Seagate Lowers Warranty Period from 5 to 3 Years on Some Desktop Hard Drives

[FordGT90Concept]

I only had one Hitachi HDD and it died after about two years. Hitachi honored the warranty though and replaced it free of charge.

I have eight Seagate drives right now with no failures (2 x 7200.7, 2 x 7200.9, 4 x 7200.10 ES).

 

[Wile E]

I havent bought seagate for quite a few years - I bought a few with my first system build back in 2002/03 but 1 of them failed on me within 2 weeks in quite a dramatic manner so it has been me & a great set of reliable maxtors for me back when they were actually 'good' before they got aquired by Seagate & slowly assimilated like the body of a rat thats just been bitten by a small venomus spider/snake - Slowly but surely Dissolving in the Hoi Sin that is Seagate....

Samsung on the other hand has really stepped up its game. its amazing how far theyve come in such a short space of time.

Pre-Seagate Maxtors? Really? Wow! Those are the worst drives I've ever owned in terms of reliability. I have owned 6 of them. All but one failed in less than 15 months. I've had nothing but great luck with Seagate thus far. I'm afraid to try the new 7200.11's tho, as I've been hearing a lot of negative feedback about those. Them reducing the warranty almost confirms those fears to me.

If this Samsung F1 works out for me, I might continue buying them. Otherwise, I'll go back to WD.

 

[Mussels]

my summary over the years

WD: mid range in every way. very rarely silent, and the high performing drives are always hot and loud (640AAKS, raptors, etc). have had 3 640GB drives fail, but still have 20 30 and 40GB drives in working order.

Seagate: been steadily getting hotter and louder since the 7200.7, however they have always been reliable. never had a failure.

Samsung: had one drive fail out of approx 40 that i've used/sold in the 160-750GB range. nearly all have been silent, and with the exception of the 300 and 400GB models, all have been quite fast too. These drives are very cheap here in aus.

maxtor: hot and loud, but reliable as long as they dont overheat. maxtors in an external enclosure is playing roulette with your data.

 

[eidairaman1]

maxtor is non existant with the buyout, I recall them buying Quantum, some say those drives were garbage but they were actually good drives for the time until maxtor bought them, then seagate bought maxtor.

my summary over the years

WD: mid range in every way. very rarely silent, and the high performing drives are always hot and loud (640AAKS, raptors, etc). have had 3 640GB drives fail, but still have 20 30 and 40GB drives in working order.

Seagate: been steadily getting hotter and louder since the 7200.7, however they have always been reliable. never had a failure.

Samsung: had one drive fail out of approx 40 that i've used/sold in the 160-750GB range. nearly all have been silent, and with the exception of the 300 and 400GB models, all have been quite fast too. These drives are very cheap here in aus.

maxtor: hot and loud, but reliable as long as they dont overheat. maxtors in an external enclosure is playing roulette with your data.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Compaq used a lot of Quantum Fireballs. I think I recall only one failure. They weren't great nor were they bad. Actually, I don't think there is any brand of HDD I would call bad. I haven't ran in to any failure streaks or bad customer service that would warrant me doing so.

 

[Mussels]

Compaq used a lot of Quantum Fireballs. I think I recall only one failure. They weren't great nor were they bad. Actually, I don't think there is any brand of HDD I would call bad. I haven't ran in to any failure streaks or bad customer service that would warrant me doing so.

i had 3 WD 640's die in a row having a bad streak really, really puts you off using that brand again.

 

[eidairaman1]

probably heat related, most OEM machines ive encountered i wind up replacing the drive because they failed under Dust/heat related issues due to insufficient cooling in those Micro/Mini ATX Cases, even the Mid/Full/Server ATX Cases.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I tend to avoid WD. Not sure why but all the horror stories I hear (like that) could have a lot to do with it.

 

[Mark_Hardware]

Go on any website, and you will read horror stories about any brand. Go to newegg, and you can see an almost equal number of negative vs. positive reviews for every HDD. You will see things like "I had x number fail right away..." and "was doa..." and of course "I will never use this brand again!" Hell, it's prevalent even in this forum. I recommend taking reviews, specifically those concerning hard drives, with a grain of salt.

 

[Pinchy]

Ive used and build computers with Seagates, WD, Samsung & Maxtor.

For the past three years, I have not had any drives that havent been silent and no drives that have died. Just to note though, I always put a fan in the front of the chassis to cool the drives down.

In my current computers I have a mix of the F1s and WD SE16's. The WD's are faster, but they are all equally quiet and have not had a huccup for months now *knocks on wood*. Two of them are in SFF computers as well, where airflow isnt that great.

On topic, I rarely buy seagates as they are generally more expensive. If they put down their prices from this warranty thing, I might actually start buying them again.

 

[eidairaman1]

Go on any website, and you will read horror stories about any brand. Go to newegg, and you can see an almost equal number of negative vs. positive reviews for every HDD. You will see things like "I had x number fail right away..." and "was doa..." and of course "I will never use this brand again!" Hell, it's prevalent even in this forum. I recommend taking reviews, specifically those concerning hard drives, with a grain of salt.

if you hadnt noticed most HDs that are bought on E-Tailers are OEM and not the Retail packaging, basically meaning that they dont have that additional packing to protect them from shock, and they dont come with the long warranty that the retail drives do.

 

[Widjaja]

Where I work, all the HDD failiures have been customers with seagates.
But since my boss stocks seagates mainly, well thats probably why most people come back with seagate HDDs.

 

[DonInKansas]

We learned a long time ago that the small savings you make when buying the cheapest Hard drive is lost when you consider the value of the data stored on them .

Odd point seeing as how the Hitachis are usually cheaper than Seagate/WD.

 

[AlvinTheNerd]

Don't look at Brands across Products

O rly?? when was the last time you used a Samsung HDD?? back in the old days i admit they were a bit naff but their F1 spinpoint drives are one of the best drives around second to WD Raptors. I have NEVER been a keen fan of Hitachi stuff - their rice steamers/cookers pwn but thats about it - their screens are crap, their TV's are crap - anything they make thats NOT a rice cooker is crap.

Hitachi nuclear reactor systems are pretty good. They are pairing them with GE reactors and getting about half of the 34 new reactors being built in the U.S. However, Hitachi Nuclear has nothing to do with their hard drives. Just like rice cookers and screens has nothing to do with their hard drives. Hitachi is a BIG conglomerate that owns a lot of companies. Companies that share the Hitachi name and large investment pool but little else. Don't compare the products from one company to another just because they share a conglomerate name. Look at what it is and judge it independently.

 

[Top Geezer]

Good point Alvin. Just reading all your replies it seems we all have a story to tell about each HDD manufacturer. We build RAID systems and bought about 40K 1Tb drives this year. We do a proper qualification on every component we use as we feel we are responsible for each customer's data and as most customers are buying Petabytes of storage, we need to minimise the risk.
All I can tell you is, even with the old technology that Hitachi have to date (current Ultrastar was first tested and qulaified in May 2007) with 5 platters. It still out performs all competitors in performance, heat output, power consumption, and reliability. As you can imagine, being quite a large user of high cap drives, the other vendors are falling over themselves for our business so give us free drives to test as soon as they release any new model but still we continue to use Hitachi.
Interestingly, last week, our local Hitachi guy dropped off some samples of the new 3 platter 1Tb drive, we haven't tested it yet so I cannot comment on it. What we are really waiting for is the 2Tb, we tried the Seagate 1.5Tb and it's a dog !

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Pre-Seagate Maxtors? Really? Wow! Those are the worst drives I've ever owned in terms of reliability. I have owned 6 of them. All but one failed in less than 15 months.

(Very late reply)

Ive had around 6 also all of them & the ones i recommended to friends are still running fine except for 1 that died recently that i bought 2 years ago??? the rest are from random machines that i either built or scrapped from older machines from 2004/05 not bad for a set of Maxtor Diamond Max 9/10's

& trust me, my pc has been running more or less 24/7 since those days so they have been under extremely heavy use.

Hitachi nuclear reactor systems are pretty good. They are pairing them with GE reactors and getting about half of the 34 new reactors being built in the U.S. However, Hitachi Nuclear has nothing to do with their hard drives. Just like rice cookers and screens has nothing to do with their hard drives. Hitachi is a BIG conglomerate that owns a lot of companies. Companies that share the Hitachi name and large investment pool but little else. Don't compare the products from one company to another just because they share a conglomerate name. Look at what it is and judge it independently.

conglomerate or not they all still carry the same name therefore 'ALL' part of the same company. for example - Samsung, they make laptops, mp3 players, cameras, tv's, cell phones & memory chips as well as a ton of other stuff. but yet I dont go around bashing everything they make. because I & everyone I know have never had an issue with them unlike Hitachi which are more famous in my country at least for their 'budget' grade goods as well as unreliable highend stuff.

Im not talking about their nuclear reactors. what your saying is pointless as ANY similar company - Samsung, Sony or Toshiba etc etc are structured in more or less the same way. hence their 'divisions' but their ALL still called Sony or Toshiba at the end of the day when any of their products hit the shelves. which if the products are epicallu crap will drag the WHOLE company down never mind the just 1 company responsible unless HQ decides to take action & either dissolve the section/division or bail it out etc etc.

 

[Melvis]

That is a shame that they are lowering there warranty, as that was also 1 reason why i bought seagates, cheap and long warranty. I found seagates to be a bit noisy over WD, and also don't seem to load as fast, but apart from that, there fine. I had to replace my 500GB HDD < after it started to die just after 6weeks of use, that was a bummer, but ive had a WD that was DOA, so there as good as eachother i think, but i do like WD's Raptors and my first HDD died after 2yrs, it started to corrupt files =/ but was dam fast in loading, and it was a 120GB WD.

 

[iamweasel25]

SEAGATE HAS LOST A CUSTOMER TODAY

I, for one, bought seagate drive specifically for their 5 year warranty.

without it I no longer have a significant reason to buy their drives over competitors drives, especially when competitors are slightly cheaper.

goodbye seagate, you served me well, but no more.

 

[cdawall]

Maybe it will cut down costs more than loose money lol. I'll stick with WD's with there 5y all though other might follow.

Does make me think that there is a problem.

what WD has a 5yr warranty i sell them and they vary accross the line what is 1,3 or 5yrs here is a link to what has what warranty http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp#policy

Pre-Seagate Maxtors? Really? Wow! Those are the worst drives I've ever owned in terms of reliability. I have owned 6 of them. All but one failed in less than 15 months. I've had nothing but great luck with Seagate thus far. I'm afraid to try the new 7200.11's tho, as I've been hearing a lot of negative feedback about those. Them reducing the warranty almost confirms those fears to me.

If this Samsung F1 works out for me, I might continue buying them. Otherwise, I'll go back to WD.

Maxtor sucked in the old days i lost 2 of there "high end" ATA 133 drives and they replaced them with old ATA100 drives bastards....

SEAGATE HAS LOST A CUSTOMER TODAY

I, for one, bought seagate drive specifically for their 5 year warranty.

without it I no longer have a significant reason to buy their drives over competitors drives, especially when competitors are slightly cheaper.

goodbye seagate, you served me well, but no more.

NOT EVERY SEAGATE DRIVE IS AFFECTED BY THIS


would people read more than the 1st sentence of this?


and since when was WD a good manuf to buy from? i had 10x more of them fail than any other company. i have owned Hitachi, seagate, samsung, IBM, WD more seagates than anything else and i have a BOX full of WD drives that failed months after there warranty ended....

from what i have used (new and old) WD drives are hot running and HAVE to be actively cooled not to error under stress

 

[highoctane331]

EV thing overseas

I worked for this company for 21 years of my life, to loose my job to some slant eyed bastads overseas who will work for peanuts. I pray this company goes bankrupt & all the share holders, ceo's etc, etc wind up in jail!!! Seagate sucks & please pull that god aweful logo off Sharks ice!

 

[Melvis]

I worked for this company for 21 years of my life, to loose my job to some slant eyed bastads overseas who will work for peanuts. I pray this company goes bankrupt & all the share holders, ceo's etc, etc wind up in jail!!! Seagate sucks & please pull that god aweful logo off Sharks ice!

Ouch thats gotta realy suck there dude, i think its time for me to head back to WD.

Since you worked there for that long, what other things can you tell us about the company and there products?

 

[Tau]

I actually have 2 500GB seagates that i need to RMA here in the next couple of days (just got 2 1TB's to replace em) one has 3 bad sectors, and the other has lost 9 sectors this month :S 4 at the beginning and 5 the other day.

Seagate has always been good to me so i tend to stick with them. I have had some pretty bad experiances with WD drives, as well as their disgusting RMA process... so i wouldent reccomened them to anyone.

 

[insider]

Different experience here with WD, all the WD drives I've used have been running solid non stop 24/7 for many years now without a problem, only 2 drives have failed in the last 7 years, the direct RMA process (at least in UK) was pretty straightforward, I've bought nothing but WD performance drives since the multiple IBM *DeathStar* failures!

 

[spearman914]

5 Year warranty is kinda long for me. Before even 2 years is over I'll be looking in buying a new drive already.

 

[Rebo&Zooty]

my summary over the years

WD: mid range in every way. very rarely silent, and the high performing drives are always hot and loud (640AAKS, raptors, etc). have had 3 640GB drives fail, but still have 20 30 and 40GB drives in working order.

Seagate: been steadily getting hotter and louder since the 7200.7, however they have always been reliable. never had a failure.

Samsung: had one drive fail out of approx 40 that i've used/sold in the 160-750GB range. nearly all have been silent, and with the exception of the 300 and 400GB models, all have been quite fast too. These drives are very cheap here in aus.

maxtor: hot and loud, but reliable as long as they dont overheat. maxtors in an external enclosure is playing roulette with your data.

agree about maxtors in external cases, THO my 200 that cooked(somebody tossed a shirt over the external case stoping airflow) BUT the amazing thing, dispite all the data being fubard i was able to run hdd regenerator on the drive after a lowlevel format and the drives worked for YEARS since then without any problems, its got like 3 reallocated sectors(well within the safty limmits of the drive) quite impressed to be honest.

I havent had problems with any brand as much as WD over the 11+years i been geekin it, not counting the quantium bigfoot drives in compaq comps that where mounted verticaly(drive was not designed for that and infact warrned against it in white papers)

maxtor is non existant with the buyout, I recall them buying Quantum, some say those drives were garbage but they were actually good drives for the time until maxtor bought them, then seagate bought maxtor.

WRONG, seagate has hardly touched maxtors operations, they have had them upgrade to better motors(lower fail rates) but thats been about it, when maxtor bought quantium they absorbed them fully, that wasnt true for seagate with conner (old skool hdd maker) and it wasnt true for maxtor eather, tho eventually seagate did fully absorb conner, that was more about getting higher readability out of desktop level drives, conner where slow, but they where reliable as hell, shit i still got a couple of them around that been running for 10 years or more HAHA!!!!

i have worked in many shops and other then the ibm deathstars(made by hitchi but using componants IBM bought, bad cache chips mostly) WD has been the worst for fail rates.