Seagate Krap

[jaideeguy]

I've just replaced the 4th or 5th seagate hd out of approx 10 over the years. 'How do they stay in business?', I asked my pc guru and he says they have a low price, long [5yr] warantee and quick return time when they fail and by my odds they fail at almost 50%.

is this 50% fail rate normal for their export product?? or is it lower and they just schlep off the rejects to us poor suckers here in LOS??

Just wondering what other's experiences are with seagate??

[dave_boo]

I haven't had one fail yet....

[jaideeguy]

Amazing hd karma you have.....out of how many??

[Johnxxx]

I've just replaced the 4th or 5th seagate hd out of approx 10 over the years. 'How do they stay in business?', I asked my pc guru and he says they have a low price, long [5yr] warantee and quick return time when they fail and by my odds they fail at almost 50%.

is this 50% fail rate normal for their export product?? or is it lower and they just schlep off the rejects to us poor suckers here in LOS??

Just wondering what other's experiences are with seagate??

When I bought my last one I sent 3 back - made in China and extreme noise. Then I got one made in Thailand. Paradise - the HD This running almost 3 years now.

[Crushdepth]

Try Hitachi drives. A bit harder to find but they are available.

[jaideeguy]

My pc guru guy admits that hitachi is way better, but when it fails, then the wait for replacement is a month or more....therefore seagate is preferred as a 2 day turnaround at most, no questions asked, but data lost..........

[lopburi3]

I would consider a HD as a destroy on failure device myself and never even consider guarantee/replacement. Expect many other people feel the same - just too much chance of information compromise letting others have access to a drive you have not been able to even partially erase; and probably don't remember what was on it.

[jaideeguy]

Yea Lopburi...you're probably right. I had never thought about it that way and my pc guru guy said that the data was irritrevable...let's hope so. At most, it was movies, and some boring personal files that I backed up.

[sniffdog]

I had a Seagate go belly up three times before the warranty period and they were replaced. But I had to pay extra, because the original capacity was not available anymore.

[Johnxxx]

I would consider a HD as a destroy on failure device myself and never even consider guarantee/replacement. Expect many other people feel the same - just too much chance of information compromise letting others have access to a drive you have not been able to even partially erase; and probably don't remember what was on it.

It is true what you say. But for this reason on my computer all personal data are stored on encrypted virtual drives or in encrypted files. This always gives me a good feeling when my girlfriend uses the computer For single files I use AxCrypt. It is free and one of the best for single files or groups of files:

http://www.axantum.com/AxCrypt/

Of course you can encrypt the whole partition. But then it will be harder to lock out your girlfriend if you do not use encryption for certain folders/files on top of it

[dave_boo]

Well, under Linux it's a boot option to encrypt directories. /home always gets encrypted on my machines. Apparently you can do the same with folder inside of Windows. This will let you keep the majority of the filesystem 'open' so that your significant other can still use the system. You don't have to encrypt the whole folder!

I won't go into Windows security model though....

[Johnxxx]

Well, under Linux it's a boot option to encrypt directories. /home always gets encrypted on my machines. Apparently you can do the same with folder inside of Windows. This will let you keep the majority of the filesystem 'open' so that your significant other can still use the system. You don't have to encrypt the whole folder!

I won't go into Windows security model though....

With NTFS in Windows you can encryt too. But to be honest - I do not trust M$ and so I use other tools. I do not know if my mistrust is justified or not. But for the same reason I do not use the Win firewall and... Perhaps I should not use Windows at all For the most important files I use Bestcrypt. Is said to be one of the best of all. Just can trust the tests...

Edited May 28, 2009 by Johnxxx

[lopburi3]

I suspect most people will not be happy with the delays involved with encryption systems (although they probably do work well for the GF problem). Then there is the key to the system which in most cases will not be very secure. Then there is all the information that gets missed if you try to selectively encrypt.

I have never used laptop and have not traveled recently but have seen reports of people held for hours at US Immigration because they can not open encrypted folders. Encryption seems to be like a safe - anyone sees it and it is a red flag that we (authorities or bad guys) need to get into it.

[Johnxxx]

I have never used laptop and have not traveled recently but have seen reports of people held for hours at US Immigration because they can not open encrypted folders. Encryption seems to be like a safe - anyone sees it and it is a red flag that we (authorities or bad guys) need to get into it.

Better to be held for hours than for years My encrypted virtual drives have a hidden part in the container - somehow it is a container in the container with different password.

You can show to the immigration the data in the not hidden part. They cannot see that there is a hidden part. In the worst case you just change a file in the not hidden part in front of their eyes so that the hidden part gets destroyed.

Because of the (small) performance loss with encryption I encrypt only certain areas/data.

[Crushdepth]

According to a Security Now! podcast I was listening to a few months ago the latest version of Truecrypt has negligible performance loss on whole of disk encryption. Actually they said it is actually slightly faster!!

[MKAsok]

I've had 2 Seagate externals fail on me as I posted here. Admittedly, this was around 3 years ago, so maybe they've improved since then, or maybe I was just particularly unlucky. Still, I'd never use a Seagate drive again. I've been using a WD My Book 1TB external for the last 6 months. Works perfectly, *touches something wooden*

[Thanh-BKK]

Hi.

I've had one Seagate fail on me within four WEEKS of it being bought - and they didn't want to swap it, instead it was sent off to Singapore or somewhere and i had to wait close to another four weeks to get a new one! That was a long time ago i admit, in 2001, but i haven't bought another Seagate ever since, too.

For myself i "killed" only two hard drives in my entire life, one Maxtor and that Seagate (which was to bridge the wait period for the Maxtor to be replaced, under warranty as well).

But i have seen a ton of failed hard drives due to my occupation (fixing computers) and indeed most of them ARE Seagate.

Best regards.....

Thanh

[stumonster]

was your haard drive under synnex warranty ?

if so where did you change it ?

is there a place in Pantip to get a changover drive ?

[TopDogger]

I got 2x 1tb Western digital drives a month or so ago, the sales guy assured me as they were "Made in Thailand" they were the best and would last forever.. It was all they had avail so I just laughed at him and brought them anyway.. Within 2hrs of installing them 1 was reporting 250c with SMART monitoring and soon after failed..

As far as Seagate goes, probably 30% of the ones I've used in Thailand have failed within 1yr of purchase.

[Crushdepth]

I used to use Seagate. Based on an admittedly very small sample size, my experience is that once they shifted the manufacturing base to China the quality went to hel_l. I now exclusively use Hitachi and haven't had any problems (yet).

[JetsetBkk]

I have 3 Seagates - no problems.

[ignis]

When I moved to Thailand 6 years ago I brought all my data on a Seagate 80GB HDD

For years have always re built my PC every 2 years, I'm touching wood now the Seagate HDD from the UK is still going strong!! now 7yrs old.. but have had 3x Seagates fail here so far 1x 160GB, 1x 200GB, 1x 250GB and 1x 640GB WD, all of them failed within the 1st year.

Both yesterday and today my new WD 640GB is suddenly not showing ?? bought this 3 weeks ago !!

[Veazer]

Well, under Linux it's a boot option to encrypt directories. /home always gets encrypted on my machines. Apparently you can do the same with folder inside of Windows. This will let you keep the majority of the filesystem 'open' so that your significant other can still use the system. You don't have to encrypt the whole folder!

I won't go into Windows security model though....

With NTFS in Windows you can encryt too. But to be honest - I do not trust M$ and so I use other tools. I do not know if my mistrust is justified or not. But for the same reason I do not use the Win firewall and... Perhaps I should not use Windows at all For the most important files I use Bestcrypt. Is said to be one of the best of all. Just can trust the tests...

Windows folder encryption is a joke. Run a password hacking boot disk to get the user's pw and then you're in...

[jaideeguy]

Almost 2 weeks since my seagate 500 krapped out, I'm still waiting.......the shop tried to pawn off a rebuilt with visual flaws on me and my tec guru refused and he now has secured a new one.

we'll see how this one goes......that latest put me over 50% failure with seagate.

[filingaccount]

Almost 2 weeks since my seagate 500 krapped out, I'm still waiting.......the shop tried to pawn off a rebuilt with visual flaws on me and my tec guru refused and he now has secured a new one.

we'll see how this one goes......that latest put me over 50% failure with seagate.

I am interested in what your HDD temperatures are.

What is your normal room temp when the PC is on?

Do you have any airflow running over the HDD's?

What is you power supply readings? eg. the 12 V and 5 V rails.

I used to have some issues with Seagate HDD's. It was a 1-2 punch with the HDD's being imported from China and receive quite a lot of punishment in shipping, and a lack of airflow of the HDD's. The lack of airflow resulted in high temperatures when there was prolonged disk access, and the temps dropped when disk access stopped. Apparently what happed was that the abuse during shipping (althoguh seagate takes a lot of precausions, the abused received is much higher than from a locally built HDD's) combined with heat cycles reduced the expected life of the HDD.

Another problem that many HDD's suffer from is that the circuit board easily overheats and breaks. The data is still intact, but the HDD requires a circuit board replacement with the same version of the firmware.

This was corroborated by DCOM service center.

The problems seems to have become slightly larger since the perpendicular technology was introduced. The tighter packed bytes seems to be a little bit more sensitive to outside conditions.

[jackdanielsesq]

With that kinda HDD Karma, I would dump my Guru like a STD, A PC Guru??!! Ya gotta be kidding, Jack.

There is quite a procedure to go thru to format any modern hi-capacity HDD properly, to make it perform reliably, for at least 100,000 MTBF,

but with your credentials, OS and FS, I doubt that anyone would be allowed to help you. M$ dont do any of them either.

I have several 2.5 HDD that are now +5 years old that I use on file servers, that M$ trashed within 1 year, that I rehashed - still going strong.

All purchased in SE Asia. IBM, Hitachi, SG, Max - reworked them all.

Of course if ya running everything at +45'C, all bets are off.

BR>Jack

[ignis]

When I moved to Thailand 6 years ago I brought all my data on a Seagate 80GB HDD

For years have always re built my PC every 2 years, I'm touching wood now the Seagate HDD from the UK is still going strong!! now 7yrs old.. but have had 3x Seagates fail here so far 1x 160GB, 1x 200GB, 1x 250GB and 1x 640GB WD, all of them failed within the 1st year.

Both yesterday and today my new WD 640GB is suddenly not showing ?? bought this 3 weeks ago !!

Up Date........ just for interest I unplugged the power supply cable to this HDD and connected it to another HDD it did not work, so the problem was a faulty power cable, sorted though my big box of spares and found another power supply splitter cable now works fine..

Went and got the last 'failed' Seagate HDD and that works as well, so in my PC a power supply splitter cable was at fault as it appear to work sometimes and not others, the the WD and the 'failed' Seagate HDD have worked fine with the new cable for over a week

[nikster]

Keep your HDs cool... I believe the reason for HD failure in Thailand is heat, for the most part. The drives in my laptops used to get too hot, and I had about 1 fail every year. Luckily I always had backups, never lost any important data.

You can use a temp monitoring program for the HD.

As for encryption, FileVault on OS X does the same thing, no performance loss. But I'd rather keep sensitive information in the (encrypted) keychain, it's more convenient. My home folder contains 160GB of data and the vast majority of it, I'd say 159.999 GB doesn't ned to be encrypted, it's all music, movies, pictures...

And my banking passwords etc are not stored anywhere

[jaideeguy]

It could have been the heat that did in my last 500 seagate. It was in an external box and the heat off the aluminum box was almost too much to leave my hand on it. How do you cool an external HD??

[stumonster]

anyone have a list of places to take seagates to be replaced ?

I have a 160gig IDE with a syynex sticker that the seagate site says is still in warranty