3TB Harddisk sale

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>

| I won't touch a seagate these days.
| 
| Firmware disaster after firmware disaster.
| 
| I wouldn't put my data on it even if it was free.

I think that all disk drive manufacturers have problem drives.  Some
are related to just a particular drive, sometimes a drive design.
Then there is customer service/support.

So all we know is superstition: based on too small a sample size.
That being said, I superstitiously avoid Seagate.  Not boycott, avoid.

I had a Seagate drive go last week.  It was a 7200.11 drive, one that
originally came with a ticking time-bomb in the firmware.  But I fixed
that when they announced it (badly) a few years ago.  So that isn't
what hit me.

(That bug did hit my son.  He had a 7200.11 drive that came in a
Gateway computer.  I checked the serial number with Seagate's tool,
and it said all was well.  Lies.  So he did end up with have a locked
up drive.  Unfortunately, Seagate said that this was Gateway's problem
but Gateway would only replace, not repair the drive.  I built and
sent him a TTL-level serial cable and he did the delecate operation to
re-vivify the disk.  He then copied the drive to a replacement and
won't use that drive again.  Horrible.  I count this too as marks
against Seagate.)

My 7200.11's failure mode was that it would go through this sequence
when powered up: spin up; click 11 times (i.e. seek hard to
recalibrate the head position); spin down.  The consensus on the web
is that this is a head failure -- not to be fixed by firmware or even
PCB replacement.  So I sent it in the Seagate and expect a replacement
in a week or so.

I have to pay shipping one way (just under $9 (including tax) via some
Canada Post service, with $100 insurance and tracking).  I could have
used their premium option: US$10 for them to ship you a replacement
and a prepaid mailing label with which to return the drive.  Normally
that would be a better choice.  One reason: this way you get a box
suitable for shipping a drive before you have to ship it.

Contrast that with Lenovo.  I had a problem with my new Think Pad
Android Tablet.  They shipped me a shipping box (I had to sign for it
at the door!) with prepaid label to return it.  No cost to me.
Because they made a mistake the first time (new machine was US and had
half the flash), the procedure was repeated.

I have to say that the Seagate support person was pleasant and
experienced.  He was in Oklahoma City and had been working for Seagate
for about 15 years (including time at Imprimis, which Seagate took
over).

I bought the 7200.11 in 2009, just before the warranty on Seagate OEM
drives was to be reduced from 5 years to 3.  We always wondered if
that was a sign of Seagate's confidence in its own drives.  Mind you,
WD's similar drives only had 3 years warranty at that time.  A 3 year
warranty would have been up by the time the drive failed.

I did have trouble with an old (10 years old?) WD drive last week too.
A 40G IDE drive.  I was able to get all the contents with ddrescue.  I
only noticed the problem when I was doing a straight dd of the whole
drive that failed 3/4 of the way through (repeatable).
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists