Seagate Streamlines Barracuda Product Family; Simplifies Selection for Consumers

[wrathchild_67]

...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%.

It is because of the 7200.11 series that I will never ever buy a Seagate again. Out of six 1.5TB 7200.11's I bought, four of them failed within a year. The remaining two are flaky in their spin-ups and spin-downs but still work overall. My experiences with these drives aren't merely anecdotal and I even flashed the firmware to the supposed fixed version before ever putting the drives to use. The firmware obviously didn't help. I don't even want to RMA these drives for fear of getting refurbed 7200.11's back.

 

[newtekie1]

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.

No, my logic makes perfect sense. If your idea of bad drives come from finding people complaining about it, then you will never have any option to buy, because you can find just as much bitching about every company, including WD. You have no option, and "the internets says so" isn't a valid argument when the internet says it about every brand.

And good luck with Toshiba, they shut down their hard drive line earlier this year... That is why there are 0 desktop drives available on newegg from them, and only 1 laptop drive.

And as YoukY63 pointed out(I knew I had read that article somewhere, just couldn't find it), the actual failure rates when sampling tens of thousands of drives are extremely low between the WD and Seagate and Samsung. So you really have no ground to stand on.

It is because of the 7200.11 series that I will never ever buy a Seagate again. Out of six 1.5TB 7200.11's I bought, four of them failed within a year. The remaining two are flaky in their spin-ups and spin-downs but still work overall. My experiences with these drives aren't merely anecdotal and I even flashed the firmware to the supposed fixed version before ever putting the drives to use. The firmware obviously didn't help. I don't even want to RMA these drives for fear of getting refurbed 7200.11's back.

I bought 3, all with the defective firmware, RMA'd one and got one with a non-defective firmware. The other two were flashed with the new firmware and worked flawlessly.

But, yes your experience is anecdotal, and the firmware did fix the problem. If it didn't fix your drives, then you probably flashed drives that didn't even have a firmware problem to begin with, with a firmware not designed for your drives, causing more harm than good.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

No, my logic makes perfect sense. If your idea of bad drives come from finding people complaining about it, then you will never have any option to buy, because you can find just as much bitching about every company, including WD. You have no option, and "the internets says so" isn't a valid argument when the internet says it about every brand.

You still havent answered my question so my point still stands. If the drives were good why would people be complaining so much about them???

Like i have said before. I mentioned that I have read and heard more re-occuring horror stories about Seagate drives then any other HDD manufacturer. WD have had problems but once they get it fixed, you tend not to hear anything from them for a long time as they sorted the problem out.

If a consumers keep complaining over and over again because drives keep on breaking, who are YOU to tell them they are full of shit?

your failure to answer my question proves my point.

A lot of useful information is shared over the internet.

TPU is one of the sites that share lots of information on PC hardware and customisation etc etc. IF everyone at TPU were to recommend an i5 setup, would you listen to our recommendations of thousands people or would you be a douche and do the complete opposite and get some old AMD Sempron because "the internets says so" ???

Your point is invalid. and you can tiptoe around the issue and troll as much as you like because youre so great you work in a pc repair store but that doesnt automaticly make what you say correct.

Yes I listen to the internets. and the internets have kept me from making bad mistakes when it comes to purchasing hardware. who are you to say otherwise?

 

[wrathchild_67]

But, yes your experience is anecdotal, and the firmware did fix the problem.

Wrong. The problems with this series are well documented and went beyond the firmware for many people.

If it didn't fix your drives, then you probably flashed drives that didn't even have a firmware problem to begin with, with a firmware not designed for your drives, causing more harm than good.

Wrong again. I know for a fact that of the two firmware fixes floating around for these drives I chose the one designed for my drives based on the criteria Seagate gave on their website which was very clear. Get off your goddamn high horse. You're simply wrong about these drives.

 

[Frick]

Sometimes it feels like it's a thing hating on Seagate. I mean look at that french article that has looked at a LOT of drives in a non-anecdotal manner. It says that the error rate is not worse than anyone the others and given that it's a study based on actual figures that says a lot. And if we look at individual 1TB disks the numbers are more interesting:

- 3.65% Western Digital Caviar Blue (WD10EALS)
- 3.59% Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C (HDS721010CLA332)
- 2.89% Western Digital Caviar Black (WD1001FALS)
- 2.79% Western Digital Caviar Black (WD1002FAEX)
- 1.61% Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 (ST31000528AS)
- 1.57% Western Digital Caviar Green (WD10EARS)
- 1.31% Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 (ST31000524AS)
- 1.27% Western Digital Caviar Blue (WD10EALX)
- 1.15% Samsung SpinPoint F3 (HD103SJ)

And 2TB drives:

- 5.53% Western Digital RE4-GP (WD2002FYPS)
- 5.07% Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 (HDS722020ALA330)
- 4.75% Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 (HDS723020BLA642)
- 4.42% Western Digital Caviar Black (WD2002FAEX)
- 3.48% Seagate Barracuda LP (ST32000542AS)
- 3.40% Seagate Barracuda XT (ST32000641AS)
- 3.05% Western Digital Caviar Green (WD20EARS)
- 2.98% Seagate Barracuda Green (ST2000DL003)
- 2.20% Samsung SpinPoint EcoGreen F4 (HD204UI)

Notice how Segate drives are doing pretty good here?

Anecdotal evidence is actually good for say holiday resorts and possibly when talking about support, but when it comes to technical stuff it's .. well bullcrap. Say you can find 500 horror stories about Seagate drives online. Or lets say 1000. That is a drop in the ocean when counting of the units they sell (in 2010 they sold 48 million drives in total). Even if you can find 10.000 horror stories online it's still just a drop.

I'm not trying to pick fights here, but it's just silly to take anecdotal stories about hardware failure seriously. The area where they are doing some good are stories about support.

 

[Kantastic]

You still havent answered my question so my point still stands. If the drives were good why would people be complaining so much about them???

Like i have said before. I mentioned that I have read and heard more re-occuring horror stories about Seagate drives then any other HDD manufacturer. WD have had problems but once they get it fixed, you tend not to hear anything from them for a long time as they sorted the problem out.

If a consumers keep complaining over and over again because drives keep on breaking, who are YOU to tell them they are full of shit?

your failure to answer my question proves my point.

A lot of useful information is shared over the internet.

He answered your question with actual statistics and common sense, not blind ignorance. I've been on this board a few years now, and the only Seagate problem I've read about is the 7200.11 FW issue, which has long been fixed and replaced with the now highly acclaimed 7200.12 series drives, drives which I've been fortunate enough to own. Actually, I flung one 2 feet across the floor once while building my cousin's computer and it's still working strong today, a year and a half later.

TPU is one of the sites that share lots of information on PC hardware and customisation etc etc. IF everyone at TPU were to recommend an i5 setup, would you listen to our recommendations of thousands people or would you be a douche and do the complete opposite and get some old AMD Sempron because "the internets says so" ???

Your point is invalid. and you can tiptoe around the issue and troll as much as you like because youre so great you work in a pc repair store but that doesnt automaticly make what you say correct.

Yes I listen to the internets. and the internets have kept me from making bad mistakes when it comes to purchasing hardware. who are you to say otherwise?

I don't care what everyone on TPU recommends because, without insult to TPU, many of the members here don't know as much as they assume they know. I would be one of them. However, what I do know is that there is a group of very intelligent, unbiased members here that, before making threads, I would go to privately for help, and newtekie1 is one of them.

He mentioned he works in a tech shop to infer that he deals with volume. I don't think I have to explain why having a sufficient data pool is crucial for proper statistics right? I slept through stats in high school and I still remember the basic elements.

 

[YoukY63]

You still havent answered my question so my point still stands. If the drives were good why would people be complaining so much about them???

Like i have said before. I mentioned that I have read and heard more re-occuring horror stories about Seagate drives then any other HDD manufacturer. WD have had problems but once they get it fixed, you tend not to hear anything from them for a long time as they sorted the problem out.

If a consumers keep complaining over and over again because drives keep on breaking, who are YOU to tell them they are full of shit?

your failure to answer my question proves my point.

And you failed to demonstrate us that Seagate disks have more failure than WD or any other brands...
I showed you my data. Come on, where are your data now?

 

[newtekie1]

You still havent answered my question so my point still stands. If the drives were good why would people be complaining so much about them???

Yes, I have answered your question, several times. The internet has given everyone a voice, and they choice to use that voice to bitch about things that didn't work perfectly. Which is why you can find the same stories about every manufacturer, or pretty much every product created in the world. Will you find a non-satisfied customer is far more likely to post about it on the internet than a satisfied customer that puts the product in use and never thinks about it again.

Like i have said before. I mentioned that I have read and heard more re-occuring horror stories about Seagate drives then any other HDD manufacturer. WD have had problems but once they get it fixed, you tend not to hear anything from them for a long time as they sorted the problem out.

And as has been pointed out in the thread several times, anecdotal argument means nothing. Besides my own experience with thousands of drives over the past years working as a tech and then owning my own shop(and as Kantastic so easily picked up on, I say this as a basis for volume of drives seen, not as a "I own a tech shop na na na na"), there are the actual studies that covered way more drives than any of us will probably see in our lifetime that give actual hard numbers that prove you wrong.

If a consumers keep complaining over and over again because drives keep on breaking, who are YOU to tell them they are full of shit?

Again, this is where you seem to fail at understanding my argument. I'm not saying people complaining about the drives failing are wrong or full of shit. I'm saying you find the same stories about drives failing from every brand. I'm not making the argument that Seagate drives don't fail, I'm making the argument that other manufacturer's drives fail just as often. See the difference? Probably not...

your failure to answer my question proves my point.

A lot of useful information is shared over the internet.

Yes, and a lot of people bitching about products not working is shared to. But that doesn't really prove anything. As I and others have pointed out.

TPU is one of the sites that share lots of information on PC hardware and customisation etc etc. IF everyone at TPU were to recommend an i5 setup, would you listen to our recommendations of thousands people or would you be a douche and do the complete opposite and get some old AMD Sempron because "the internets says so" ???

It seems you would be that douche buying the AMD Sempron because "the internet says so". After all, your whole argument is based on "the internet says so". According to you, the internet says Seagate is bad after all. I haven't see a whole lot of people not recommending seagate around here, maybe you can point some out. Haven't even seen a lot of Seagate horror stories either. As I said, the last HD failure thread I read was about a WD drive...

Your point is invalid. and you can tiptoe around the issue and troll as much as you like because youre so great you work in a pc repair store but that doesnt automaticly make what you say correct.

No, the fact that there is actual numbers backing me up and not just anecdotal BS is what makes me correct.

Yes I listen to the internets. and the internets have kept me from making bad mistakes when it comes to purchasing hardware. who are you to say otherwise?

Back to you buying that Sempron because the internet says so then, right?

Wrong. The problems with this series are well documented and went beyond the firmware for many people.

Not really, they had normal failure rates beyond the firmware issue. Though a lot of the problems were caused by people flashing drives with firmware that wasn't meant for their drives. People say 7200.11 and immediately flashed it with the firmware, which caused more harm than good, as not every 7200.11 drive had bad firmware, and the fixed firmware wasn't designed to work with every 7200.11 drive either.

Wrong again. I know for a fact that of the two firmware fixes floating around for these drives I chose the one designed for my drives based on the criteria Seagate gave on their website which was very clear. Get off your goddamn high horse. You're simply wrong about these drives.

Not likely, and I'll explain why.

You said you bought the drives and flashed the firmware before even using them. Meaning the fixed firmware was already out, likely for a good while, before you even bought the drives. This means the drives likely came with good firmware already, and probably weren't even supposed to work with the firmware that you blindly flashed.

And I'm guessing that "criteria" you used was "its a 7200.11 drive, so I'ma flash that firmware"...

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Yes, I have answered your question, several times.

You have now - but not directly.

It seems you would be that douche buying the AMD Sempron because "the internet says so". After all, your whole argument is based on "the internet says so". According to you, the internet says Seagate is bad after all. I haven't see a whole lot of people not recommending seagate around here, maybe you can point some out. Haven't even seen a lot of Seagate horror stories either. As I said, the last HD failure thread I read was about a WD drive...

Nope I bought a 2500k (Check my specs on the left bro) and, again I admit I am basing the arguement about "the internet says so" I have mentioned that more then once. the Internet gave everyone a voice a platform to vent on (just like you) But there are other people out there who are very technical and good with computers just like us who have blogs or run tech sites that vent also. to simply just bundle everyone in the same basket is just the same as saying there are no women on the interwebs

I take every complaint with a pinch of salt but at the same time I am very mindful and suspicious of that particular brand. Check in some of the seagate/samsung or other HDD based news posts. there are a few people that have posted about their bad experience with seagate, albiet it was probably posted a few months ago but there are a fair few posts on TPU about peoples personal experiences with that particular brand.

as always - no one is forcing anyone to buy anything they dont want to buy and after reading reviews online about whatever product we're after, Its common sense that we choose to go with something that has more good reviews.

to simply just say "because the internet says so" is a little strong. as tech sites (bar tomshardware) do some great reviews. and i buy my hardware based on peoples reviews, but that doesnt mean that i trust any random person that has something bad to say about a peice of hardware.

 

[newtekie1]

You have now - but not directly.



Nope I bought a 2500k (Check my specs on the left bro) and, again I admit I am basing the arguement about "the internet says so" I have mentioned that more then once. the Internet gave everyone a voice a platform to vent on (just like you) But there are other people out there who are very technical and good with computers just like us who have blogs or run tech sites that vent also. to simply just bundle everyone in the same basket is just the same as saying there are no women on the interwebs

I take every complaint with a pinch of salt but at the same time I am very mindful and suspicious of that particular brand. Check in some of the seagate/samsung or other HDD based news posts. there are a few people that have posted about their bad experience with seagate, albiet it was probably posted a few months ago but there are a fair few posts on TPU about peoples personal experiences with that particular brand.

as always - no one is forcing anyone to buy anything they dont want to buy and after reading reviews online about whatever product we're after, Its common sense that we choose to go with something that has more good reviews.

to simply just say "because the internet says so" is a little strong. as tech sites (bar tomshardware) do some great reviews. and i buy my hardware based on peoples reviews, but that doesnt mean that i trust any random person that has something bad to say about a peice of hardware.

Wow, that post is all over the place, I don't even think you know what your stance is at this point. Half of your rambling is "people say bad things about seagate, so they must be bad" and the other half is "I don't trust any random person that says something bad" and "I take negative criticism with a grain of salt". I guess what your really mean is "I take negative criticism from random people on the internet with a grain of salt, unless I have an irrational bias against the brand, and then I'll use the negative criticism of random people on the internet as proof of how bad the brand is."

And I'm not saying that people aren't going to post about their problems with Seagate, but you seem to ignore the fact that people are also posting about their problems with WD/Samsung/Hitachi/etc. Just a quick trip over to the storage section of TPU shows the first page has WD Problem, Samsung Problem, Samsung Problem, Samsung Problem. Not a single Seagate issue on the first page, but 1 person with a WD problem and 3 people with Samsung problems with no Seagate issues. The only recent thread about someone having an issue with Seagate is Feaksavior's thread, and he uses exclusively Seagate, so bad luck is bound to hit, and another thread about a 7200.11 dying form July.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

I don't even think you know what your stance is at this point.

Long story short.

Still wouldnt recommend them

 

[newtekie1]

long story short.

Still wouldnt recommend them for not logical reason

ftfy

 

[FreedomEclipse]

And of course - its easy for you to sit there and twist my words as always - Well done you!

 

[TurdFergasun]

why don't you include the seagate 7200.11 drives in your reliability survey? i know, it's because they were the worst drive manufactured since the hitachi deathstar drives. not only were they wide spread failures, it was the way seagate handled the problem by handing out refurbished versions of the same drive. not only that, their warranty center like to claim drives are unfixable and offer "great deals"($500) on their data recovery service(i365), when all one has to do is youtube search 7200.11 fix and build yourself a cable for $14! Total BS and i know i'll never deal with them... again... in my life, that is if i'm not forced to by some friend's POS hardrive failing who needs help. then i guess i'll be forced into it.

 

[newtekie1]

why don't you include the seagate 7200.11 drives in your reliability survey? i know, it's because they were the worst drive manufactured since the hitachi deathstar drives. not only were they wide spread failures, it was the way seagate handled the problem by handing out refurbished versions of the same drive. not only that, their warranty center like to claim drives are unfixable and offer "great deals"($500) on their data recovery service(i365), when all one has to do is youtube search 7200.11 fix and build yourself a cable for $14! Total BS and i know i'll never deal with them... again... in my life, that is if i'm not forced to by some friend's POS hardrive failing who needs help. then i guess i'll be forced into it.

They were included in the reliability survey, did you even bother to read it?

- Samsung 1.5%
- Seagate 1.8% (1.6% without the 7200.11 160 GB)
- Western 2.0%
- Hitachi 3.0%

And Seagate didn't hand out refurbished drives, they handed out certified repaired drives. As in they took your drive, fixed the firmware issue, and returned it to you. And in my case, the one 7200.11 drive I sent in for RMA before the firmware was released, they sent me a totally new drive.

 

[TurdFergasun]

no they took my drive, had it for 3 weeks, and did nothing. the response that my drive was totally unsalvageable and required level 2 data recovery if i wanted to keep the data or at least have the potential to retrieve it. in those 3 weeks i searched on my own and found the diy instructions on how to reset the controller and flash the new firmware, which is what i did on my own after getting the drive back from seagate. I knew of how to fix the drive while they're telling me it's NFG for warranty service repair levels, and was going to cost out of pocket on my end.

so to summarize: 1. they lie to your face on the status of your warranty claims to absolve their responsibilities, then they'll try to profiteer from the situation their faulty products have left you in. a company i'll have nothing to do with now or in the future, regardless of how their hardware improves.

thought i'd clear that up since you seemed to have been missing some facts.

 

[newtekie1]

no they took my drive, had it for 3 weeks, and did nothing. the response that my drive was totally unsalvageable and required level 2 data recovery if i wanted to keep the data or at least have the potential to retrieve it. in those 3 weeks i searched on my own and found the diy instructions on how to reset the controller and flash the new firmware, which is what i did on my own after getting the drive back from seagate. I knew of how to fix the drive while they're telling me it's NFG for warranty service repair levels, and was going to cost out of pocket on my end.

so to summarize: 1. they lie to your face on the status of your warranty claims to absolve their responsibilities, then they'll try to profiteer from the situation their faulty products have left you in. a company i'll have nothing to do with now or in the future, regardless of how their hardware improves.

thought i'd clear that up since you seemed to have been missing some facts.

Ah, might have been, I just told them to replace the drive because I had a proper backup of the data like everyone else should.

 

[Neuromancer]

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

Not saying hard drive manufacturers CAUSED a natural disaster to create an artificial price inflation, but it does seem funny that prices on everything are going up the same time they do every year so that when sales hit from black Friday on till Christmas post season shopping they seem extra super duper

Yup I did not say, that the HDD manufacturers are starting a natural disaster conspiracy.



(FYI: Poking a little fun at conspiracy nuts, mixed with a little truth about this being the time of year prices go up, so dont run me up the flag pole guys!)

Ah, might have been, I just told them to replace the drive because I had a proper backup of the data like everyone else should.

Yup wrote about that a LONG time ago. Data replication is WAY more important than even RAID. After all if you have a fire or a power surge or something. your RAID1 stripe dont mean nuts. Having an external drive in your car, or an online backup... thats redundancy...

RAID is ONLY for servers or performance nuts