Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives said to be failing at an alarming rate
By Donald Melanson 
posted January 16th 2009 2:09PM
posted January 16th 2009 2:09PM
Rumors flying, sensational headlines, dogs and cats living together. Yes, its another apparent rash of hard drive failures -- this one centered on Seagate's spacious 1TB Barracuda 7200.11 drives. Apparently, the problem lies in a faulty firmware found on drives manufactured in Thailand, which causes them to fail before they're even able to boot up and leaves them completely inoperable, with some extensive data recovery measures the only option for those looking to hang onto their data. What's more, while Seagate is now said to be updating the firmware on newly manufactured drives, it's apparently not possible to update the firmware on the toasted drives, as they're not even able to be detected by the BIOS once they fail. Seagate still doesn't seem to be addressing the issue publicly, however, and as Tom's Hardware points out, they haven't yet issued a recall on unsold drives, so anyone planning on upgrading or building a new PC may want to proceed with caution.
[Via The Register]
[Via The Register]
The 7200.12 drives are out with 500GB per platter. Why would anybody still buy 7200.11 drives?
Because they haven't released the two-platter 1TB drives yet? That's what the article is about, although the 500GB 7200.12 drives are crazy fast.
Where are the stupid Seagate fanboys now?
WESTERN DIGITAL FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WESTERN DIGITAL FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just bought a WB 1TB Black Retail. Opened it up, DOA... Just clicks.
WHERE'S THE WD FANBOYS NOW?!?!?!?!?!?!?/111/1?!?/1/1/?!!?!??!
i've actually had a good working Samsung drive since 10/23/2007 ...i'd really recommend their drives. They always made really good electronics products in all other areas so when i seen that they were making hard drives i decided to go with the name i trusted an i'm happy to say it's worked out great..fast as can be an reliable as the day i bought it..i'd really recommend lookin into them if you're in the market for a hard drive. there's not just 2 companies making these things well people, just keep that in mind
"Where are the stupid Seagate fanboys now?"
Looking with a pleased eye at the 5 year warrenty that Seagate has vs. WD's 3 year warrenty...
True, it doesnt help if you did not back up your 1 TB drive, or at least have it in a RAID array, but those extra 2 years make a heck of a difference.
I love WD, but don't you know that seagate(more like failgate) bought WD.... I still trust WD they havn't let me down once in 20 years
@Paul
Clearly you haven't done your research. Many WD drives have a 5-year warranty.
http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp
WESTERN DIGITAL FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Where are the stupid Seagate fanboys now?
@James Dumoulin
I don't know where you get your information, but Seagate definitely does not own Western Digital. Maybe it's Maxtor you're thinking of?
In any case,
WESTERN DIGITAL FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@ Paul
Seagate's consumer level drives's warranty was cut down to 3 years, effectively in 2009.
Clearly, Billy Fiul is the equivalent of an Apple Fanboy for the hard drive area....
@Billy Fiul:
You, sir, seriously need to get laid.
speaking of Maxtor, they have the best...oh wait, no they don't. but they never...oh wait, they always do. They are so much better than...oh wait, no they're not.
Damn it! I was trying to be a Maxtor fanboy just to add spice to the flame war, but noone would believe me anyway.
I CANNOT stand hard drive company fanboys, especially when they say "your drive failed? x company sucks! you should have bought from y company". Every hard drive company is capable of putting out a piece of shit. With almost any manufacturer, you can find a series of drives that is noted for having nothing but problems: whether it be Hitachi/IBM's 75GXP "Deathstar" series, WD's 2.5GB drives a long time ago, or Quantum's problematic drives a very long time ago. For Seagate, the 7200.11 drives are one of them. As for drives that are DOA or die at an earlier time than they should...that can (and does) happen with any make or model of hard drive. I used to have a slight preference for Seagate drives....I'll just avoid the current generation of their drives, but still consider them as long as they prove themselves as a reliable manufacturer in the future.
@ James Dumoulin
Dude, Seagate bought Maxtor. Western Digital is their biggest competitor....
Also, been running 2 250GB WD's for over 2 years now, still running nice and strong. Never given Seagate a try for many have bad Newegg reviews (or just not as many good ones as WD). I hear the Samsungs are good, but they havn't built up a strong enough reputation to be trusted vs. WD or Seagate, depending on if you like Caviar or Barracuda...
@knightsray
5 seagate drives non of them older than 3 years all dead in all different kind of forms
Wait, if the drives fail before the first boot. How would you get data on it that you would need to get off?
After spending my career in the hard drive industry (most of it Quality no less), and now thankfully out of that business, my experience was that every drive company makes good drives and stinkers on any given day. Newly introduced products are the worst of all. Every company has their disasters on this model or that, and just when you think one company has it together, they fold on the quality on the next model.
The only thing that you can generally rely on is that drives which have been in production for more than 6 months are the most reliable. They do monitor their quality performance and over time do fix issues and make improvements.
The problem is that the companies are under immense pressure to get new stuff to market with ever changing technology, and the first few months production is usually crap. They simply can't take the time to get it right before starting production.
The major computer OEM's (Apple, Dell, etc.) demand extra testing on newer drives and generally are conservative in moving to new models, but obviously Apple isn't conservative enough sometimes. On new models, the distribution and retail markets get the stuff that doesn't meet OEM standards. The add-on storage market, including the external offerings from the drive manufacturers, get the Grade B stuff. So beware.
Bottom line... don't buy the newest and fastest unless you want to roll the dice with your data. Doesn't matter what company you buy from.
Shadar
Oh I've known this for ages. I work at a fairly large Canadian reseller of Seagate drives and they've been coming back in alarming quantities over the last few months. That's why we all guessed they were shortening their warranty period--not only for the cost-cutting, but because their quality sucks now.
The buyers for my company are in a frenzy right now. Seagate is refusing to take drives back, and 50% of our shipped Q4 product is at risk. This also applies to their enterprise drives, I don't know if that's out there yet. Bastards.
It's not just the 1TB drives, either. I ordered a new 650GB drive in November for a new build, and all it did was go "click... click... click...". Got a replacement from the retailer in early December.
Guess what? This week, "click... click... click..."
Not impressed, Seagate.
i feel VERY sorry for anyone losing 1TB of data, thats gota hurt, thats a mistake you'd only make once haha *mumbles backups*
Ooo barracuda!
Duh, duh-duh-duh, duh-duh-duh, duh-duh-duh, duh-duh-duh, duh-duh-duh, duh-duh, duh, duh, Duh....baaannnggg, whoaaiiyyyyyyy....
Mass hysteria!
The solution to this for a DIY PC builder is simple:
Buy Western Digital.
You are 100% correct. When I bought my 1TB last year I debated between Seagate and Western Digital. I'm glad I paid close attention to reviews and bought WD as I normally buy Seagate. The fact is the Seagate has had higher amount of bad reviews on sites like Newegg for a while now.
Yes, clearly one flop with a seagate drive and suddenly they're crap. One flop that erases years of shitty WD drives.
Sorry, I still have no problem with Seagate drives, still running 4 of them in my personal machines and many more else where.
Not once. They had problems with their 80 GB laptop harddrives around 1.5 years ago.
In the last couple of years I bought nothing but 7200.10 & 11 drives. I'm well aware all drives fail, but the number that are displaying the faults outlined above are far above normal.
I'm ready to call this Deathstar V2.0.
Deathstar is a trademark of The Empire Inc. and cannot be used in any way without prior written permission.
Mine failed 2 out of 24, all with the firmware number 15.
i still have a deathstar 45gb running fine ^^
so i hope the wd 1tb green edition is good to go?
Sonce this post is about Seagate, yes, your Western is safe.
Duh.
@Arkenklo
It's spelled since, idiot.
And also, "Duh." is not a grammatically correct sentence, idiot.
funny arkenklo, i know that. but some may want to go shopping rather sooner than later and don't want a defective drive ;)
btw the last part of your name 'klo' means toilet in german :-p
@Grammar Nazi
Starting a sentence with a conjunction (in your case, "and") is not grammatically correct. Idiot.
@GoateeMan
I believe you're incorrect. The conjunction "And" can be used, and is not gramatically incorrect. It is however frowned upon, and preference is given to something like "In Addition".
I might be wrong, but I think GrammerNazi is correct here.
I hope this isn't true about their laptop drives. I'm waiting for their 500 GB 7200 RPM drive which should be out in a month!
People use it a lot nowadays, so it's become sort of acceptable (I don't personally have any problems with it), but it's still *technically* incorrect. Normally I wouldn't comment on something so minuscule, but since GN felt the need to act like a presumptuous ass, I thought I ought to point out that he himself is incorrect. It's also worth noting how much better he could have worded his comment had he omitted the "and" altogether and just used "also" instead.
Have you guys seen Seagate return different model numbers / sizes than the original drives you sent back?
I'm seeing lots of drives coming back from seagate that are totally different than the ones we sent in.
Send in a 400gb drive and get a 500gb back.
Send in a 500gb drive and get a 750gb AS back
Send in a 320GB ES, get a 500GB ES.
I can only hope. I just RMA'd my (second) 650GB back to them yesterday.
If they send me back, say, a 1TB with updated firmware, I just MIGHT forgive them ;-)
Does this apply to the 1.5T 7200.11 drives as well?
Figures, the 1TB 7200.11 was the first Seagate product I've ever bought.
I bought one of these drives and it failed within 3 days. Seagate's horrible warranty service has practically barred me from returning it. It's been sitting here dead of almost 2 months now.
reminds me of the maxtor [320gb] hard drives that i keep in hopes to one day recovering the files from them
they were used in my 1st serato setup
hours upon hours of time spent on crate builds, edits & mp3 tags lost
all the more reason to favor SSDs even though the cost is extreme.
the failure rate is less dramatic.
and yes i know you wont get faster data transfer rates by getting a SSD.
it's just more peace of mind for data recovery.
Actually, if an SSD fails it is nearly impossible to recover the data.
i meant that to get to a point to where the [SSD] drive fails takes a whole lot more than powering your system up.
my friend unplugged my external [maxtor] w/out ejecting it 1st.
insta-brick