IMPORTANT: Check your hardware, PC users

[nameless]

I thought I'd post this so no one goes through the nightmare I just had.

First off, don't buy seagate products, ever. Seriously, I wish I could burn down their headquarters after this BS.

So about a week ago, my drive crashes. It seems like no big deal until I reboot, and the drive is no longer recognized. I thought I'd fried the thing or something. I posted on facebook about my problem and had 2 friends respond that their seagate drives did the same thing.

Windows booted in safe mode once and I was able to back up a little to a brand new seagate external (I think you know where this is going). External decided to then format itself. unbelievable. Sector scan saved most, but two VERY important files were corrupted.

A little bit of research shows that seagate has HUMONGOUS firmware problems that causes a drive to be totally unresponsive. Calling seagate's support, they can correct/data retrieve files for a fee of $2000 (WTF!?) Other data retrieval services are cheaper than that even if they have to work in a clean room.

This problem IS NOT uncommon. Several sites report 40-60% of the seagates 7200.11 drives produced prior to jan 12 2009 fail due to this bug.

There is a DIY fixit that is pretty dangerous that corrected the issue for me. You have no idea how relieved I am to recover my film.

Seagate advises that if you have a 7200.11 drive that you update firmare immediately, but most unbiased sites say that there are new issues with the new firmware and you shouldn't update because there isn't a DIY fix for newer firmware yet.

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So here is the bottom line:
Open up your PC if you don't know what HD you're running. If it says seagate, I'd suggest you back up important files on a non-seagate drive.

If it says seagate barracuda 7200.11, back up everything RIGHT NOW! There isn't a moment to spare. It could crash at any time, and just totally be unresponsive. save $2000+ by spending 100 today.

Then chuck that seagate drive through the windows of seagate headquarters while you're at it.

 

[chilipie]

For what it's worth… if you haven't backed up everything at least once, then you're screwing yourself no matter what kind of drive you own. Seagate drives may have more problems than others, I don't know - but if something matters that much to you then it's just stupid having only one copy of it.

 

[Zensteve]

Heh, the only harddrive that's ever wiped itself on me was a Seagate.

 

[nameless]

For what it's worth… if you haven't backed up everything at least once, then you're screwing yourself no matter what kind of drive you own. Seagate drives may have more problems than others, I don't know - but if something matters that much to you then it's just stupid having only one copy of it.

sound advice, unless you are backing up one seagate to another.

I use acronis to back my stuff up, I just don't have it on autobackup to save system resources. That'll probably change after this nonsense.

SEAGATE drives DO have more problems, a LOT more problems. 40-60% failure is absolutely terrible. It makes these drives virtually worthless. Would you use a drive that had a 60% chance of failing for no reason with no warning? Even if you back up, its worthless. You'd need two backups to be safe, and at that point, does working off of the seagate really make any sense at all.

For reference, the average failure rate in hard drives in general is .88% (PCworld.com). This is quite substantial.