Seagate Not Reliable in SATA

Computer Hardware
#1

Hi I have purchased 2 Seagate serial ata over 1 year and all given me Disc Read Errors have occurred on Startup, But sometimes only happens once a week and sometimes quite a bit more, and restart computer and then Drive kicks in. One hard drive was a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120gig which purchased a year ago failed a week after I had it got a replacement then that done the same thing days after I got it I’m still using that drive as I speak as a slave as it doesn’t boot off it anymore as boot sector stuffed and tried repairing it with no success but does boot sometimes. I also bought a drive 2 weeks ago a Seagate 250gig barracuda 7200.10 serial ata and setup as my master drive and two days after I had it disc read error occurred. This is bizarre when the brand new drives I have had are doing this.
Someone at a computer shop said that Seagate’s are Reliable for speed but Not for Quality. He Recommends Western Digital. Please post reply’s and post your Vote for the best sata drive and any suggestions or people who have had same problems with serial ata drives I would be interested in knowing if others are experiencing these same problems

Thanks
Grant

#2

You must have been very unlucky then. I’ve got 2 Seagate SATA drives (7200.7 80Gb and 200Gb) and they have been fantastic.

Both are several years old now, and work marvellously. I personally would probably not touch anything but Seagate from my experience with them (both with my own computers, and many other work/friends PCs). They also come with a 5 yr warranty compared to everyone elses 3yr (at least they did when I got them)

#3

Seagate is great for me, Samsung too.

#4

Seagate has been working very well in SATA and SATA Raid :slight_smile:

#5

Hi everyone could anyone be a help to a solution to my Disc read error has occured problems as its only ocassional that I get this message and I myself have always have stuck by seagate but this is making me go off them

Thanks
Grant

#6

Sounds a lot more like some other hardware issue, or even software. Seagate has a set of diagnostic tools that can reliably identify a bad drive, and you should not assume a drive is bad unless it fails those tests. SATA controller issues, motherboard problems, Windows file system errors, bad PSU and bad BIOS all come to mind as possible causes of such problems. But one way to find out is to buy some other brand drive and see if it does the same thing.

#7

I had the same problems as you and it turned out to be the Molex connectors and PSU. These things are really picky about getting good power.

#8

I have a new Seagate sata, about 2 months old and it’s doing the same thing to me. It may go 2 weeks without happening, and then might reboot twice in the same day.

This never happened before putting the new drive in.

Ron

#9

I’ve experienced similar symptoms with two Seagate models recently, the 7200.8 300GB SATA and the 7200.9 500GB SATA II. After a lot of Googling I called Seagate support, who offered firmware updates for the drives to address “peculiarities” when paired with certain SATA controllers. The drives are now happily chugging away in my home machine, and I’m left with the feeling that Nvidia hasn’t been on the up-and-up with their integrated SATA controllers lately.

I’m not a fan of any particular HDD manufacturer. They all suck about equally. Warranties notwithstanding (Seagate’s 5-year warranty is more a PR job than an indicator of reliability/longevity, I think), I’ve been happy with drives from every major player. Samsung, WD, Seagate, Hitachi, etc., all make decent drives… buy the one that performs best for you.

#10

I was going to suggest PSU (as some others did above), but I have not had such issues affect me before, so I can’t be sure what the cause is.

I would generally agree with CDan’s post however. Try the Seagate website and maybe give the diagnostic tools a try:

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/utils.html

#11

thanks for advice people and would greatly appreciate anyone else who may have solutions and also anyone who having same problem as me. This problem maybe power supply who knows may even be problems with seagate SATA Drives

#12

I refuse to use any seagate products. One of my friends have had 2 from the same batch fail within a few days. Then the 2nd replacement failed after a few months, then that replacement (different model) failed a day after the original warranty ran out.
That’s just one of about 20 disappointments. Most not so extreme, but still nasty.

I made the mistake of buying a seagate HD for my parents. Damn thing runs like a 20MB HD, starting shortly after the 1yr warranty ran out.

A Seagate HD in one of 3 dell laptop PCs died shortly after the 1yr warranty ran out. 4yrs later, the replacement hitachi (cheap one at that) is still running fine.
2 out of 10 Dell desktop PC’s also died just after warranty ran out - Both seagate. Other 8 were IBM desktars & Maxtors.

On other companie, my high performance (at the time) WD broke down about 1 day after I bought it. The replacement (same batch) broke down 9 months later. WD sent a refurb drive which is still running strong 3 years later.

Maxtor & Fujitsu I’ve never had an issue with. Fujitsu no longer make desktop HD’s.

I’ve owned 5 maxtors, 2x PATA80GB(4years), 1xPATA120GB(3years) + 2x160GB-SATA(1.5years) and they are all still in use, and 4 WD’s, 2xPATA80GB (3years), 1xPATA120GB(2.5years) and my current SATA320GB.
Samsung & Hitachi, I’ve only tried in with 2.5" HD’s, so I can’t place a vote on these.

Maxtor & Fujistu HD’s won’t win any benchmarks, but they are dependable. Seagate & WD are definately among the fastest. Samsung I hear good things about, similar with hitachi.

But of course YMMV, so I’d hope that a long warranty ensures that the manufacturers have some confidence in their products.

#13

I have two SATA Seagate’s HD: a 120GHz (3 years old now) and a 200Ghz (3 months old). Both work flawlessly.

GB

#14

for laptop:

got a 20gig IBM 2.5inches for 5 years,still works fine.
1 toshiba 60gig 2.5, died after 1 year
and now a new seagate 100g 2.5 for 3 months…under test.

got the seagate for the 5 years warranty, sick of HD dying right after the warranty and nobody give u a damn shit…

#15

I’m interested to know, have all the main Seagate problems been with a particular model line?

Both my SATA Seagates are 7200.7 models, and (as said in an earlier post) work flawlessly

#16

I have 2 pata 7200.7’s that I run on sata raid (sata converters) that have worked just fine. If there is a brand that I had to say I didn’t like, it would have to be maxtor. I have old maxtors that have been running for years without problems but have had a few newer drives very prematurlly fail. I think that most manufactures have had specific models that were a little less reliable though. A good place to look is http://www.storagereview.com . You have to enter information on one of your drives to see the reliability survey but its worth the trouble. It might save you from buying a drive from a bad model line.

Looking on storage review, the seagate 7200.7 seem to average about 10 percent of drives failed within 3 years (overall for 120 gig and 160 gig sizes, 3 model lines for each). One specific model of 160 gig 7200.7 was about 15 percent while the other two were less than 8 percent. The 120’s were all about 10 percent or less. That is with about 1600 people reporting for the 7200.7 in those two sizes. Believe it or not, that is pretty good compared to any brand and model. I had a maxtor 120 gig diamond max 9 (cannot remember the exact model) that failed in less than a year. When I looked it up, it turned out to have about 30 percent failures within the first year.
These results may be a little sqewed as I’m guessing that people with drives that fail are more liklly to get mad and go looking for a place to report it, but still, its kind of scarry that even the best models are rated at close to 10 percent falure within a few years. this includes drives ranging from doa to death at any age within the specified time by the way.

To give a comparison though, the 7200.8 seem to be worse with falures somewhere between 15-20 percent (the larger sizes were worse with close to 20 percent). The segate cheeta 15k.3 with about 170 people reporting only had 4 reported falures with no falures for 1 out of the 3 models so as you can see it varries from model to model (the cheeta 15k.3 was the highest rated seagate).

edit, believe it or not, someone just posted a falure after 4 years use so the 15k.3 now has 5 falures.

#17

My Seagate’s good, but I was unable to set up the 320 gig drive as my windows boot drive. Had similar problems to what other users faced - HAL.dll error, Unable to load OS, etc. Tried all BIOS settings etc, no luck. Other than that its good and fast.

#18

I have 2 200 gig sata’s and 1 250 and they have been superb.

#19

Remove ddo(dynamic drive overlay) by this tool: http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html
and then instal Windows XP.

#20

In general no drive is better than another, that’s a fact.
If you want quality go for SCSI devices.
Seagate aquired Maxtor a while ago btw…
I’ve personally been very pleased with Hitachi’s T7K250 (SATA) family, fast and quiet just how I like it.
//Danne