Warning: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

*Alb pets his pair of Spinpoint F1's*

I wish I'd bought those instead.

I heard an interesting rumour that the reason why there were so many cheap 7200.11 on the market was because they had been built for a big PC OEM to the OEMs requirements. When the OEM took the initial batch of several thousand drives, and tested a significant subset of them, they found that the drives failure rate was far, far higher than specified, and far more than they were willing to put up with. The last thing a PC OEM wants to deal with is failed hard drives and the angry customer that bought the PC, especially if they've got to send people out to do warranty repairs.

So Seagate lost the tender, and the excess drives were dumped into the market at a cut down price for the rest of us to use and suffer with the high failure rate.

 

[Sxotty]

Thanks for sharing the info. I am likely to buy another drive soon and I always liked seatgate and WD so I will avoid the 11 series for now.

 

[stevem]

...and the way they store the drive firmware on the platter means any drive problems can be very fatal with no warnings.

This has been the trend since Maxtor's DiamondMax Plus 8 series introduced the dreaded NAR6xxx drive detection error on POST. It's just cheaper to use sectors on the media itself to store firmware. The IBM DeathStar issue was different & related to GMR heads running continually over the same tracks on the glass platters of GXP 60/75 series drives. A firmware update let the controller move them randomly on idle.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

This has been the trend since Maxtor's DiamondMax Plus 8 series introduced the dreaded NAR6xxx drive detection error on POST. It's just cheaper to use sectors on the media itself to store firmware. The IBM DeathStar issue was different & related to GMR heads running continually over the same tracks on the glass platters of GXP 60/75 series drives. A firmware update let the controller move them randomly on idle.

Not so much cheaper when it really screws your reputation for years to come. There's a lot of people who won't be buying Seagate for either personal or business use for a long time. The way Seagate have failed to deal with the issue or engage with their customers is a damning indictment of their poor customer service. Along with seriously bugged products, people just won't trust them.

 

[Sxotty]

This has been the trend since Maxtor's DiamondMax Plus 8 series introduced the dreaded NAR6xxx drive detection error on POST. It's just cheaper to use sectors on the media itself to store firmware. The IBM DeathStar issue was different & related to GMR heads running continually over the same tracks on the glass platters of GXP 60/75 series drives. A firmware update let the controller move them randomly on idle.

I thought it was because the bearing was not designed to 24/7 use and it was around the time P2P became popular so people left their computers running 24/7 in home use.

 

[Albuquerque]

I thought it was because the bearing was not designed to 24/7 use and it was around the time P2P became popular so people left their computers running 24/7 in home use.

Yeah, I remember that being the excuse anyway, true or not. I've had good and bad to say about a lot of drive manufacturers, but I've seen a Western Digital 8Gb drive survive the last nine years of 100% constant-on time. The bearings sqeal like nothing I've ever heard, but it continues running even to this day.

But even with that example, Western Digital is the drive manufacturer I've had the worst dealings with -- six dead drives in a span of about 15. I've had decent dealings with Maxtor drives, but I know we had a slew of them at the office that died in our Dell SFF systems that were replaced with Seagate Barricudas. And Seagate has been pretty good to me, I still have an entirely functional 100Mb IDE PIO Mode 2 drive from an ancient Packard Bell 386SX system from about 1991-92. I also have another full-height 5.25" slow/narrow SCSI seagate drive from WAAAY back in the day that still can access it's full 20Mb capacity. It also weighs about 12 pounds

I guess it just really boils down to preference and history. The only reason I own a pair of Spinpoints is because of their reviews, price, and my only other experience with Samsung computer hardware: my DVDRW drive. I like both my HDD's, and both my DVDRW's. So I guess I can't complain

 

[stevem]

Not so much cheaper when it really screws your reputation for years to come.

I don't disagree, but the drives are profiled under accelerated use & fit within the "acceptable" failure rate curve. With multiple secure non-user areas, this should not be an issue. Unfortunately, some newer 7200.11 models seem to be not so great. I'd prefer full flash rom storage, but including the full defect map for a >500GB drive would be costly. Just look at optical drives which now have EEPROM config data & firmware on the same device, just to save a dollar...

I thought it was because the bearing was not designed to 24/7 use and it was around the time P2P became popular so people left their computers running 24/7 in home use.

Leaving the computer idling resulted in original firmware drives dragging their heads over the same sectors. Bearings weren't a problem per se. There was a site where a number of drives from servers at a university had been opened. The magnetic media had been rubbed clean off the platters leaving them transparent. The magnetic dust made a mess of the heads & internal surfaces.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Looks like the story is going mainstream now:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3...7200-11-failing
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/01...acuda.failures/
http://i.gizmodo.com/5130702/1tb-seagate-b...-gogo-users-say
http://gadgetblips.dailyradar.com/story/se...iling_en_masse/

 

[Davros]

ps: google use a hell of a lot of hard drives and they puplished the results (failure rates ect) somewhere

 

[Albuquerque]

This story is starting to make it's way around the water cooler here at work now too. It sounds like we'll be asking Dell to make sure these drives are not coming with our Optiplex desktop systems.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I would do the same. Everywhere a thread pops up, on whatever forum, a load of people pop up and say "yeah I had that happen to me too". Some of them are saying they've lost four out of five drives in a RAID array, and I just read some guy who claims to use a lot of these drives in his business (admin or OEM) is seeing 50 percent plus failure in the last few months.

It's just not worth the risk to go with dodgy Seagate drives. Even if you take the time and expense to do regular backups, there's always disruption, downtime, and the work you've lost since your last backup. And at the end of the day, there's zero support from Seagate beyond a swap for a second hand, also faulty drive which just enables you to go through all the same hassle again.

 

[Sxotty]

Leaving the computer idling resulted in original firmware drives dragging their heads over the same sectors. Bearings weren't a problem per se. There was a site where a number of drives from servers at a university had been opened. The magnetic media had been rubbed clean off the platters leaving them transparent. The magnetic dust made a mess of the heads & internal surfaces.

Funny thing was those drives were darn tough otherwise. I dropped one 3.5 feet onto a wood desk, accidentally unplugged it while running and it arced a shock. Then it just randomly died later

 

[Babel-17]

BestBuy continually offering an external drive with eSATA, firewire, and USB for less than 13 cents a GB has to mean something.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9019251&type=product&id=1218009477014

Check out the one review, interesting if true.

What's great about it: Nothing Except Price
What's not so great: Almost Everything

"WATCH OUT THIS DRIVE DOES NOT SUPPORT ANY 64-BIT OPERATING SYSTEM!!!

This ST315005FPA2E3-RK external storage device will not install with either USB2 or 1394A connectivity with or without the Seagate software.

I have several other external drives, mostly Western Digital 1TB Essentials, all of which installed in 30 seconds or less via USB2.

The OXFORD USB chipset providing USB2 support on the ST315005FPA2E3-RK may be of an older type, as is the TI 1394A controller used on the device. There has been a November 2008 Microsoft Hotfix for TI 1394A controllers using Windows Vista x64 versions, but must be requested through Microsoft support (or wait for Vista SP2 in March 2009).

The ST315005FPA2E3-RK should install as a generic USB MASS STORAGE DEVICE with USB2 connectivity, and be recognized as such by Windows PnP Manager, not so, thus Seagate has major issues here.

Nowhere on the RETAIL BOX does it mention that the ST315005FPA2E3-RK is not supported under and by any 64-bit operating system. However, calling Seagate Technical Support, and they clearly state that any 64-bit operating system is not supported, and the majority of consumers operate 32-bit operating systems. They further went on to state that there is no intent to support 64-bit operating systems. But Segate does state 32-bit only on their support software download page!

 

[Davros]

What's great about it: The case looks nice?

no 64bit o/s support sometimes i'm convinced the pc industry is run by chimps...

 

[Albuquerque]

no 64bit o/s support sometimes i'm convinced the pc industry is run by chimps...

No kidding, that's pretty crappy. The drive itself is obviously "compatible", but since they already know the USB interface component has no 64-bit drivers AND you can buy 64-bit systems directly from big-name top-tier manufacturers these days, why isn't it written on the package?

To steal an icon from another forum:

 

[Davros]

ps: found the google hard drive survey
http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/18/massive-google-hard-drive-survey-turns-up-very-interesting-thing/

heres the pdf itself although they are not nameing and shameing
http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

ps: found the google hard drive survey
http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/18/massive-google-hard-drive-survey-turns-up-very-interesting-thing/

heres the pdf itself although they are not nameing and shameing
http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf

Unfortunately that article is from two years ago and doesn't name and shame, so we're not really any wiser.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Looks like the customers getting organized and using the internet to light a fire under Seagate's ass may have paid off. A German tech site is reporting that Seagate will make an official statement tomorrow (Friday), some of their tech reps let it slip on chat there was a new firmware arriving in a day or two, and a Knowledge Base article went up before the official statement and then was pulled, but it still can be seen here.

 

[RudeCurve]

Thanks for the update.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Thanks for the update.

It's not happened yet! I have to wait and see if this is just BS rumours or if Seagate are actually going to do something, but late on Friday because they think it's a good time to give out bad news. This would be pretty stupid, because that means three more days for people's disks to die before they can get updates on Monday.

Or maybe Seagate gave the "statement tomorrow" line to the German magazine in order to stall them, and they'll come out and claim there's no issue, same as they've been doing for the last few months, despite a 40 percent failure rate.

You just can't trust Seagate to do the right thing by their customers anymore.