FreeAgent Products

[Madhu123]

Hi,

This is really bad and I should have read all the issues in the forum before buying it. I bought Freeagent External 1.5TB drive from dell and received in UPS today. It worked for 45 minutes when I attached it to first laptop copied 3.7TB of data then switched to second laptop to backup audio book collection. Immediatly it stopped working, no power light and beeps every 5 seconds. I did proper shutdown before connecting to laptop and I am have good exp in handling external drives. 

People should not buy this drive at all. Not all reliable and not even working for 1 hour and very bad exp for first time buyer of seagate products . I have two 1TB mybook network editions from WD and 1TB iomega drive and all are working with out any issues. Some time they were up and running for days.I should have stick to my fav store other than seagate.

Big Mistake..Don't do it and don't become a Bakra(Goat). I am talking to dell rep to return it immdtly.

[thousandmark]

Help....

Im using FreeAgent Go 250 GB, and having same problem too. When i'm playing a MP3 music in a player (file using from FreeAgent), immediately it stop, and having error. And then the FreeAgent beeps every seconds.

When i try in the other PC, it can works again, but after in one hours, it sounds beep anymore.

Help, how to handle this situation?

- (Sorry, my english is not good, i'm Indonesian)

Im using FreeAgent Go 250 GB, and having same problem too. When i'm
playing a MP3 music in a player (file using from FreeAgent),
immediately it stop, and having error. And then the FreeAgent beeps
every seconds.

When i try in the other PC, it can works again, but after in one hours, it sounds beep anymore.

Help, how to handle this situation?

- (Sorry, my english is not good, i'm Indonesian) 

[intothemoat69]

Only had my drive for a month and it has like three hundred cds on it, my whole photo library, and the rest of my life. I have this cause I do not own a computer. One month and its dead? I spent good money on this and spent countless hours putting my data on it, Im not gunna eat this.

[HighHo]

Same problem with a FreeAgent XTreme 1.5TB, only one day old, similar to someone else I made backup of my laptop to then format, which i did after getting the drive. Went back the next day to copy stuff back to laptop to find the drive is dead.

The last time i had a seagate drive about 5 years ago it failed after about 6 months. This time really will be the last I buy there products. I accept things go wrong at times, but there seems to be an issue looking at all the posts and no real responce from Seagate.

[tronm]

I bought a Seagate Free Agent Desk, 1.5 TB from Costco; was on sale with $30 off coupon this month. Spent the last couple of weeks transferring aproximately 500 MB of  files from the last 20 years to it for backup. It started acting strange-sometimes it wouldn't be recognized by Windows , sometimes  it would hang. I noticed it ran very hot also. Tonight, it started beeping, and the blue LED "spray pattern" wouldn't light. Now I can't access it at all. 2 weeks of work down the drain.

Seems to me that Seagate quality is not what it should be. Troubleshooting info is not very helpful about this problem.

Guess I should have bought a Western Digital or IOMEGA.

I will be contacting Costco about this, as they may have bought a boatload of bad hard drives- if the postings on this forum are any indication.

[SamCa111]

tronm, I wouldn't recommend any brand's external harddrives really. I've heard plenty of horror stories about WD as well. Safer to get a large capacity thumbdrive if that can carry enough for you.

[indavisual]

I lost my lifes work on this thing and I cannot afford data recovery. I have researched how to do my own data recovery but the chances of recovery are not the greatest especially when Im a newbie who has never tried it before. Not to mention it would void my warrantee. So, here I am stuck.

Oh, and one more thing about the customer service that makes me second guess this is that I called technical support and they asked me minimal questions, did not give me a reason why it was broken, or what was wrong with it. They just said call data recovery. I said to myself ok I'll just recover my data and try again with a new drive. I thought data recovery would be free but they told me it would cost 700-3500 dollars! Thats ridiculous.

I am a computer graphics artist and I get jobs with the computer art I have created by making demo reels. Most of my art was backed up on this drive when it failed. I have to start my portfolio from scratch now.

I think Seagate should provide free recovery for these drives since they are producing lemons!

[Edited in compliance of the community rules and regulations.]

Message Edited by BradC on 05-06-2009 11:26 PM

[fabiobi]

Same thing just happened to me (I have a FreeAgent 750 GB, bought it 1 month ago).

I pulled a wire, it tilted (it was already on the floor, so it wasn't such a big impact), the fan started to make a harsh noise and the drive starts bleeping.

Now, honestly, this can't be the end of that data... I just can't believe it.

I had other external hard drives, they failed, had bad sectors, CRC errors... everything, but I was still able to access it from my computer and use diagnostic and restore softwares. Actually I recently restored everything from my WD drive, which had tons of bad sectors, and a physically damaged part on the disk. Even then, I was able to restore 98% of the data.

So a little thumb on a drive can't be the end of 750 GB worth of data.

And it sure won't cost 500-1.500 $ to recover.

In a few hours I'll call Seagate and demand an answer.

---

Is there any lawyer here? Or does anyone know someone that could take our case, if Seagate doesn't offer a solution?

Because, let's put what's happening in simple words:

1) Big brand advertise product that STORES DATA

2) Consumer buys product to STORE his DATA

3) Product LOSES DATA (which is a direct fail to its purpose)

4) Consumer LOSES DATA (which means, in most cases, money worth of bought mp3s, videos, software and/or legal documents... or maybe even priceless memories and digital collectables)

5) Consumer contacts big brand for a solution to the PROBLEM THEY CAUSED

6) Big Brand tells that the consumer has to pay 5-50 times the product actual value to fix the PROBLEM THEY CAUSED

Now, can someone correct me here if I made any mistake?

Because if I didn't, this a pure and simple case of RACKETEERING.

I'm sure there should be a lawyer willing to take such a large case pro bono (considering how many "witnesses" and "victims" we have here)

[fabiobi]

It sure makes you wonder...

Is Seagate selling damaged products (or products in the verge of getting damaged) to force people who lost important data to PAY LOADS OF MONEY for data recovery?

The Seagate drives were the cheapest ones on the market in the last months, but their data recovery service is probably one of the most expensive in the world...

...and if you take your drive somewhere else for data recovery, your warranty is void?

Hummmmmmmm....

[JayZ_WA]

Well, glad to hear I am not alone!

This seems to be quite the recurring issue - funny, I could type about the same as everyone else 'after about 6 months, my drive has no power and a low beeping noise'.

Really, at this point - what do I do with the other 2 that haven't yet failed (actually 1 of those was replaced twice for being dead).  Am I backing up or storing on a drive that is likely to die at any point in time and even more likely within 6 months!

Clearly, I need another solution - this is temporary storage not a reliable backup.  

I am thinking I will order a Drobo this week ....(uh no, NOT with Seagate drives - I would likely end up with all the internal drives that have had firmware issues)