Buy one for me because I will not buy another Seagate lousy software.

I have never used the manufacturer's software. If they build standard hardware it should not require a funky driver.

I don't need enhanced "features" either. It needs to store data, and return it to me when I ask.

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You can actually recount all the hard drives you've purchased and used? Wow.

I've used Fujitsu drives, Samsung, IBM, Maxtor, Quantum, Western Digital and Seagate.

The Maxtor drives have been the most reliable for me. Out of easily more than 50 drives I've only had 1 ever fail on me. The Fujitsu drive I bought worked well until the IDE connector broke on it. The 3 IBM and 12 WD drives have all failed, every single one. The two Quantum drives worked for years then failed. The Samsung was given away so I have no idea if it still works.

My first foray into Seagate wasn't a pleasant one. I bought my first drive and it was dead. Returned it for another one and it too was dead. The third was dead as well and the place I purchased it started thinking I was doing something to the drives to cause them to fail. The fourth drive worked well, and so has every one I've purchased since (easily more than 20 drives).

Based upon my experience, Maxtor and Seagate have the most reliable drives (which now Maxtor is Seagate). I will never buy a WD or IBM drive ever again.

OzzFan:

I'm sure I missed a few (I know I owned a 1,6Gb disc sometime, but don't remember what it was or where it went), but the ones I mentioned I have owned and they all did what I explained.

I actually have two more drives lying around in the closet that work. One Seagate Medalist 4,1Gb, which also came out of my nephews computer.
The other is another Seagate, a 40gb model (taken from my brothers computer as I helped him upgrade his HDD), which is mounted in a USB box, this one I still use regularly for carrying larger amount of data when necessary.

So actually my statistics for Seagate are even better :)

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You can actually recount all the hard drives you've purchased and used? Wow.

I've used Fujitsu drives, Samsung, IBM, Maxtor, Quantum, Western Digital and Seagate.

The Maxtor drives have been the most reliable for me. Out of easily more than 50 drives I've only had 1 ever fail on me. The Fujitsu drive I bought worked well until the IDE connector broke on it. The 3 IBM and 12 WD drives have all failed, every single one. The two Quantum drives worked for years then failed. The Samsung was given away so I have no idea if it still works.

My first foray into Seagate wasn't a pleasant one. I bought my first drive and it was dead. Returned it for another one and it too was dead. The third was dead as well and the place I purchased it started thinking I was doing something to the drives to cause them to fail. The fourth drive worked well, and so has every one I've purchased since (easily more than 20 drives).

Based upon my experience, Maxtor and Seagate have the most reliable drives (which now Maxtor is Seagate). I will never buy a WD or IBM drive ever again.

You reminded me of my Fujitsu. Had it for about 4 3/4 years and it got flaky. Warrantee was for five years. (Try and find that today!!!) They replaced a board. Used the drive for about another 5 years before the bearing started making noise and I moved the data before it failed.

Obviously being mechanical all drives will fail.

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I have a AT&T Olivetti UNIX PC, bought second hand in 1987, whose 40 MB disk is still working. Can't remember its maker (micrologic?) and it is too difficult to disassemble the PC7300. running UNIX System V, with its 256 KB RAM. My today's system, a SUN WS, has an HITACHI SATA II 160 GB disk which has been working 24/7 since January. I bought a second equal HITACHI disk in order to make a RAID 1 system but so far I haven't found the courage.
Tullio

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Charpentier:

As far as I know, all Seagate drives are backed with a 5 year warranty.

I know all the drives I own, have a 5 year warranty, which means all my drives except the two oldest are still under warranty, should they fail.

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Just fixed my friend's girlfriends computer, which is 6 years old or so (Athlon XP 2100). Problem with the hard disk where it needed chkdsk running, but the o/s (xp home) wouldn't get far enough in to run chkdsk. So i popped it in my rig, run the chkdsk on it, put it back in the computer and it booted up fine. I updated a few things, burnt all her photos to cd, and returned it. Nothing wrong with the disk itself, just corruption of the software, but don't know how it happened.

You know the story; It just started doing it, no idea how! Been running fine ever since.

The drive? 80Gig PATA Seagate, running fine after 6 years.

@Mark; Seems like you got the Friday afternoon just before hometime batch...

regards, Gizbar.

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A proud GPU User Server Donor!

You can actually recount all the hard drives you've purchased and used? Wow.

I've used Fujitsu drives, Samsung, IBM, Maxtor, Quantum, Western Digital and Seagate.

The Maxtor drives have been the most reliable for me. Out of easily more than 50 drives I've only had 1 ever fail on me. The Fujitsu drive I bought worked well until the IDE connector broke on it. The 3 IBM and 12 WD drives have all failed, every single one. The two Quantum drives worked for years then failed. The Samsung was given away so I have no idea if it still works.

My first foray into Seagate wasn't a pleasant one. I bought my first drive and it was dead. Returned it for another one and it too was dead. The third was dead as well and the place I purchased it started thinking I was doing something to the drives to cause them to fail. The fourth drive worked well, and so has every one I've purchased since (easily more than 20 drives).

Based upon my experience, Maxtor and Seagate have the most reliable drives (which now Maxtor is Seagate). I will never buy a WD or IBM drive ever again.

You reminded me of my Fujitsu. Had it for about 4 3/4 years and it got flaky. Warrantee was for five years. (Try and find that today!!!) They replaced a board. Used the drive for about another 5 years before the bearing started making noise and I moved the data before it failed.

Obviously being mechanical all drives will fail.

I forgot about Connor Peripherals HDDs. I have some 80MB & 120MB drives that are still working today. My oldest Maxtor is a 850MB drive that has a single bad spot on it (from about 13 years ago) and no problems since. My older 20MB and 40MB drives from an original IBM clone seems to have disappeared with the clone unit.

I switched to Samsung drives.

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KenW

LOL.....
I seem to have struck a chord here.
Seems like many of us have been bitten by a hard drive going south now and then.....

Given the number of operating hours I have logged on my rigs over the years, I guess I have really not been treated too badly by my Seagates......but like many other things, you have to start to wonder if the current level of quality they are producing is what it once was. Especially since they have bought up other hard drive manufacturers who I had considered to be of lesser quality and could be making some of their Seagate brand drives in those manufacturing facilities.....

I think when I was having a quick look at 1TB drives in reference to possible Seti server upgrades, I saw some reference to 'server grade' or high reliability drives with very high MTBF numbers.....I'll have to do some research into that before I get a spare drive or two to have on hand or add to my daily driver to use as a clone drive for backup....

If anybody else has any experience or info on that subject, it would be interesting to know......

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Beware, the courier company may be playing soccer with your packages.

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

Charpentier:

As far as I know, all Seagate drives are backed with a 5 year warranty.

I know all the drives I own, have a 5 year warranty, which means all my drives except the two oldest are still under warranty, should they fail.

Terms are 1, 2, 3, or 5 years depending on the product.
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=Seagate_Technology_Limited_Consumer_Warranty&vgnextoid=516fd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

Glad you found 5 year drives.

I think when I was having a quick look at 1TB drives in reference to possible Seti server upgrades, I saw some reference to 'server grade' or high reliability drives with very high MTBF numbers.....I'll have to do some research into that before I get a spare drive or two to have on hand or add to my daily driver to use as a clone drive for backup....

If anybody else has any experience or info on that subject, it would be interesting to know......

Well, for that it's worth, I've not had any problems (yet) with the similar ES.2-model of your failing Barracuda 7200.11 500Gb ST3500320AS, it's the exact same model-number except ends with NS instead of AS. It's 2 months old now...

Taking a quick look, the NS has a MTBF of 1.2 M hours, while the AS has "only" 750k, so it shouldn't really have been failing anytime soon...


Now, I've been fairly lucky then it comes to hd's, appart for an old 3 GB scsi, that if my recollection isn't too fuzzy was a Quantum, that had a hardware-crash trashing a couple spots on hd. Since hadn't a replacement at the time, tried scanning hd within the scsi-cards setup, and re-located any bad spots. After doing this a couple times, the hd did continue working error-free until was retired some years later...

Of other hd's, a very old 40 MB no-idea-of-brand that was in the old 386-sx16 then new, AFAIK this hd should still be working, but being so fat and very very noisy, haven't been used for 10+ years. A Maxtor 210 MB bought in 1993 was still working last tried it, probably last was actively running was in 2005. A couple Quandum-ide around 2-4 GB no idea if works or not since haven't got them any longer, the bad Quantum?, an old Seagate 4.2 GB Hawk. And, a fat Barracuda 17 GB that still works, but being so fat doesn't fit all places, and with so little disk-space have retired it.

Of currently running hd's:
IBM DDYS-T18350N (10k scsi, OS-partition on Core2duo-E4400) 8 years old.
2x Seagate ST336706LW (10k scsi, raid0) 6 years old.
Seagate ST380021A (7200 ide, OS-partition on Opteron242) 6 years old.
Seagate ST3160827AS (7200 sata) 3.5 years old.
Seagate ST3250823AS (7200 sata) 2.5 years old.
And, as already mentioned, Seagate ST3500320NS (7200 sata) 2 months old.


As for why you're having so many hd-problems, no idea, but atleast once-upon-a-time some hd's, and especially scsi-hd's, despised running on overclocked bus, and if not mis-remembers, atleast Raptors doesn't like running on overclocked SATA. So, no idea how overclocking works now, but if it's like in older days then everything was overclocked, one possibility of problems is overclocking.

Another possible reason is "adequate cooling", atleast the 10k-scsi wants to be cooled, and the recommended is less than 35 degrees celsius, even works at 50-60 max (depends on model). Lastly, getting correct & stable power, if PSU is having problems, it can knock-out things like hd's.

Then again, it can be a bad batch of hd's. Or, as jason_gee mentioned, the transporter has used the parcel as a football or something...

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"I make so many mistakes. But then just think of all the mistakes I don't make, although I might."

I'm less and less pleased with my Seagate drives too...

Just over a week ago I had 2 of them fail only 30 minutes apart. The sad part was that both drives were part of one of my RAID 5 arrays! Needless to say I wasn't very happy...1.5TB of data gone just like that...I had backups of the most critical data but backing up everything isn't practical. Isn't that what RAID is for... ;-)

When the first drive failed I figured I'd shut down and remove it and replace it the next morning but, alas, the computer gods had other ideas!

All 4 drives in the RAID 5 array were bought at the same time when I built the system, so the next morning I replaced all 4 on spec. At least now I have a pair of older ones that I can swap in an emergency.

I seem to have been replacing quite a few Seagate drives for some of my clients as well these days, IMHO their quality has been going down as their capacity has been going up.

My system array using WD Raptors in RAID 1 also lost a drive about 4 months ago. WD isn't immune to failures either but I have observed better reliability from their products in the last couple of years.

I second that on WD hard drives I like their software the best.

I seem to have been replacing quite a few Seagate drives for some of my clients as well these days, IMHO their quality has been going down as their capacity has been going up.

Hmm, quick look my old Cheetahs, it's got a MTBF of 1.2 M hours, and Unrecoverable Data-read-error of "less than 1 sector in 10E15 bits transferred". Looking on the the new ES.2, it's got the exact same MTBF and error-rate...

With more than 10x the capasity of the old drive, chances are it's maybe not getting exactly 10x as many reads, but maybe 5x or something. Since the read-error-rate is the same, with maybe 5x more reads, chances are you'll hit the error earlier than before...


BTW, as a comparison, the "desktop" hd-model, the Barracuda 7200.11, has a MTBF of 750k hours, and Unrecoverable Data-read-error of "1 sector in 10E14 bits", meaning less on both accounts. But, if you looks on the manual, the most interesting is that is basis for MTBF.

For the ES.2, MTBF 1.2 M, read-error 10E15. Operational, 8760 hours/year, 250 motor start/stop-cycles per year.
For the 7200.11, MTBF 0.75 M, read-error 10E14. Operational, 2400 hours/year, 10000 motor start/stop-cycles per year.

Meaning, if runs 24/7, the "normal" hd-type is only expected to run for 100 days per year...

The ES.2 on the other hand is expected to run 24/7/365, but is not expected to continuously start/stop.

The data for desktop-model is from the Barracuda 7200.11-manual, page 18. Also mentioned on the same page is: "The desktop personal computer environment of power-on-hours, temperature, and I/O duty cycle affect the product AFR and MTBF. The AFR and MTBF will be degraded if used in an enterprise application".

The data for ES.2 is from the Barracuda ES.2 SATA-manual, page 16.

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"I make so many mistakes. But then just think of all the mistakes I don't make, although I might."

I seem to have been replacing quite a few Seagate drives for some of my clients as well these days, IMHO their quality has been going down as their capacity has been going up.

Hmm, quick look my old Cheetahs, it's got a MTBF of 1.2 M hours, and Unrecoverable Data-read-error of "less than 1 sector in 10E15 bits transferred". Looking on the the new ES.2, it's got the exact same MTBF and error-rate...

With more than 10x the capasity of the old drive, chances are it's maybe not getting exactly 10x as many reads, but maybe 5x or something. Since the read-error-rate is the same, with maybe 5x more reads, chances are you'll hit the error earlier than before...


BTW, as a comparison, the "desktop" hd-model, the Barracuda 7200.11, has a MTBF of 750k hours, and Unrecoverable Data-read-error of "1 sector in 10E14 bits", meaning less on both accounts. But, if you looks on the manual, the most interesting is that is basis for MTBF.

For the ES.2, MTBF 1.2 M, read-error 10E15. Operational, 8760 hours/year, 250 motor start/stop-cycles per year.
For the 7200.11, MTBF 0.75 M, read-error 10E14. Operational, 2400 hours/year, 10000 motor start/stop-cycles per year.

Meaning, if runs 24/7, the "normal" hd-type is only expected to run for 100 days per year...

The ES.2 on the other hand is expected to run 24/7/365, but is not expected to continuously start/stop.

The data for desktop-model is from the Barracuda 7200.11-manual, page 18. Also mentioned on the same page is: "The desktop personal computer environment of power-on-hours, temperature, and I/O duty cycle affect the product AFR and MTBF. The AFR and MTBF will be degraded if used in an enterprise application".

The data for ES.2 is from the Barracuda ES.2 SATA-manual, page 16.

Ahhhhhhh....so it appears there is a difference between a hard drive that they expect to be turned on and off with limited running hours as in a desktop application and one that they expect to be running 24/7 as in a server (or in my case Seti crunching) application.....

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

I will buy a Flash drive. Maybe they are more reliable.

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Manned mission to Mars in 2019 Petition <-- Sign this, please.

I am using a 8 GB flash drive to make a monthly backup of my home directory and a weekly backup of my BOINC directory with the command on CLI:
tar zcvf BOINC.tar.gz BOINC . Then I move the *,gz file to the flash drive.
Tullio

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You can actually recount all the hard drives you've purchased and used? Wow.

I've used Fujitsu drives, Samsung, IBM, Maxtor, Quantum, Western Digital and Seagate.

The Maxtor drives have been the most reliable for me. Out of easily more than 50 drives I've only had 1 ever fail on me. The Fujitsu drive I bought worked well until the IDE connector broke on it. The 3 IBM and 12 WD drives have all failed, every single one. The two Quantum drives worked for years then failed. The Samsung was given away so I have no idea if it still works.

My first foray into Seagate wasn't a pleasant one. I bought my first drive and it was dead. Returned it for another one and it too was dead. The third was dead as well and the place I purchased it started thinking I was doing something to the drives to cause them to fail. The fourth drive worked well, and so has every one I've purchased since (easily more than 20 drives).

Based upon my experience, Maxtor and Seagate have the most reliable drives (which now Maxtor is Seagate). I will never buy a WD or IBM drive ever again.

I still remember when it was cool to cut a notch into a DSDD Floppy disc so you could flip it over and get double the storage! I miss my Apple II.

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