Is Seagate really this bad or i just got really unlucky?

[jagdtigger]

Hi all.

 

So in a nutshell, in June 2017 i ordered 4 10TB ironwolf drives. This year one of them gone cactus before warranty expired. The second started failing after the warranty expired, currently has 2800 reallocated sectors, long smart test doesnt find anything. IDK about the big picture but 2 hdd out of 4 becoming faulty right around the end of the 3 year warranty period is a bit too much for coincidence IMO.

 

 I will look around a bit but its almost certain that the replacement drive wont be coming from seagate......

[Morrie Sells Wigs]

1 minute ago, jagdtigger said:

Hi all.

 

So in a nutshell, in June 2017 i ordered 4 10TB ironwolf drives. This year one of them gone cactus before warranty expired. The second started failing after the warranty expired, currently has 2800 reallocated sectors, long smart test doesnt find anything. IDK about the big picture but 2 hdd out of 4 becoming faulty right around the end of the 3 year warranty period is a bit too much for coincidence IMO.

 

 I will look around a bit but its almost certain that the replacement drive wont be coming from seagate......

Statistically, 2 out of 4 after just 3 years does seem unlikely?

 

That said, Seagate are pretty established aren't they?

 

So, it's not like they have a reputation for faulty products. 

 

Seems it might be best trying another company if you are uneasy. 

 

 

[dizmo]

Look at the serial numbers. If they're all made around the same time it could just be an unfortunate run.

What does it mean to "go cactus"? I get what you're saying (went bad) I just don't see how a cactus represents that.

[jagdtigger]

6 minutes ago, dizmo said:

What does it mean to "go cactus"? I get what you're saying (went bad) I just don't see how a cactus represents that.

Some ozzie (Australian) slang.

 

6 minutes ago, dizmo said:

Look at the serial numbers. If they're all made around the same time it could just be an unfortunate run.

The first one was ZA21DJFJ, this current one is ZA21DL96.

 

35 minutes ago, Maury Sells Wigs said:

That said, Seagate are pretty established aren't they?

 

So, it's not like they have a reputation for faulty products. 

It can happen regardless of reputation......   I mean i have a wd green used for torrenting, it has 38000+ power on hours without a single bad sector. The faulty seagate has only 28279  and it was designed to be more sturdy than a green but it still failed rather quickly.

[Morrie Sells Wigs]

1 hour ago, jagdtigger said:

Some ozzie (Australian) slang.

 

The first one was ZA21DJFJ, this current one is ZA21DL96.

 

It can happen regardless of reputation......   I mean i have a wd green used for torrenting, it has 38000+ power on hours without a single bad sector. The faulty seagate has only 28279  and it was designed to be more sturdy than a green but it still failed rather quickly.

I know, but what I meant was some products, some companies, have a reputation for unreliable products...Seagate isn't one of them.

[SteveiJobs]

I've had similar experience with Seagate and sometimes going through a data loss like that can make you a bit sour on a brand. I've never had a single WD drive fail in 15+ years of using them almost exclusively FWIW. Look at statistics from data warehouses that publicly share their failed drive data.

[Jarsky]

On 11/2/2020 at 7:24 AM, jagdtigger said:

Some ozzie (Australian) slang.

I was just thinking you seem more aussie than hungarian with the proper english, and using the word 'cactus' 

 

 

On topic though, there was a very well documented firmware issue with the old Seagate Barracuda 3TB (ST3000DM001) drives (Reported by Backblaze: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/3tb-hard-drive-failure )

 

It appears there is a known issue with the older Seagate IronWolf 10TB drives running the SC60 firmware that can cause CRC errors.  The fix is to update it to the SC61 firmware.

10TB IronWolf (ST10000VN0004) : https://apps1.seagate.com/downloads/certificate.html?key=1237891795995

10TB IronWolf Pro (ST10000NE0004) : https://apps1.seagate.com/downloads/certificate.html?key=1308638701702

[jagdtigger]

On 11/2/2020 at 10:54 PM, Jarsky said:

I was just thinking you seem more aussie than hungarian with the proper english, and using the word 'cactus' 

Im definitely hungarian  to the bone.....

 

On 11/2/2020 at 10:54 PM, Jarsky said:

It appears there is a known issue with the older Seagate IronWolf 10TB drives running the SC60 firmware that can cause CRC errors.  The fix is to update it to the SC61 firmware.

All of the drives are on sc60, cant risk destroying the data by updating though....

[Jarsky]

Your data should be fine, but if you don't want to risk it then yeah make a copy of the disk before updating its firmware. 

I've done this on old Seagates as well as some WD Green drives and have personally never lost data, but its never guaranteed of course 

[wanderingfool2]

3 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Im definitely hungarian  to the bone.....

 

All of the drives are on sc60, cant risk destroying the data by updating though....

If all were bought at the same time, it could also have been that it was dropped before buying.  I've seen a few drives that broke shortly after arrival.  There is also the chance of there being a bad batch and such.  (At least for IronWolf's I haven't had much of an issue).  I've had more issues with WD enterprise drives, but I don't think it's an issue (actually my WD drives failed due to faulty sectors on average 1 per year)

[looney]

I think you are just unlucky, my original batch of 45 4TB Seagate consumer drives are only just now starting to slowly fail me one by one every one or two months.

To me this seems reasonable as they have a power on time of 51xxx hours (5.8y) and I have not treated them kindly in that time with a reasonable amount of IO.

 

 

EDIT: apparently I still have 3 4TB drives running that I bought before those other 45 drives, they are at 6.3y and still going strong.