# Seagate HD Failures



## hjones4841 (Jan 21, 2009)

First off, this thread is not intended to be a bash on Seagate - I am sure many folks have had good luck with them. But, I am not one of them. I have had abnormally high Seagate hard drive failures over the past 3-4 years. Reviews on Amazon and Newegg seem to confirm my findings. We use our hard drives for many applications now and the loss of one - especially in a DVR where backups are not possible - can be quite a pain.

I have known about Seagate quality issues for quite some time, backed by personal experience in PCs. While they offer a good warranty, when you send one back, you get a re-furb (at least that is what happened to me).

I purchased two new Dell PCs last year, both of which came with Seagate hard drives. I immediately cloned them to another brand (Western Digital in this case) and relegated the Seagates to the "D" drives. One of the Seagates failed Sunday, less than a year old.

The "last straw" came last night while I was watching the mens' gymnastics - the DVR froze. It is a DirecTV HD DVR that was connected to an external HD that I had purchased mounted inside an enclosure - one of the 2TB DVR extenders. I rebooted the DVR, only to see programs on the internal drive that were recorded months ago prior to hooking up the external drive.

This morning I opened up the enclosure to find - you guessed it - a 2TB Seagate drive. This one was less than 6 months old. I suppose it could not hold up to the almost continuous recording of the olympics. Heat was not an issue - a fan blows on the external enclosure from front to back. The enclosure at all times was barely warm.

I pulled the Seagate drive out and threw it in the trash. By chance I had bought two WD 2TB Green drives to use as PC backups yesterday. One of them is in the enclosure now and the DVR is working fine.

Again, this is not a bash. It reflects only my experiences. I do suggest, however, that you research user reviews on reliable websites before entrusting your data, or in this case, TV programs, to a hard drive.


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## robbo266317 (Sep 22, 2008)

Having worked in IT for 30 odd years I have regularly seen bad batches of drives from just about all manufacturers.
I put it down to the ever increasing need to fit more data into smaller and smaller spaces with the lowest possible cost.


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## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

I know that Segate had a bad batch of drives manufactured with the letters 9VY7 at the beginning of the serial number.


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## hjones4841 (Jan 21, 2009)

Guess I am lucky but I have had only 1 WD failure out of many. That was a 3TB in a NAS. Hitachi drives seem reliable as well but I have only had 2.


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## MikeBiker (Jan 3, 2010)

Hitachi disk drives are now part of Western Digital.


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