Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[karvala]

Hitachi also have a vastly better track record (especially in the last 5 years) in regard to both failure rates and customer service.  Seagate seem to be engaged in a race to the bottom.  If they want to position themselves as the bargain basement pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap brand, then I guess that's up to them, but it's not a business model that has brought much success to any IT manufacturer historically, and I can't imagine it's going to start working any better now.

For myself, I bought 5 of the 1TB/platter Barracudas recently.  Within two weeks, two had developed suffiicient surface problems to fail the short DST, while a third had a complete head crash (first one of those I've experienced in many years).  All five of course also suffered from the chirping problem and load cycle problem, even after firmware update.  No reply from Seagate customer service to my (perfectly polite) queries about this, no reply even on this forum when I asked specifically about the head crash.  So, all five drives went back for a refund and have been replaced by five Hitachi drives, all of which work perfectly.  They can join another three older Hitachi drives I have been running for three years now, all of which remain in perfect health.

I'm sure 1TB/platter, cheap manufacturing, reduced warranty periods and radio silence from customer serivce seemed like a good idea to the accountants, but when the RMAs start flooding in, as they're bound to do, and the bad reputation starts to spread, I suspect they might come to regret it.

[max789a]

Which model Hitachi drives did you choose to replace the Seagate ones?

Thanks.

[karvala]

The 7K3000 2TB model.  It's about 20% more expensive than Seagate's 2TB DM001, but it has a higher reliability rating, broadly comparable performance (it comes out slightly slower in some benchmarks and slightly quicker in others), and no known issues.

[Hammey]

Hi well i can see you are upset but I am sure you have used forums before and they really dont like people posting competitors names but since you are upset you ignore the rules vn. By the way do you know who owns the the H company I dont think so but look it up on google you may be supprised enjoy your new w drive.

[karvala]

As far as I'm concerned, I'm providing valuable feedback to Seagate, and hopefully useful feedback to other members by responding to a simple question in a straightforward manner.  If I were on here trying to sell products for other companies, I would agree with you, but since it's clearly obvious that's not what I'm trying to do, I will trust Seagate to have the good sense not to attempt any censorship.  To you, I would say: don't be afraid of big companies, and don't be afraid to speak out when they fall short of the standards you expect, even on their own forums.  Companies only improve when customers give feedback, including feedback of the nature "these products are not working well, I've received poor service, so now I'm buying from competitor A,B or C instead."  Best wishes.

[karvala]

P.S.  Forgot to address the ownership point.  I'm aware the H were purchased by WD, if that's what you mean.  I'm also aware, though, that they continue be operated as an entirely separate division, hence I think it's reasonable to project their recent past failure rates onto their new products in the absence of any other information.  Of course if WD start to interfere in the running of H, which a few years down the line seems quite likely, then that projection would have to change, but at the momeny I think there's no reason to believe that the new ownership has interfered with product reliability.

[Hammey]

Hi I use enterprise drives as I run raid and they are ment for raid both brands. If you bought 5 of these drives are you running them in a raid setup as they are only really for software raid and will cause problems. Also yes I agree you need to report when things dont go right to help other users although I dont see any help in your post accept to get a diffrent brand of Hard drive. Maybe try a enterprise drive to run in raid 5 or 10. All hard drives having are having troubles these days I keep away from the cheap everyday drives less problems. But as you know some people want to pay least amount and they suffer for it.

[max789a]

Thanks, karvala, for replying to my query. It's a pity that, to date, there doesn't seem to be any reliable drives with 1TB platters.

[UDMA133]

ST1000DM003 here, 1TB, original firmware CC4C, updated new firmware CC4H.

Chirping was present with CC4C, gone or mostly gone with CC4H.

Performance is top notch.

Remember to 4K align your partitions on older operating systems (WinXP SP3).

SmartAlign isn't a 100% solution (see topic i started).

Happy with my drive, working flawlessly.

[Borrisimo]

 I've been looking at review for Seagate/Hitatchi and WD 2TB Drives and they all have the same problem, useless power saving features causing chirping sounds, seems like all the manufacturers got together and designed an entire generation of HDD's that are terrible, clearly they did not have their heads on straight when they thought that buyers of 7200rpm drives would ever want power saving features.

I'm desperate to buy new drives especially a new boot drive but none of the current generation of drives are acceptable - and thats before considering the outrageous prices, really need new models to be released soon with no power saving on 7200rpm's