I bought 4x Seagate Barracuda 500GB SATA (ST3500320AS) drives last year, and out of the 4, I am down to 1 that is working. They have not been abused or slung about, and each one has failed without any drama. It's caused some drama for me though, as I have lost some irreplaceable photos twice now and the missus isn't too happy. I am well peeved that this latest one has just failed on me. The BIOS isn't picking it up, and I suspect it's the controller board. I could swap it out with the one from the remaining working HDD, to pull off what's on there, but I'm not risking having the one remaining drive FUBAR. I've just filled in the RMA form on Seagate's site, but it's the last time I buy a Seagate drive 75% failure rate is waaaay out of line.
There's a lesson there: Always back up stuff you can't afford to lose. (I don't back up anything so I guess I can't talk) Also, don't buy Samsung.
Unlucky, but also unlikely. I've been running sammy's for years now. I've had a RAID 5 for...probably about 4 years now. Had 6 sammy 300's, then 6 500's, now I've got a spread of 500's and terra's, all sammy's. Think I've had 1 fail on me in that time, which got RMA'd and replaced. This is why I RAID 5 though, any working hard drive is just a hard drive which hasn't failed yet. Always keep that philosophy, and things tend to go better. RAID 5 helps too. edit: irrelevant now.
Maybe the drives were all part of a bad batch? It's got me worried enough to have just ordered a new relacement for the last working one. I've backed up to DVD's just in case this one decides to go south too. The RMA page showed that all 3 were still in warranty (which I knew) so there should be no problems with getting the replacements. There will be 3x 500GB HDD's going cheap though soon
Sorry, just had to check on the labels, they are indeed Seagate Barracudas. For some reason I had the Spinpoints on my head. I have changed the title and threads. Sorry about that.
If you buy four drives at ones, I think it's quite likely they are of the same patch... I used to prefer Seagate for a long while, but now it seems the brand doesn't mean anything, it all boils down to luck.
A friend always said never to buy multiple drivers from the same supplier at the same time, if one fails, they will all fail!
was surprised if they had been samsungs, i have 18 f1's and 12 f3's and not a problem on a single one, they are all raided and all get heavily used.
Lesson learned I reckon I won't be doing the same again in a hurry. I just hope this one lasts till I get the replacement I ordered.
I've had good luck with WD (I own 4) and samsung (just 1) drives, the seagate (just 1) I do have hasn't failed me yet but nothing important is on there anyways
Every Seagate drive I've had has tons of re-allocated sectors.. some of them from new. I'm not buying Seagate any more. WD or Samsung for me.
I have been using Western Digital RAID Edition 3 drives in RAID 0 for more than 2 years now. I never back up and none of them ever failed or dropped out of RAID. I just replaced them with Spinpoint F3s because I ran out of space and Spinpoint F3s are faster and quieter. Still they are not enterprise level drives so I use a 2TB Seagate LP to back it up. The Seagate still haven't died yet.
I got three Seagate Barracuda disks about three and a half years ago now, and they are all running strong. In my case, they sit right behind the main intake fan though, so they have nice cool air running over them all the time. Also I read that you can prolong the life of disks by running a defrag software that constantly defrags them. I researched it because I was concerned about the software wearing the disks out, but apparently it does the opposite. It keeps them moving which is what they like. In 20 years of computing, and through about 10 hard disks, I don't think I've ever seen a hard disk die. There was maybe one a long time ago but I can't even remember it. I think I have been lucky.
You have. They can die. All of them, at any time. They usually die within a short period of buying it, or after a very long time. If the latter, it's often preceded by the drive re-allocating sectors, or even having bad sectors. If the former... there's usually no warning. Every once in a while however, a drive with just die for a electrical or mechanical reason - eg. controller hardware, or mechanical failure in the moving parts. Never trust a hard disk. Doesn't matter whether it's a Seagate, or a enterprise grade WD. HDDs... Bast***s all of 'em Basically.... just do a back up... and then a back up of your back up Then you can buy any old POS disk you want.. just buy what's fastest. If it fails, then so be it.
Hard drives have moving parts. Hard drives fail. Always back up irreplaceable data. Always. Incidentally I've had Seagate, Samsung, Western Digital and Hitachi drives all fail on me - it's just part of hard drive ownership. They don't last forever.
I need to get my machine running a system higher than RAID 1 I think. I'm running 2 x 500GB Seagate drives and this thread has got me properly spooked now!
