Seagate Sez: O Hai, We Sellz Bad Hard Drives

I've been hearing about the newest Seagate HDs. Specifically, hearing that they are duds, death balls, places you don't want to park your data. They denied it, of course, even while shedding their CEO and restructuring.

At long last they've copped a plea:

Seagate had to issue a firmware update for the 7200.11 1.5TB drives. Although most worked without issue, a significant minority of buyers reported that the drives would randomly pause for 15-30 seconds while under load or when configured in a RAID array.

At the time, the issue was blamed on Seagate's rush to push a 1.5TB drive out the door while other HDD companies held their own maximum capacities at 1TB. This explanation worked as long as the problem stayed confined to the 1.5TB series, but it hasn't. Earlier this month, reports began to surface that various 7200.11 drives were failing. Although detected in BIOS (often after lengthy delays), all data on the drives was inaccessible. On January 16, Seagate updated its knowledge base with information on which drives were affected, appropriate software tools for determining the specific model information of one's hard drive, and the appropriate firmware update.

Unfortunately, that has not been the end of the issue. A number of Seagate customers with hard drive models on the company's list trotted off to apply the new firmware, only to discover that the update either A) didn't work or B) bricked a drive that had formerly been in perfect working order. We spoke to Seagate representative Michael Hall, who affirmed that the originally posted firmware had a "glitch" of its own that had failed to fix the original problem or even created it where it hadn't previously been present.

The "good" news is that this unexpected issue has itself been fixed via a further firmware update. If you've already updated and had no issues, you won't need this new version, but it should fix any problems the first firmware caused for those of you unlucky enough to encounter it. Seagate has repeatedly stated that this problem, while frustrating, should not cause data loss. In the event that you do lose information, however, the company has pledged to provide free data recovery services.

So who here would buy one of these, and demonstrate that they truly believe Seagate has fixed the problem? The 1.5TB drive is selling for stupid cheap. Care to put your data on it?

Gah, I had to double check the manufacturer on my 750 BG. A bit anxious, but luckily I'm alright.

And no thanks, I think I'll pass. "Significant minority" is too much of a chance for me.

It does seem Seagate is trying to do right, however slowly.

CR

I read a slightly different story on a german site lately which said the whole .11 series or so would completely crash and become inaccessible, making a firmware update impossible. Is that related, a different story or plain wrong info I got there?
But then I'm still happy with my Sam...wait, I just gave that away, but my notebook still works, not like I had planned anything new in the next weeks.

Really sad to watch Seagate go downhill like this, especially after Maxtor bought them. Amongst my friends and tech professionals I know Seagate always carried a higher reputation than the other HDD manufacturers, with Maxtor being the absolute bottom of the barrel (yes, even worse than the old IBM deathstar drives). It would appear that they're trying rather hard to claim that bottom rung at this point. :shame:

I've always been a fan of Western Digital drives. In my 10+yrs of building my own PCs, I've never had one fail on me. The worst drive I have ever seen was the Quantum Bigfoot. When I worked at a PC shop in college, I must've replaced dozens of those.

Ya, I was raped by a Seagate, and as any faithful fan of SVU could tell you, I've been living with the consequences ever since - except I don't have Mariska Hargitay around to hold my hand. :embarassed:

Lost tons of irreplaceable pictures and most of my early essays for school. Now I maintain 2 different external hard drives and upload my pictures to google and photobucket, kind of like a victim putting 5 different locks on the door. :laugh4:

Really though, it was *** ridiculous. The whole reason people buy the damn things is to safely store their stuff in case their computers go down. I could understand if the USB connecting wire was faulty or the little plastic stand it sits on breaks, but the device's core function should be tested, tested, and re-tested.

Sad thing is, it wasn't even one of the ones mentioned in the article. :shame:

(inappropriate use edited - LEN)

I've pretty much always gone with Seagate drives, fortunately I haven't had to actually buy one since the Maxtor buyout. Looks like they are trying to rectify the situation, and they seem to be fairly upfront about what happened. But I should probably start looking for a new favored manufacturer.

The slashdot posting on this had some good info. An employee set up an alternate account (maxtorman) so he could tell the story without getting canned. By the looks of it, middle management pushed the firmware update and bypassed the quality control process.

Always been a Lacie fan my self when it comes to external disks. They make some quality drives. When it comes to normal HDs I prefer Western Digital and Hitachi, wow can they take years of abuse and keep on ticking over. I hope my current Samsung HD is of the same quality.

I feel for my brother though, he has a Seagate, but not one of the affected models.

I'm on my second "replacement" Seagate drive, and have an external Seagate that likes to work some of the time.

When this one goes bust, it will not be replaced with another Seagate, even if it is a free replacement.

Pff, my last one was a Samsung as I said, the one before, that I still have in an external case, was a Maxtor and it worked fine for years, still does AFAIK. The trick with data security is to either have all your data redundant or not to have any important data at all. ~D

haha, i am in trouble.

i have a terrabyte seagate data drive in each of my main two pc's, as well as a 500GB seagate system drive in the gaming one.

not to mention two seagate 320GB drives (one in my media PC), and two samsung 250GB's scattered among older pc's.

this could be interesting. :wall: