Seagate 7200.11 High Failure Rate

[Tony]

I have gotten 5 drives and 4 of them failed within an hour. Yes, the
warranty replacements gotten directly from Seagate failed just like the
orginal 2 new ones purchased from an online retailer. One of the original
warranty replacements is still working, though I'm not really using it yet
other than loading Windows and testing configs. The model is ST3320613AS.
Has anyone the inside scoop on what the problem with these drives is/are and
whether or not it affects all 7200.11 drives or just the 320 GB model?

(Aside: I bought the original 2 drives for a desktop RAID 0 setup but
there's no way I'd use these drives in anything less than a RAID 1 setup now
because of their proven unreliability).

Tony

 

[Rod Speed]

I have gotten 5 drives and 4 of them failed within an hour. Yes, the warranty replacements gotten directly from
Seagate failed just like the orginal 2 new ones purchased from an online retailer.

Then the system you were installing them in was killing them.

One of the original warranty replacements is still working,

All that proves is that what killed the others doesnt kill all drives.

though I'm not really using it yet other than loading Windows and testing configs. The model is ST3320613AS. Has
anyone the inside scoop on what the problem with these drives is/are

The system you are putting them in is killing them.

and whether or not it affects all 7200.11 drives or just the 320 GB model?

Its cant be either of those. If they were all failing at
anything like that rate, the sellers would know about that.

(Aside: I bought the original 2 drives for a desktop RAID 0 setup but there's no way I'd use these drives in anything
less than a RAID 1 setup now because of their proven unreliability).

Its the unreliability of the system you put them in thats proven.

And if you want a high reliability, they need to be in separate systems.

 

[Arno Wagner]

I have gotten 5 drives and 4 of them failed within an hour. Yes, the
warranty replacements gotten directly from Seagate failed just like the
orginal 2 new ones purchased from an online retailer. One of the original
warranty replacements is still working, though I'm not really using it yet
other than loading Windows and testing configs. The model is ST3320613AS.
Has anyone the inside scoop on what the problem with these drives is/are and
whether or not it affects all 7200.11 drives or just the 320 GB model?

(Aside: I bought the original 2 drives for a desktop RAID 0 setup but
there's no way I'd use these drives in anything less than a RAID 1 setup now
because of their proven unreliability).

Tony

It seems that when Segate started manufacuring ih China, their
quality went to hell. Currently Seagate has a clear "stay away"
attached. It seems Samsung and Hitachi are currently the
way to go. That may aof course change at any time.

Arno

 

[Tony]

Then the system you were installing them in was killing them.

You mean my provenably reliable desktop that I have used for years all of a
sudden picks and chooses to destroy 7200.11 drives but not my Maxtor SATA or
Segate PATA drive or other drives I've had in it? I regularly SATA and PATA
drives in this machine to test and setup other users' machines. So, given
all the data of users experiencing high failure rates, you actually came to
the conclusion that my system is bad? Totally bizarre, dude.

All that proves is that what killed the others doesnt kill all drives.


The system you are putting them in is killing them.


Its cant be either of those. If they were all failing at
anything like that rate, the sellers would know about that.

Check out the product reviews at NewEgg. I think the latest reviewer notes
that he went through 8 drives looking for 2 good ones. Check it out.
Something is up with these drives.

Its the unreliability of the system you put them in thats proven.

That's not a logical conclusion given the existing information.

Tony

 

[Tony]

It seems that when Segate started manufacuring ih China, their
quality went to hell. Currently Seagate has a clear "stay away"
attached. It seems Samsung and Hitachi are currently the
way to go. That may aof course change at any time.

The 250 GB 7200.10 drive is getting rave reviews. Has there been a
manufacturing location change between the time of 7200.10 and 7200.11
drives? If so, then you may be onto something.

Tony

 

[Rod Speed]

You mean my provenably reliable desktop

No such animal as far as a new fault showing up is concerned, particularly
when you increase the load on the 12V rail by adding extra drives.

that I have used for years all of a sudden picks and chooses to destroy 7200.11 drives but not my Maxtor SATA or
Segate PATA drive or other drives I've had in it?

All that indicates is that the Seagate drives were more sensitive to the fault.

I regularly SATA and PATA drives in this machine to test and setup other users' machines.

Irrelevant to what happens when the number of drives is increased significantly.

So, given all the data of users experiencing high failure rates,

No one got anything like the failure rate that you claimed to have seen.

you actually came to the conclusion that my system is bad?

Nope, from the failure rate that no one else is seeing, actually.

Totally bizarre, dude.

Nope, dud.

Check out the product reviews at NewEgg.

None of them have had anything like the failure rate you are claiming.

I think the latest reviewer notes that he went through 8 drives looking for 2 good ones. Check it out.

No thanks, its clearly not what most see.

Something is up with these drives.

Something is certainly up with your 'logic'

That's not a logical conclusion given the existing information.

Wrong, as always.

 

[Tony]

No such animal as far as a new fault showing up is concerned, particularly
when you increase the load on the 12V rail by adding extra drives.

You're obviously on the defensive for whatever reason. (Trolling!).

All that indicates is that the Seagate drives were more sensitive to the
fault.


Irrelevant to what happens when the number of drives is increased
significantly.


No one got anything like the failure rate that you claimed to have seen.

Even moreso! The latest post shows 8 drives failing for one user! Read all
about it:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16822148316.
41% of the reviews rate it VERY POOR (one star, probably because it may not
be possible to give zero stars). 50% rate the product 2 stars or less. It's
clearly a defective product being delivered for whatever reason.

Nope, from the failure rate that no one else is seeing, actually.

Click on the above link and see.

Nope, dud.



None of them have had anything like the failure rate you are claiming.

The link dude, the link. Read and learn.

No thanks, its clearly not what most see.


Something is certainly up with your 'logic'



Wrong, as always.

OK troll. Buh bye!

Logical users who aren't trolls and have the ability to reason, please post
your experiences with this drive model as something is obviously awry.

Tony\

 

[Rod Speed]

You're obviously on the defensive for whatever reason.

Nope, its you on the defensive when your nose is rubbed in your sillier claims.

(Trolling!).

You wouldnt know what a real troll was if one bit you on your lard arse.

Even moreso! The latest post shows 8 drives failing for one user!

Its no news that some systems kill drives.

Read all about it:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16822148316.

Just another fool that doesnt have a clue.

41% of the reviews rate it VERY POOR (one star, probably because it may not be possible to give zero stars).

Irrelevant to how many got anything like the result you claimed to have seen.

50% rate the product 2 stars or less.

Irrelevant to how many got anything like the result you claimed to have seen.

It's clearly a defective product being delivered for whatever reason.

How odd that the storagereview drive reliability database says nothing like that about that particular drive.

Click on the above link and see.

Just another fool that doesnt have a clue.

The link dude, the link.

Just another fool that doesnt have a clue, dud.

Read and learn.

Nothing to 'learn' there, dud.

OK troll. Buh bye!

Aint going nowhere, child.

Logical users who aren't trolls and have the ability to reason, please post your experiences with this drive model as
something is obviously awry.

Pity about the storagereview drive reliability database, dud.

 

[Sambo]

You're obviously on the defensive for whatever reason.

Nope, its you on the defensive when your nose is rubbed in your sillier claims.

(Trolling!).

You wouldnt know what a real troll was if one bit you on your lard arse.

Even moreso! The latest post shows 8 drives failing for one user!

Its no news that some systems kill drives.

Read all about it:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16822148316.

Just another fool that doesnt have a clue.

41% of the reviews rate it VERY POOR (one star, probably because it may not be possible to give zero stars).

Irrelevant to how many got anything like the result you claimed to have seen.

50% rate the product 2 stars or less.

Irrelevant to how many got anything like the result you claimed to have seen.

It's clearly a defective product being delivered for whatever reason.

How odd that the storagereview drive reliability database says nothing like that about that particular drive.

Click on the above link and see.

Just another fool that doesnt have a clue.

The link dude, the link.

Just another fool that doesnt have a clue, dud.

Read and learn.

Nothing to 'learn' there, dud.

OK troll. Buh bye!

Aint going nowhere, child.

Logical users who aren't trolls and have the ability to reason, please post your experiences with this drive model as
something is obviously awry.

Pity about the storagereview drive reliability database, dud.

 

[Mike Ruskai]

The 250 GB 7200.10 drive is getting rave reviews. Has there been a
manufacturing location change between the time of 7200.10 and 7200.11
drives? If so, then you may be onto something.

I have two 250GB 7200.10 drives, two 750GB 7200.11 drives, and two 1TB Samsung
Spinpoint F1 drives. I have had no problems with any of them, but the
Samsung's are by far the fastest. The 7200.11's are actually disappointing
with regards to performance.

 

[Man-wai Chang ToDie (33.6k)]

It seems that when Segate started manufacuring ih China, their

quality went to hell. Currently Seagate has a clear "stay away"

Maybe someone smoked or spitted inside the factory...

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (Xubuntu 8.04) Linux 2.6.25.10
^ ^ 16:16:01 up 5 days 19:33 2 users load average: 1.00 1.01 1.12
? ? (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa/

 

[Arno Wagner]

The 250 GB 7200.10 drive is getting rave reviews. Has there been a
manufacturing location change between the time of 7200.10 and 7200.11
drives? If so, then you may be onto something.

There has. Look into the archives of this group. Also reviews
are often not longer-term valuations and often miss quality issues.

Arno

 

[Michael]

It seems that when Segate started manufacuring ih China, their
quality went to hell. Currently Seagate has a clear "stay away"
attached. It seems Samsung and Hitachi are currently the
way to go. That may aof course change at any time.

Arno

Within the past 6-10 months I read somewhere - possibly in this NG - where
several persons had new Seagates die. The commonalities were Seagate and
country of manufacture (Thailand). I remember the incident because at that time
I was shopping for two, multi-hundred GB drives. I went with Hitachi SATA.

I don't buy Chinese when the item must last. In general Chinese process control
sucks; there are enough bad Chinese lines to blight the reputations of any that
are good.

 

[bill]

I bought a 2.5" 160GB for my laptop.
Had a problem. Ran Seatools, showed nothing, called Seagate.
They couldn't figure it out, said drive must have a problem.
Tried running Spinrite - it showed the drive making constant seek
errors. Got a replacement. this one is making lots - not constant -
seek errors. Seagate just blows it off and says we don't support
anything but Seatools and it doesn't tell what the seek errors are. if
it fails u have 5 years to replace it. I said - Ya, but that
translates into a slow drive - he couldn't understand that so I gave
up. SO seek errors are not important to Seagate.

THEREFORE, Seagate sucks. Don't know if others are better - the orig
drive had NO seek errors and one ECC.

THAT IS WHY SEAGATE DRIVES ARE SLOW. Seek time IS the slowest thing
that happens - if you have to do that 2-3 times to read one cluster -
u can see where that goes.

 

[Tony]

I bought a 2.5" 160GB for my laptop.
Had a problem. Ran Seatools, showed nothing, called Seagate.
They couldn't figure it out, said drive must have a problem.
Tried running Spinrite - it showed the drive making constant seek
errors. Got a replacement. this one is making lots - not constant -
seek errors. Seagate just blows it off and says we don't support
anything but Seatools and it doesn't tell what the seek errors are. if
it fails u have 5 years to replace it. I said - Ya, but that
translates into a slow drive - he couldn't understand that so I gave
up. SO seek errors are not important to Seagate.

THEREFORE, Seagate sucks. Don't know if others are better - the orig
drive had NO seek errors and one ECC.

THAT IS WHY SEAGATE DRIVES ARE SLOW. Seek time IS the slowest thing
that happens - if you have to do that 2-3 times to read one cluster -
u can see where that goes.

My nightmare with 7200.11 drives continues! I am RMAing today, yet another
set of 2 drives that Seagate sent me as replacements. I've lost count of how
many drives have failed (7 now?). Literally, not one 7200.11 I have received
has lasted for more than a couple of weeks, and all but one have died or
started degrading immediately. Now the one that actually lived for 2 weeks
is dead. I noticed also that other people are having the same kinds of
problems with other models (500 GB) of the 7200.11 series of drives.

Same failures as before: BIOS and Seatools only intermittantly see the
drives. RAID card and Windows event logs show drive failures and errors.
Relocated sectors and seek errors. Can't complete formatting. This time
though, SeaTools actually noted that one drive failed the tests. The other
is no longer seen by SeaTools or the system BIOS.

I cannot in any way trust these drives with my data, so I am asking Seagate
to replace with the prior 7200.10 series which appears to have a better
track record in the forums than the unreliable 7200.11s. I'll keep my
fingers crossed I guess.

Tony

 

[Yousuf Khan]

My nightmare with 7200.11 drives continues! I am RMAing today, yet
another set of 2 drives that Seagate sent me as replacements. I've lost
count of how many drives have failed (7 now?). Literally, not one
7200.11 I have received has lasted for more than a couple of weeks, and
all but one have died or started degrading immediately. Now the one that
actually lived for 2 weeks is dead. I noticed also that other people are
having the same kinds of problems with other models (500 GB) of the
7200.11 series of drives.

Same failures as before: BIOS and Seatools only intermittantly see the
drives. RAID card and Windows event logs show drive failures and errors.
Relocated sectors and seek errors. Can't complete formatting. This time
though, SeaTools actually noted that one drive failed the tests. The
other is no longer seen by SeaTools or the system BIOS.

I cannot in any way trust these drives with my data, so I am asking
Seagate to replace with the prior 7200.10 series which appears to have a
better track record in the forums than the unreliable 7200.11s. I'll
keep my fingers crossed I guess.

Just throwing some ideas out.

What else (physically) has remained common between these sets of drives?
Have you tested the SATA cable(s)? What about the SATA port that they
are being attached to? Maybe your power supply is good enough for your
previous drives, but it gets saturated when you put these additional
drives in? Is there enough cooling in the locations you put the drives
into? So maybe try moving the drives around a bit?

Yousuf Khan

 

[Tony]

No offense but either something in your system is killing them or I am
calling
shennanigans on this one.

Go read the NewEgg forums. I'm not the only one experiencing the high
failure rate. I have put all kinds of SATA and PATA drives in my machine
without a hitch. It's only the latest Seagate ones I'm getting that are
failing. It doesn't matter whether they get attached to the RAID card or the
motherboard SATA, they just go away quickly/immediately: the last one I
received logged reallocated sectors IMMEDIATELY. Here are a FEW of
MANY similar experiences with these drives logged recently at NewEgg:

"Another Failure

Pros: Fast, for a few days

Cons: Died after a few days, Seagate diags said it overheated which is
strange, none of the other five drives in same enclosure did. Sometimes
would pass other diags, then repeated attempts to erase failed."


"Caveat Emptor

Pros: Does what I need it to without any issues.

Cons: I bought one two years ago and it's still running strong with no
problems, but the one I bought this past summer suddenly died in about
two months."


"WOW. DO NOT BUY!!

Pros: Very fast for about an hour.

Cons: They dont last more then an hour. 1 only lasted 5 mins.

Other Thoughts: Basically bought 2hds for raid0..both failed. i sent one
back to seagate one to newegg neweggs drive failed within 5 mins seagates
seems to work so far.."

 

[Tony]

Just throwing some ideas out.

What else (physically) has remained common between these sets of drives?

They are the same brand and model with the same firmware and the same
origin of production. The shipping carrier has been the same. Not any errors
logged without the Seagates in my daily use system and multiple components
are new now than when this situation began (cables, fans, power supply). I
have used the same APC 750VA UPS.

Have you tested the SATA cable(s)?

I didn't "test" with a tester but have tried existing cables used on drives
in the
machine that have worked and are working without problem with other drives
and also tried the new cables that came with the SATA RAID card.

What about the SATA port that they are being attached to?

Tried on both the RAID card and on the motherboard SATA. Original drives
failed while attached to the RAID card and others have failed as single
drives on the motherboard SATA ports.

Maybe your power supply is good enough for your previous drives, but it
gets saturated when you put these additional drives in?

Brand new Enermax 425W Modu 80+ with 3 rails. Power supply was
a different unit when I first starting buying these drives. These
single-platter,
modern-technology drives don't use much power, even at spinup.

Is there enough cooling in the locations you put the drives into?

Entry-level Chenbro SOHO server case with fan that blows over the hard
disks with a dedicated fan from the front of the case thru the hard drive
cage. The drives run at 31 deg C.

So maybe try moving the drives around a bit?

Original failures were in a hot-swap cage and the latest failures
were in the non-hotswap cage. Cooling is way above the level of
pretty much all desktop cases with a 120 mm at the rear of the
case, the dedicated hard drive fan and the power supply with a
120 mm fan in it. Yes I run the fans at low speed but there is
plenty of airflow as temps of everything are in the low 30's.

Again (and again) though, that there are so many buyers of these
drives experiencing similar failures says something is up elsewhere.

I told Seagate that if they intend to ship me yet 2 more drives of
the same kind, they may want to send them via another carrier
in case they are being mishandled in some way in shipment.
I told them that I don't intend to keep sending these drives back
to them at ten bucks a pop, and my time is valuable and my
data needs a reliable place to reside! I also asked for a final
solution to the problem perhaps sending out a different model
or refunding my out-of-pocket costs so I can go out and buy
another brand (that may be the ultimate test that I will be
performing if Seagate gives me a refund). They are going
to contact me again later today.

Tony

 

[Andrew Hamilton]

drives.

Go read the NewEgg forums. I'm not the only one experiencing the high
failure rate. I have put all kinds of SATA and PATA drives in my machine
without a hitch. It's only the latest Seagate ones I'm getting that are
failing. It doesn't matter whether they get attached to the RAID card or the
motherboard SATA, they just go away quickly/immediately: the last one I
received logged reallocated sectors IMMEDIATELY. Here are a FEW of
MANY similar experiences with these drives logged recently at NewEgg:

Right now I'm running four Seagate 7200.? 320 GB models in my Antec
P180 case, with zero problems. But my digital photo library is
growing so fast that I thought I should upgrade one or two of the
drives to 1 TB.

I was all set to order two of the Seagate 7200.11 1 TB drives, UNTIL I
read those same reports. Now I won't.

To all the people blaming the OP for being problem, just spend some
time on the egghead site and read product reviews. Most are pretty
positive, or point out a few design flaws. It's rare that you read
about product _failure rates_.

The fact that so many people are reporting problems IS statistically
significant. What the cause is, I don't know and I suspect Seagate
engineers do know and are struggling to fix it.

In the meantime, I'm wondering if the Hitachi 1 TB drive would be a
good choice. $30 more than the Seagate, at newegg, but absolutely
worth it if the drive is solid and reliable.

-AH

 

[Rod Speed]

Right now I'm running four Seagate 7200.? 320 GB models in my Antec
P180 case, with zero problems. But my digital photo library is
growing so fast that I thought I should upgrade one or two of the
drives to 1 TB.

I was all set to order two of the Seagate 7200.11 1 TB drives, UNTIL I
read those same reports. Now I won't.

To all the people blaming the OP for being problem, just spend some
time on the egghead site and read product reviews. Most are pretty
positive, or point out a few design flaws. It's rare that you read
about product _failure rates_.

The fact that so many people are reporting problems IS statistically
significant. What the cause is, I don't know and I suspect Seagate
engineers do know and are struggling to fix it.

In the meantime, I'm wondering if the Hitachi 1 TB drive would be a
good choice. $30 more than the Seagate, at newegg, but absolutely
worth it if the drive is solid and reliable.

I prefer Samsung myself.