Seagate 3TB Drives Are Problematic

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LOL_Wut_Axel

Diamond Member
Mar 26, 2011
4,310
8
81
I have had my 3TB Barracuda 7200.14 (the exact model they are criticizing) for over three years and according to SMART it is running perfectly. Temps are within 32-36C depending on load and it reports no errors or reallocated sectors. Same with the Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB I have had for five years and the OCZ Vertex 3 I've had for three years on my desktop. I also have a Toshiba MQ01ABD100 1TB along with an A-DATA SP900 128GB on my EliteBook 2560p... no problems with those either. I have had over 15 hard drives and of those only one has failed... a 320GB 2.5" WD Blue.

Just take into account people in general are more likely to give feedback or complain when a product fails or has a problem rather than when everything goes smoothly. Those numbers seem hugely inflated to me... and the reason is that they are using them as server/NAS type drives; not only that, but because they purchased all at a about the same time frame it could also be bad batches. These are not rated for 24/7 operation, especially under constant load. Neither are the other drives, but apart from the Hitachis they were very small numbers.

TL;DR: I wouldn't really read too much into it.
 
Last edited:

MongGrel

Lifer
Dec 3, 2013
38,751
3,068
121
I think you mean they are enterprise designs..

Kind of like using a 3d printer to print up a gun.. It will work at least once.. Maybe twice if you still have your face.. But you cant say it is not going to blow up sooner or later.. The only quesiton would be how soon is too soon..

Next up would be seagate 3d printed hard drives.. They are printing up media storage on paper.. Instead of using expensive equipment to create platters, they can print them on.

Um yeah, ok...
 

Nec_V20

Senior member
May 7, 2013
404
0
0
I have three of the 3TB ST3000DM001-9YN166 HDs running in my system. They have been running 24/7 respectively for:

1) 1142 days 19 hours (Firmware CC9C)
2) 980 days 20 hours (Firmware CC4B)
3) 977 days 9 hours ( Firmware CC4B)

These drives are not in a RAID array.

I have a Hitachi HDS5C3020ALA632 2TB drive which has been running 1513 days 18 hours in the same system as the Seagate drives.

The most important part of my system is the PSU which is a Corsair AX850. Not only is it a Gold unit, but it also has very low ripple on the 12V rail and excellent overvoltage protection. Excessive ripple is what destroys hardware.

Many buy the PSU as an afterthought from what is left of their budget after they have splurged out on all the sexy stuff.

It could just be that the 3TB drives are more sensitive to ripple than other drives.
 

RecoveryForce

Member
Feb 12, 2015
117
2
46
www.recoveryforce.com
The Seagate drives have a few issues:

1. Heads are running way to close to the platters and even a small vibration seems to be enough to cause a head crash
2. They have firmware issues that cause the drives to stop responding
3. Some heads seem to just be weak and start to degrade very fast
4. Some models have locked down firmware access, making it impossible to fix minor firmware issues

If they are working for you, great. But, be sure to have all your data backed up.
 

Nec_V20

Senior member
May 7, 2013
404
0
0
The Seagate drives have a few issues:

1. Heads are running way to close to the platters and even a small vibration seems to be enough to cause a head crash
2. They have firmware issues that cause the drives to stop responding
3. Some heads seem to just be weak and start to degrade very fast
4. Some models have locked down firmware access, making it impossible to fix minor firmware issues

If they are working for you, great. But, be sure to have all your data backed up.

You might be the CEO of RecoveryForce, I was however Senior German Engineer for Enterprise Disaster Recovery Tech-Support at Veritas Software.

I know from this experience not to keep all my eggs in one basket. I have 12TB of offline storage in the form of USB HDs

I am not trying to be snarky, and it is good advice which I wish more people took to heart.

I would be interested to see logs of the errors you mentioned if you had kept any.
 

RecoveryForce

Member
Feb 12, 2015
117
2
46
www.recoveryforce.com
You might be the CEO of RecoveryForce, I was however Senior German Engineer for Enterprise Disaster Recovery Tech-Support at Veritas Software.

I know from this experience not to keep all my eggs in one basket. I have 12TB of offline storage in the form of USB HDs

I am not trying to be snarky, and it is good advice which I wish more people took to heart.

I would be interested to see logs of the errors you mentioned if you had kept any.
Well, I'm a computer science drop-out have a German friend and have been to Germany before.

I don't have any log, per se. Not enough hours in the day for me to do the recoveries and document everything about each case. I do, from time to time, blog and post about random cases on my company's blog and forum.
 

AlienTech

Member
Apr 29, 2015
117
0
0
I have a 6GB seagate drive I bought in 1998 was still going great until a few months ago when I realised the magnets in them were more valuable than the drive itself I use it now as a coaster.. My 160GB sata 1 seagate from a decade ago is still running fine though..

I also have a few dozen other seagate drives and except for 2 of the ST2000DM001 models I think are crap.. All it means is I am looking elsewhere.. I dont like the odds..
 

Puffnstuff

Lifer
Mar 9, 2005
16,038
4,800
136
It's funny with all of this talk of bad seagate drives my hitachi deskstar 1tb decided to bite the dust. It passed all of it's smart tests and gave up the ghost without warning or noise as it excused itself from being seen by the pc. All of my spinners are now wd blacks which is the way that it will stay.
 

Nec_V20

Senior member
May 7, 2013
404
0
0
I don't have any log, per se. Not enough hours in the day for me to do the recoveries and document everything about each case. I do, from time to time, blog and post about random cases on my company's blog and forum.

I can relate to you with regard to that.

In my time in the position I documented above I dealt with over 17,000 individual cases/escalations and failed to resolve exactly 223 (I don't count kludges or workarounds as resolutions). As far as I know I am unique in that for two days I had a clean sheet i.e. I had no open cases/escalations in my queue.

I was supposed to document my cases in the database and although I didn't bother quite a lot of the time a typical entry would be:

Problem Description:
"SCSI Problems"
Problem Resolution:
"Told customer to get a screwdriver."

When people were turned over to me after their "basic training" from the company which was long-winded, boring and short on substance (where the trainees invariably left as ignorant as they had started) I gave them the 30 second real tech support training.

I would get them to hold one hand up and take their forefinger under their thumb

I would then get them to take their little finger in their other hand and repeat:
"You cannot cure hardware problems in the OS, so get rid of the hardware problems"
I would then tell them to fold their little finger under their thumb
Next I told them to take their next finger and repeat:
"You cannot cure OS problems in the Application, so get rid of OS problems"
I then told them to fold that finger under their thumb
By this time they had a solitary middle finger sticking up and I would say:
"And whatever is left, we are f@#ked with".

I couldn't be arsed with all the bureaucratic nonsense which tried to get between me and the people who were really having problems - which was the poor guys standing in front of dead servers.

So I can pretty much understand why you wouldn't have much in the way of logs
 

wabbitslayer

Senior member
Dec 2, 2012
533
1
76
I've just had a failure on my ST3000DM001 (2 months out of warranty).

No problems with it before, no clicking, diagnostics ran as recently as 1st of last month showed no problems. It just dropped out a coupple of days ago, changing the sata port to hot swap and plugging it and unpluggint is has gotten it to intermittently show up, I've tried to copy files off, it gets maybe one or two very slowly and then dies out.

Thought I had the whole drive contents of about 2.5GB backed up, turns out there's about 40gb of audio files I did not. D:

Anyone have an opinion as to the likelihood it's the circuit board, and has anyone had any experience with these guys: http://www.hdd-parts.com/

I'm thinking it's worth the $50 gamble, unless a bunch of people here tell me "no, there's no way it's the pcb"
 

thesmokingman

Platinum Member
May 6, 2010
2,307
231
106
I guess I've just gotten lucky with the 20 Seagate's I've got running 24x7.

I've got 12 3TBs running in a R6 since 8/2012. Finally one drive dropped last night, swapped in the spare. I suppose it served it's time. 3 years running 24/7. I ordered a new one, since its out of warranty.
 
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