160GB impacted by old buggy firmware, the 2010-2011 failure rate would be "only" 1.6%.

Anyhow, Seagate HD are not worse than WD disks. So thank you to not scare people with biased informations.

 

[ViperXTR]

my 160GB seagate barracuda is lucky to have survive for ~6 years then (oh wait, my 6GB seagate medalist is still alive D: )

 

[kn00tcn]

I will answer for him. Check at this (french only, sorry): http://www.hardware.fr/articles/843-6/disques-durs.html

behardware is the english version of them

 

[YoukY63]

behardware is the english version of them

Yes, thank you for the link. I knew about it, but only a few articles are translated in english, and especially not the ones related to the french market.

 

[sy5tem]

i think that since company have made 1 TB + HD the failure rate as raised up consistently ... in general i ad more HD failure in the last years that in the other 10 years total i worked with computer... and thats any brand ... and a bit more seagate with their firmware problem on the 1TB

 

[AsRock]

Oddly i think it depends on person to person. Like i have only had one bad WD and that was on a 850MB hdd that has a loose PCB on it.

How ever near every single Seagate or WD drive i have had only Seagate have give me bad blocks but worked for years after still.

However, some people have nothing but issue's with WD drives and none or near no issue's with Seagate drives.