3TB Seagate - another one bites the dust!

[therealnickdanger]

Well, the last of my four (4) 3TB Seagate Barracuda drives has finally kicked the bucket. Every other brand and size I'm using has been flawless with no SMART warnings of any kind. I know that Backblaze's reliability data has been called into question numerous times, but my experience lines up perfectly.

Let this post serve as a warning to backup your data and keep an eye on SMART data. It's never a question of if, but of when.

 

[Cerb]

Same here, including the 2TB size, except for what is now my backup drive, since I retired it from being a daily user as soon I noticed it sounding off. Other Seagates are fine, IME, just not a few sizes of the st#000dm001 series.

 

[KentState]

All 8 of my 3TB ones are now dead. Last one bit the dust about a month ago. Some lasted 4 years while others barely made it 1.

 

[ronbo613]

I've only got one Seagate 3TB in an external enclosure, I'm afraid to power it up!

3 seems to be the HD unlucky number. The WD 3TB Reds aren't that great either.

 

[fuzzymath10]

Purely anecdotal on my part but have 4 3TB drives (2 Reds, a Seagate and a Toshiba) in a 9TB flex raid with parity and been running for a few years 24/7. Nothing has given up the ghost yet.

I do wonder how much the quality of power supplied and temperature (level and variability) impact results. Too hard to say but mine are actively cooled with low rpm case fans and powered by a nice seasonic psu although they are stacked tightly.

 

[KentState]

Purely anecdotal on my part but have 4 3TB drives (2 Reds, a Seagate and a Toshiba) in a 9TB flex raid with parity and been running for a few years 24/7. Nothing has given up the ghost yet.

I do wonder how much the quality of power supplied and temperature (level and variability) impact results. Too hard to say but mine are actively cooled with low rpm case fans and powered by a nice seasonic psu although they are stacked tightly.

Side by side, my WD Red drives have a longer lifespan than the Seagate ones. I fully understand that the Seagate drives were never meant for 24/7 RAID, but it wasn't economically feasible to get decent 3TB drives right after the flooding in Thailand. Prior to that, I was using WD RE4 drives which lasted forever.

 

[smitbret]

Same here, including the 2TB size, except for what is now my backup drive, since I retired it from being a daily user as soon I noticed it sounding off. Other Seagates are fine, IME, just not a few sizes of the st#000dm001 series.

Your 2TBs went bad, too? Were they the 2x1TB platter or 4x500GB versions?

I have had 4 of the 2x1's in my 24/7 Server since 2011 and haven't had a lick of trouble.

 

[Cerb]

Your 2TBs went bad, too? Were they the 2x1TB platter or 4x500GB versions?

I have had 4 of the 2x1's in my 24/7 Server since 2011 and haven't had a lick of trouble.

ST2000DM001, including a few client's. Never looked into the particular platter density used.

 

[Charlie98]

I've only got one Seagate 3TB in an external enclosure, I'm afraid to power it up!

3 seems to be the HD unlucky number. The WD 3TB Reds aren't that great either.

Great. 2/3rds of my HTPC storage is either a 3TB Seagate or a 3TB Red.... The other 1/3rd is a 5TB Toshiba that runs 8C hotter than the other drives.

 

[MongGrel]

I'd post something about my Seagate experiences in the past, but it looks pretty covered.

 

[JimmiG]

Since I started my current job, 7 ST3000DM001's and one (much older) 1TB WD have failed.

We still have 5 ST3000DM001's that are running in the NAS (one with SMART warnings), but we've already purchased a bunch of 3TB WD's to replace each as they fail (don't want to run degraded arrays with ST3000DM001's for several days while we wait for replacements since another one could fail).

 

[nerp]

The Seagate issues are very troubling. I don't think I'll be buying one at any point in the future. I'm sticking with Hitachi drives going forward as long as I'm ordering a platter.

 

[smitbret]

ST2000DM001, including a few client's. Never looked into the particular platter density used.

They had two versions that sold under ST2000DM001. The older ones were a 4x500GB and the newer had 2x1GB. The old, 4 platter ones were about 30MB/s slower and ran hotter. The only way you could tell was the size of the notch in the upper right corner. If it made almost a full 90 degree arc it was the newer one.:

 

[StinkyPinky]

I'm surprised they were allowed to get away with this. Is there any laws in place where the govt can force a company to do a recall? These drives were clearly way beyond acceptable when it came to failure rates.

 

[bononos]

I'm surprised they were allowed to get away with this. Is there any laws in place where the govt can force a company to do a recall? These drives were clearly way beyond acceptable when it came to failure rates.

There is a class action suit that was filed days ago.

 

[Elixer]

They had two versions that sold under ST2000DM001. The older ones were a 4x500GB and the newer had 2x1GB. The old, 4 platter ones were about 30MB/s slower and ran hotter. The only way you could tell was the size of the notch in the upper right corner. If it made almost a full 90 degree arc it was the newer one.:

Which one of these is supposed to be the one that fails more, the newer ones?

Also, while there is a class action law suit in the works, they only point to BackBlaze, for their 'evidence', along with anecdotal stuff from newegg "reviews".
I say vote with your wallet, stop buying seagate drives.
It is just too bad we don't have more players making drives, so, our only alternative is to wait for big capacity NAND devices to come to market at reasonable prices, and hope those will be better.

 

[Charlie98]

I say vote with your wallet, stop buying seagate drives.

Not to sound simplistic... but not all Seagate drives are bad. They kicked out a badly designed model, that's all... just avoid the 2- and 3TB models.

Many here recommend Hitachi/HGST drives, now... anyone remember the DeathStar? Hitachi learned from their mistakes, certainly Seagate has taken notice of their problems. No, that doesn't necessarily fix it for those people who already have one of the suspect drives (I have one...) but nothing is fool proof, including NAND devices.

 

[smitbret]

Which one of these is supposed to be the one that fails more, the newer ones?

I don't know if either one is supposed to fail more often, but the smaller notch has the 4 platters, runs hotter and slower and was generally regarded as much inferior to the newer one, at least at the time.

I was only asking because I hadn't heard about the 2TB being particularly unreliable until this thread and I have 4 of them going on year 4 in my server.

 

[XavierMace]

This is my problem with these Seagate threads. Yes, it's pretty clear there's an issue with the 3TB drives. But somehow people keep adding other drives to the list with little or no evidence to support their claim. I've got 16 of the 2TB drives running 24x7 in my SAN, zero issues.

 

[Cerb]

This is my problem with these Seagate threads. Yes, it's pretty clear there's an issue with the 3TB drives. But somehow people keep adding other drives to the list with little or no evidence to support their claim. I've got 16 of the 2TB drives running 24x7 in my SAN, zero issues.

Seagate keeps the same model number for multiple drive generations. The 2nd gen WD Greens were poor drives, for awhile, but they didn't share the exact same SKU as others of the same series and size.

 

[Topweasel]

This is my problem with these Seagate threads. Yes, it's pretty clear there's an issue with the 3TB drives. But somehow people keep adding other drives to the list with little or no evidence to support their claim. I've got 16 of the 2TB drives running 24x7 in my SAN, zero issues.

Probably right. But I would say the 2013 and 2014 review history of the 2TB in that series has a pretty similar trend going back to reviews in those years. I do't find it hard to believe that it may have suffered as well.

That said I had my first 3TB from 2013 die last week. Actually my first personal drive to die while I have been using it. I have had some drives I have replaced because I was getting less and less sure of the drive. A 10GB WD in 99, a 160GB GXP in 02, a 72GB Raptor in 05. I got 3 of these Seagates in 2013, I replaced one of them about 3 months ago but have it plugged in an external enclosure and its still going. But this drive seemed fine till about 2 weeks ago, started moving some files off of it. Had to limp through some transfers, and eventually before I got everything, it completely died last week. None of what I lost was important, not in the slightest.

Edit: Should note that these 3 drives (Only 1 of which is dead) have been used in a mostly 24/7 desktop environment. Its low usage and a fairly well cooled case. But again on 24/7.

That said the drive I got to replace the one drive last year was a Seagate. I lived through and had about 5 DeathStars (45-180GXP's) and all survived. Seagate went through a bad model but the drives were half the price of anyone else at the time and the new drives seem fine. I think some people are way to quick to turn on a company for a bad product or two and artificially remove great options from contention over some precieved slight.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Knock on wood, but I've still got 1 last Thailand-based ST3000DM001 running in my environment out of the 13 that have been in the system (out of the 6 I started with). This one's lasted through all of it. All my other drives are Hitachi's now, and have not had any issues.

 

[tweakboy]

Disaster