I have had it with Seagate...

[sba]

Hi guys,

Ok, so I have had it with Seagate. I have lost 3 drives to them...first a 40GB drive 8 months...the another one in 9 months and now a 200GB drive in 10 months of their purchase. They are improving for sure but this data loss is too much for me. On the other hand 2 Samsung drives that are notorious for their failure have never failed me but now I need you guys help.

I want to buy a 160GB HDD with 8MB buffer so that I can take backup of this 200GB drive, but sadly such combi is available only in SATA. I want to know which manufacturer to go for this time? Should I go for tried and tested Samsung or is Hitachi better (as a vendor told me)? How much time of warranty is there on Hitachi, WD and Maxtor? Which one should I go with guys...please help me...

sba

 

[sidewinder]

maxtor or wd.

 

[puja399]

I don't know what's failing you, I have been using Seagate HDD for last 7 years, 1.2gb, 2.1gb, 20gb, and now 80 gb, without any trouble of any kind. I usually run my computer overnight for 365 days a year, but none of my HDDs failed so far or given me any sort of trouble. Are you sure you don't have any overheating problem? Do you use HDD cooler or HDD fan? If not, please do, your problem might go away.

 

[pimpom]

I've used literally hundreds of Seagate drives and none of them has failed. Only a couple have developed bad sectors over the years and these two were grossly misused. I did have three Seagate drives (on separate occasions) that were DOA (dead on arrival) and my supplier quickly sent me replacements.

Some time ago I heard that there were a lot of counterfeit Seagate HDDs circulating in the market. Perhaps you have been unlucky enough to buy some of those.

 

[drvarunmehta]

I have used a Seagate HDD for 5 years and the PC has been on 99% of the time. The HDD hasn't developed a single bad sector as yet. You must be really unlucky.
But from the other brands you're considering, go for Western Digital.

 

[sba]

Three times unlucky is too much for me to handle guys...I can't take it anymore. I have seen people swearing by Seagate's reliability but this just doesn't work for me. May be Seagate doesn't like me!!!

Anyways...I have been using a HDD cooler since I lost my first drive, changed my PSU when the second one went kaput and now I don't know what else to change and these are the same conditions in which my Samsung drives are working for last 3 years. As far as counterfeit drive is concerned, well it shows its valid warranty on Seagate's site so I highly doubt that possibility.

I will look into WD but I am also looking into Maxtor's Diamond Max 10. It says it has some "Native Command Queuing" thing in it. Does it actually have some performance benefit or is it another gimmick?

 

[AlienTech]

Seagate is the W.O.R.S.T hard drive company still around, and only around because of their software division varitas which I think they now sold and got money to keep going for a while longer. This is the company that had people with cloths dipped in oil wiping the platters because well, the hard drive head would hit the platter and rip off the magnetic foil so the oil helped, except now that when the drive got cold, the oil would stick to the head and it took a lot of power to start the drive up again and sometimes the magnetic foil would also tear off when the heads got moving after being stuck.

These days all this is don't high tech but the problem is still there. Especially during high temperature when the oil will change and become like glue. Happens with ALL drives now. But Shugart was the one who bought hard drives to us little folks. So they can be excused a little.

Hitachi is IBM. Although Hitachi themselves used to make HD's before I think they have stopped and are now only making IBM ones. IBM drives were very expensive and extremely reliable. Maxtor also bought Quantum, Quantum were the first to use drive caching and some of the faster methods of reading data. My room mate used to work on it and was very proud of some of the routines he had done. I am sure its much more advanced now. But at the time command cuing and such even on SCSI etc and raid type hookups were only for defense related systems. But they still were the leaders in speed.. Maxtor is just another bankrupt low cost mass producer like SAMSUNG but I am sure they learned a lot from their Quantum purchase.

Western digital is around because they always use tried and tested technology, not a leader by any means but reliable. I have used most drives so I would just buy the cheapest one with the most warranty and speed. I mean this is a crap shoot, they can all fail at the most inopportune time. So why not get something that is fast and cheap? I would spend more for the faster one. But not much. The people now all move on to other companies so the technology is very similar in all of them and they cross license them to each other so you are going to find IBM heads in all hard drives.

I love my latest Samsung 160GB, it is so cool. I am not sure it is very fast but the Maxtor's get VERY hot and will fail, I have 4 of em that failed just near the end of warrenty and no place in india to take it for repairs so by the time it gets sent over seas the warrenty will be over. My Seagate one still works after a lot of abuse after 7 years but its only 2 gigs so I don't use it. The other I haven't used it in this environment so don't know how they will perform.

You definetely have to make sure you have a ver ygood power supply and it is kept well ventilated and cool or it is a guarantee to fail you.

 

[siriusb]

Wow, those are some serious accusations on all the hard disk manufacturers. Is there a source article for these allegations? I would be interested to read it in its entirety.

 

[AlienTech]

Wow, those are some serious accusations on all the hard disk manufacturers. Is there a source article for these allegations? I would be interested to read it in its entirety.

Source would be me I am not entirely correct but the info is as good as it can get without spending a lot of special effort to find out about it. IE a co-worker used to work at IBM (now retired), part of that time was at the IBM research center for their hard drives, my old room mate used to work at quantum which is now Maxtor and I used to invest in those companies so had to learn about the technology and still lost money. And basically using their stuff for over 20 years.

But like I said, for the last 10 years there is hardly any difference between the drives, except for minor specs since they all cross license each other and the people move around so much that you can buy any of them and expect the same thing. Unlike 20 years ago when there was a vast difference in the drives. IE you never even considered buying a Seagate drive. And you noticed huge performance differences between a western digital drive and a quantum. And something like Samsung which you never even imagined would even work now seems to be making drives that really work. Samsung was not even on the list to be considered even though Seagate was. Samsung was sure to loose your data guaranteed.

 

[FilledVoid]

Maxtor's get VERY hot and will fail, I have 4 of em that failed just near the end of warrenty and no place in india to take it for repairs so by the time it gets sent over seas the warrenty will be over

I previously had a very bad experience with Maxtor so I definitely wouldnt recommend it to anyone . However Ive been using Seagate for a long time now and havent had a problem yet .

 

[AlienTech]

Maxtor's get VERY hot and will fail, I have 4 of em that failed just near the end of warrenty and no place in india to take it for repairs so by the time it gets sent over seas the warrenty will be over

I previously had a very bad experience with Maxtor so I definitely wouldnt recommend it to anyone . However Ive been using Seagate for a long time now and havent had a problem yet .

When I said there is no difference in drives I should have been clearer and said in segments, since the largest capacity drives are still by Maxtor so unless you are willing to wait 6-12 months, it is the only drive you can buy which will get you those capacities. The others fill follow in 6-12 months. Same with performance. Once Quantum went under since they could not compete in price with the others due to their higher performance drives, you had to buy Maxtor if you wanted the capacity and performance. But for Servers/SCSI Quantum is still the only one.

But I just read that Seagate is starting to look at getting to be a leader again after 20 years of being just another lamer with their higher capacity drives so who knows.

When I bought my 60 and 80GB drives in 2000-2001 there was no one else. Others were still on their 20 gb's and jus thad 40 gb's out. If I want to buy an 80GB drive now, its like the low end of any of them.

Maxtor is not reliable but they are the best performers. I think it took others almost 5 years to bring out 7200 RPM drives since maxtor bought out their first 512MB one. It got so hot you could not touch it. I mean it was around 80-100C. But it is not like you had a choice if you wanted a 512 MB drive let alone a 7200RPM one. It had 12 months warrenty and failed in 13-14 months

 

[Sankalp]

Well i will suggest that u go for samsung.

it has been 5 yrs but still i dont have neprob with my samsung drive

 

[akshayt]

what is your conifg

get better ups and psu if that helps

try to use quality ram,mobo and experiment,
let us see if it works

don't buy second hand and personally try to ensure that it is brand new,sealed and not refurburished

get seagate sata ncq or sata II ncq ( if any)

 

[anubhav_har]

hey man seagate has the best reliability factor.. i m using it and my comp is on 24hrs no probs till now.. maybe your luck is bad that you get bad drives.. if u wanna switch then go for wd or maxtor drives

 

[FilledVoid]

I guess that in the end , the only fact that matters is basically your luck. Unless of course you could get some sample data from a HUGE source of people .

As for an alternative I think Samsung might fit your need as well

 

[infra_red_dude]

well buddy i dunno exactly wot the problem mite be, but some setups are allergic to some brands! for e.g my uncle's hard disk doesnt accept any hard disk other than samsung. he's tried 2 seagate models and both developed bad sector in under 2 months! he replace wid a samsung and its running fine. then he upgraded to a higher capacity seagate and same problem! he replaced wid a samsung and its running fine now.

and one of my friend's pc doesnt like samsung. it does exactly the same thing wid samsung drives!!! clear case of compatibility!

 

[sba]

Thank you for the reply guys. I have been trying to search for various brands of HDDs (specially WD) but the really disappointing fact is that the Nehru Place is kind of overloaded with just Seagate drives. You can get every interface and every capacity but the rival companies are no where in picture. WD, Maxtor and Samsung (not present at all) are absolutely scarce in their presence while Hitachi has a small presence.

I am not able to find the high capacity drives that I want. How sad is that?

BTW to all those people who are talking about Electricals, RAM, Heating, UPS, PSU etc. should understand that I have two Samsung drives (three years old) *still* working in the same environment. Why did just Seagate die? Why not Samsung? Anyways, I will try Nehru Place once again today. I hope that I strike a deal soon...

 

[pimpom]

sba, you have had some bad experiences with Seagate and it's understandable that you're now wary of the brand.

I won't try to convince you to go for Seagate again, but to put things in proper perspective and also so as not to mislead other readers, I would like to point out once again that Seagate has a very solid reputation worlwide, probably the best.

No company has a perfect record, but Seagate's reputation is based on the experiences of literally millions of users. For example, Brand A may have a slightly faster random read time than Seagate, Brand B may be slightly quieter, Brand C may be slightly cheaper, and so on. But overall, Seagate is generally considered to be the best brand of HD.

Re your unfortunate experiences, I can only repeat what I said before : you may have bought your drives from a bad production batch or, more likely, from a batch of counterfeits.

 

[QwertyManiac]

I am usin my old comps of seagate 20 gb hdd and its been 6 yrs, no prob yet....

 

[sba]

Re your unfortunate experiences, I can only repeat what I said before : you may have bought your drives from a bad production batch or, more likely, from a batch of counterfeits.

I can't argue on my bad fortune cos that is the only way all this can be explained but I don't take that counterfeit thing. One of those failed 40GB drives was a replacement supplied to me by Seagate for the first 40GB. The first 40GB drive and 200GB drive had a difference of almost 2 years between their purchase and I always purchase stuff from dealers closely associated with distributors. Now if you want me to believe that Seagate supplied me with a counterfeit drive then I can agree to you argument.