Seagate Failure Rate

[vacunita]

first let me tell you about my setup.
Self Built Machine
P4 2.0ghz
512MB RAM
Triple Boot Win98,WinXP,Win2003 Server (for testing purposes).
2 Hard drives Seagate Barracuda.
80GB and 120GB.

The 80GB is partitioned in 2. 20Gb for Win98. and 60Gb for WinXP.

The 120 was one big partition for all my files, and Win 2003 server OS.

It's been working fine for the past 2 years. About 8 months ago I bought the 120GB to move my files over, and install Win2003. I was running low on space on D: (win XP Pro).

The 120GB Seagate drive died within a couple of weeks, started giving off damaged sector warnings all over the place. I ran seagate's tool on it, and it said it was failing.
Long story short I had it replaced. So now a brand new Seagate 120GB, is working great for 6 moths and again it starts to slow down, and out of nowhere it starts showing damaged sectors again. Before it got worst I cloned the drive to a spare 80GB (I only had about 40GB of files in the 120) Seagate from work. The Same App I used to clone it gave out a warning of about the first 500,000 sectors were unreadable and then the rest was just read some complain about others.

So again i have another doorstop, that I can't return, as it has gone past its Warranty date.

But i'm wondering if theres anything wrong with the 120Gb seagte drives. Is there a bad batch. As also a few of my clients who own these have suffered problems with them. While all the 80GB I have at work and the one for my home Pc have worked flawlessly for well over 2 years. Is it just these 120gb that have problems?

And now that I have to buy a new Drive for my home PC, any particular brand you'd recommend 120-160GB?


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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[vacunita]

Ohh it got poted twice, disregard the other thread.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[paparazi]

Not the we noticed!! we sold quite a few 120gig Seagate Barracuda's 7200.7 's ? and were not aware of excessive returns with this model.
Obviously this model is now obsolete
For those that have this particular drive, I wouldn't worry, two drives is just bad luck I'm afraid.

Martin

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[vacunita]

Two drives would not make me wonder if there is something wrong, but when i got 4 clients with bad 120Gb drives along with 2 of mine, all within a year of being purchased, its starts to get suspicious. While older 80Gb drives are still running smoothly well over the 2 year mark.

Anyway, any particular recommendations on a replacement drive. to be used mainly for data. Must be IDE as the PC only has IDE cnnectors.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[bpinning]

Hey,

New Segate or Maxator 200Gb drives are good, we build heaps of machines with them.

Brett

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http://www.eyetstore.com

NSW, Australia
(Unless you want to pay for our trip?)
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[attrofy]

Just out of curiosity, do you have adequate cooling on these drives? Have 6 of the 120gb Seagates running 24-7 for 8 months, and only glitch was a building overheat that fried two of the drives in a RAID (the drives still worked, just got an unrecoverable RAID array - but was able to salvage the data). Also, we have 2 more Seagate 300GB drives running 24-7 as external drive backups and have been running for about 10 months now.

 

[vacunita]

Thats an interesting idea as to the cause. the 120gb were placed in a CD-Rom bay in the case. had about an inch from top of bay to drive and from bottom of bay. Fastened to one side. Could there be poor airflow into the bay creating extra heat to the drives. When I took out this last one it was rather hot. but drives usually get hot.

But it could be a heat problem. I guess i could try to get another fan and place it in front of the bays and see if that reduces the temperature of the drives.




----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[paparazi]

Very much soo, I would say drives mounted like you describe would be in a "dead spot" of static non moving air.
Drives mounted lower down have the benefit of cooler air anyway (hot air rises)typical case design's always have the intake at the front and low down, so even if there isn't a fan mounted at this point, the cool air is naturally drawn from this point across any drives mounted in these bays.
This movement of air is vital for cooling as hard drives generate heat in operation.
Martin


We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[vacunita]

I guess i'll have to reconfigure the internal setup of the case. Move the DVD+-rw up one slot, push the CD-RW to where the DVD+-RW used to be, and put the new drive under the cd-roms bay's above the other hard drive. How much space should i leave between the hard drives for proper air flow?




----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[firewolfrl]

Hmmm! All my case configurations and purchases I require that there be some type of cooling mechanism for the harddrive. heat is the number one killer for drives (alas the optical drives get forgotten in the cooling schemes...DVD/CDR burners get hot too)
I purchase Seagate's for both cost and stability for my corporate clients.
I avoid Maxtors and especially Samsungs

The second biggest drive killer is the AC voltage drop. from fridges to washing machines (any household device that has a motor that draws a hard current for startup)
all my customers that have UPS (battery backups)... very seldom do I have to worry about drive failure...
Now, the customers that I have that don't have UPS I have seen a fairly high failure of drives. part of this is contributed to rural farm houses and shops with well pumps

just to note... a power drop can be more damaging than a spike (more frequent too) and faster than you can see or blink

 

[attrofy]

firewolfrl,

I have seen similar situations - and most of our settings have been in rural areas. As such, we are subject to evertyhing from power outages due to high winds to power surges and spikes from EMF ligthning strikes, brown outs, etc. As such, as standard practice, any PC goes with some form of UPS - the important thing for mission critical PC's is to find a UPS with voltage regulation. These will "straighten out" even the most problematic grid power issues. The better UPS's show line-in vs line-out, and it is amazing how well even an inexpensive UPS can work for resolving the most sporadic grid issues. This does become an extremely important factor when the A/C kicks on, or as you mentioned a pump or other essential voltage drain.

As with all things, the technology is progressing very quickly in this area, and as such, what was several hundred dollars a few years ago is now just over $100. A worthwhile investment at any level, but something worth a bit of research to ensure your needs are adequately covered.