Seagate Improving?

[Bluejay0]

So i was going to get a WD Black for my build. Then i came across a Seagate Barracuda. I knew that Seagate had a horrible reputation, but just to save money i went for it. I took it from my office and went home. I finallt finished my build which took me 6 Months and I still need upgrades. Seems to me everything is running accordingly. I've had this for maybe a week now? It's running perfectly so my question to you is:

 

 What are your vies on the giants in storage solutions? Which is better and why? What do you use?

 

 

 

 

I would love to see the community putting their part in this. Mods are glad to join in!

[xToFxREAPER]

So i was going to get a WD Black for my build. Then i came across a Seagate Barracuda. I knew that Seagate had a horrible reputation, but just to save money i went for it. I took it from my office and went home. I finallt finished my build which took me 6 Months and I still need upgrades. Seems to me everything is running accordingly. I've had this for maybe a week now? It's running perfectly so my question to you is:

 

 What are your vies on the giants in storage solutions? Which is better and why? What do you use?

 

 

 

 

I would love to see the community putting their part in this. Mods are glad to join in!

ive been using seagate barracuda exclusively for about 2 years now while my dads been using wd blacks, hes had more drives fail and cause problems then i have. hes had 4 in the past 6 months that were bought the same day as all mine were.. i havent had a single failure as yet. Maybe im lucky? or maybe hes really unlucky i dont really know but either way im not to brand conscious i just picked seagate cause it was that couple bucks cheaper at first and now i see now reason to change cause they have served me faithfully

[wpirobotbuilder]

They both produce good, reliable drives. They wouldn't be doing much business if they weren't.

 

The only difference is in the product line and the performance. WD has sought to spread out their product line while Seagate is consolidating it.

 

• You can get WD black with a longer warranty and better performance in some cases than the equivalent capacity Seagate drive but costs more.
• You can get Green drives suited to lower-cost, quiet, low-power mass storage but less performance than Seagate drives.

•  You can get quiet NAS-optimized Red drives with some enterprise features and unbeatable tech support over Seagate drives.

• You can get generic Blue drives with a balance of performance, capacity and price.

Whereas Seagate is making things simpler by making only one type of consumer drive, which (might) make their drives cheaper because there is less manufacturing diversity. That doesn't make their drives bad, but rather makes it easier for consumers to choose since they only need to worry about the capacity.

[swifty7]

I don't know about anybody else but lately I've been nabbing seagate 3tb hdd's left and right  used like new from Amazon for prices like $102(free shipping) and so far every drive  has worked flawlessly(knock on wood).  I of course always conduct a read/write surface test before I use it for backup or storage.  It usually takes several hours to complete which is kind of annoying but worth it and I always use a real time hdd monitoring utility to check for errors and high temps.

[typetheed]

As long as you're getting  the drives have single-terabyte platters, then your fine...

 

These are the Seagate Barracuda's that I would recommend... they all have 64MB caches, SATA3-6Gbps, and run at 7200rpm.

 

ST1000DM003 1TB (1 platter/ 2 heads)

 

ST2000DM001 2TB (2 platters/ 4 heads)

 

ST3000DM001 3TB (3 platters/ 6 heads)

[Bluejay0]

As long as you're getting  the drives have single-terabyte platters, then your fine...

 

These are the Seagate Barracuda's that I would recommend... they all have 64MB caches, SATA3-6Gbps, and run at 7200rpm.

 

ST1000DM003 1TB (1 platter/ 2 heads)

 

ST2000DM001 2TB (2 platters/ 4 heads)

 

ST3000DM001 3TB (3 platters/ 6 heads)

 

 

 

Go ahead and check my setup :P

[DeViLzzz]

I definitely need more room for all the games I own and need many of them installed on 2 pcs.  Thing is I just can't get myself to buy Seagate though and that is all I can afford right now. :Z  They may have improved their products but hard to trust them when they made such a poor product not that long ago.

[CWP]

I have been a big fan of WD, always recommending them to my friends and family. Part of it was due to Seagate's 7200.11/12 fiasco (in fact, I was asked to perform data recovery on a few drives from that period). However, to me, Seagate has not been improving at all. I was given one of the "1TB/platter" drives to do a data recovery on, but the electronics decided to go *poof* as soon as I applied power (not a PEBKAC issue, mind you).

The most damning thing is that I recently recommended my friend buy an SSHD to replace the dying one in his laptop. However, after about three weeks since the purchase, he reported that the OS cannot be found. The drive had mysteriously disappeared. Imagine my humiliation as a WD advocate, recommending the other camp's drive to a friend, and then have said drive fail so quickly. You will not see me buying or recommending another Seagate drives again for many more years to come. No amount of blackmail, torture, or on pain of death will change that.

However, I will admit that I like Seagate's RMA options, particularly the ability to purchase a return shipping label at a reduced cost (when compared to other tracking-enabled parcel delivery companies, including the one that Seagate chooses for the return shipping label). I have yet to see WD offering this in their line of RMA options.

 

 

On the other hand, one of my tech friends had the complete opposite score: multiple bad WDs, and extremely satisfied with Seagate quality (no, I do not have any anecdotes from him). In my corner of the world, and as far as our mutual friends are concerned, these two HDD giants are equal (except for that SSHD fiasco; I am waiting for my friend to top that blunder).

[swifty7]

got my 3rd used like new 3TB seagate today.  It was packaged meticulously.  I will be running the usual tests on it before I use it.  

[DeViLzzz]

I looked at NCIX today and thought about ordering a 3 TB Seagate and so far could not pull the trigger.  I just ... can't ... do it :O

[looney]

Seagate's quality is very high right now.

[swifty7]

surface write/read test passed to perfection,  it took hours upon hours upon hours but well worth it.  I better stop praising seagate before I jinx myself and loose all data.

[swifty7]

I looked at NCIX today and thought about ordering a 3 TB Seagate and so far could not pull the trigger.  I just ... can't ... do it :o

why don't you buy used like new from Amazon for dirt cheap?  I bought two of my drives from them and both are flawless so far(knock on wood)

 

but make sure you buy it from Amazon direct,  that way if something is wrong with the drive, you can easily return it for a replacement or full refund, 

[jbr]

They are all just as risky.

 

Ever since the 500GB mark was broken you risk drives just dying for no apparent reason.

 

The last 1TB Seagate drive I bought died in less then a month, I filled it up with 40 large files and and then poof.

 

HDD's are dead men walking.

[DeViLzzz]

why don't you buy used like new from Amazon for dirt cheap?  I bought two of my drives from them and both are flawless so far(knock on wood)

 

but make sure you buy it from Amazon direct,  that way if something is wrong with the drive, you can easily return it for a replacement or full refund, 

I assume you are talking about Amazon USA.  I don't have an address close by that I can have the drive mailed to ... well maybe I could but ....

As for Amazon direct ... what is that ?

[swifty7]

what I mean by Amazon direct is merchandise sold online directly by Amazon themselves and not from one of their pre-approved sub stores.  I got my HDD's  for $102 free shipping a pop.

[DeViLzzz]

what I mean by Amazon direct is merchandise sold online directly by Amazon themselves and not from one of their pre-approved sub stores.  I got my HDD's  for $102 free shipping a pop.

 

Amazon Canada or USA though ?

[Glenwing]

I'm not aware they ever had a bad reputation.  There are always complaints about N number of hard drives from X manufacturer failed in a row... Horror stories of multiple failed drives from both sides, and then stories about how X manufacturer has never failed on them when the other has, from both sides...

 

Chains of failures are due to your local post crew, not the manufacturer.

 

I've used both Seagate and WD and never had a failure from either one in my life...

[danthe1man1989]

I'm not aware they ever had a bad reputation.  There are always complaints about N number of hard drives from X manufacturer failed in a row... Horror stories of multiple failed drives from both sides, and then stories about how X manufacturer has never failed on them when the other has, from both sides...

 

Chains of failures are due to your local post crew, not the manufacturer.

 

I've used both Seagate and WD and never had a failure from either one in my life...

Same here other than a 2Tb external drive that got pushed off the bench

[DeViLzzz]

I actually have had a 640 GB or whatever size (something around that) Western Digital Caviar Black fail on me right out of the box.  No matter what I tried I could not get an OS to install to it or anything.  The replacement NCIX gave me worked like a charm.  It was the exact same brand and drive size.

Thing is though even with that experience I know that Western Digital has never had a situation like Seagate had a few years back where review after review you would see said there were all sorts of problems with the drives and Linus Tech Tips and other groups/individuals who review hardware acknowledge this so ... :Z

[DeViLzzz]

http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=14120DR6651   

 

 I found this and was going to price match at Memory Express which says they will match all shipping offers also now too.  The shipping for this item is free.  Now when I try to price match and complete the order at Memory Express they want me to choose a shipping option and they cost money but I don't want them to charge me shipping when they say they will match all shipping offers.  Wth do I do here ?

Update:

 

 Memory Express does not take debit/credit cards and so I just went ahead and ordered the drive from DirectCanada.  I would have saved $2.50 or so if I would have been able to purchase it through Memory Express but by the time I loaded enough money to cover the cost of the drive maybe they would have been out of drives or the price would have changed so whatever.

 Oh and the breaking point for me today as to why I finally decided to give Seagate a shot was that of course they offer great value on their drives in terms of cost per TB but the other thing is I had a situation where I wasn't installing anything but my hard drive kept saying it was almost full and I was getting warnings and the only thing that helped get rid of that was to delete user history in all my browsers and transfer a 400+ MB video file to internet storage.  That all was the straw that broke the camels back.  No more fussing with storage and uninstalling and then installing games again later.  Heck before Xmas I think I will need one of these drives for my son's computer despite the pack he will be getting my current drive which will give him 1.350 TB or so as we just need so much room for all our games and I also will look at adding another to my system.  I want to be able to install anything I want and leave it there on both pcs.

[terrytek]

I think both companies have a reputation of being quality HDD companies. However, I would be on the Seagate side because of their reliability. I like that they have a 5 year warranty on their drives. Personally, in my experience, I had 2 Seagate drives that have never crapped out (does Maxtor count, too?), but Western Digital tends to crap out on me. It's like this, I buy a new Western Digital, install my OS and drivers and everything, then after a few months, poof, the OS and everything disappears, and the hard drive dies on me. On the other hand, I have some old IDE Maxtor drives made by Seagate, and they do tend to make a lot of noise. But, I have a SCSI-3 Ultra Seagate Cheetah 15K hard drive. The way it spins up, GEEZ, IT'S SOOOOOOOOO NOISY!!!!!!!!!. It starts off with a big whirrrrrrrrrr, then goes like a fire truck horn. I mean it's so noisy i thought something got jammed inside of it. It annoys the shit out of me and it makes me want to throw it off a cliff. GEEZ. The point is, both companies tend to make good hard drives, but sometimes, people are either lucky or unlucky to have their drives either die or keep on moving.

 

-Terrytek