Seagate being sued for shoddy hard drives.

[jgreco]

That along with a lot of other horror stories on their drives. Not to mention that it was pretty short lived. I am used to drives lasting ten years and beyond, I just sent off an older 120GB IDE Seagate drive to my father after running badblocks and smart tests and I know it was at least 8 years old as my wife had bought it before we got together. I know sometimes drives will go bad but I rarely have a high turnover rate. I still have drives that are in the 10 to 20 GB range that have spun for many years that still work fine if I need them for something.

And there's lots of horror stories about Western Digital drives - something that's gone on for years:

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/french_retailer_data_offers_ssd_failure_rates/

Note this isn't actually a comprehensive failure rate list, it's JUST drives that were RMA'd to the retailer. Presumably more were returned to the manufacturer directly for service, or failed after the retail RMA window.

Look at the WD Caviar Black 2TB with its nearly 10% RMA rate, or the Hitachi Deathstar at almost 7%, or the WD Green 2TB at almost 5%. Seagate's first entry is at 4.35% with the Barracuda LP, which looks tepid by comparison.

This is all very consistent with our local experiences; I've got a pile of dead EARS drives that fairly consistently failed shortly after the warranty expired, and I knew a company who had made ZFS arrays out of WD Blacks and actually lost a pool because of a manufacturing run defect (IIRC) that killed several drives in rapid succession. Just helped reinforce my belief that heterogeneous arrays are a great thing.

So, again, I ask, what are you suggesting? The drive manufacturers all suck. Best advice is to plan for failure and go for massive redundancy (and I like heterogeneous arrays as well), along with proper burn-in testing.

 

[Yatti420]

Do you actually keep them? If so, I'm guessing it's part of a data security procedure (retention being assumed to be safer than destruction)? Or maybe you just like the mementos?

I absolutely destroy my own drives etc.. Various methods :) Slamming on the ground a few times if im recycling (in a pinch) is my favourites..

 

[joeschmuck]

I like the magnets.

 

[Mirfster]

Wonder if anyone still uses degaussers? Best way: Thermite or a Kiln ;)

 

[gpsguy]

My guess is that Yatti420 uses them for target practice. ;-)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Yatti420]

My guess is that Yatti420 uses them for target practice. ;-)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Only Western Digital Ones ;) ... But seriously alot of hate and I've had predominately WD drives fail on me personally.. The times I spent punching my keyboard threw my desk was because of WD drives..

 

[joeschmuck]

Only Western Digital Ones ;)

OUCH!

 

[Ericloewe]

The only failed drives I've had have been WDs, but that's to be expected, since the population is heavily skewed towards them (4 Samsungs, 24 WDs, plus some more stuff spread around laptops and external drives - mostly Toshiba, I guesstimate).
I even have a Deathstar in my ancient desktop, though it's the not-problematic 40GB model.

 

[Z300M]

The only failed drives I've had have been WDs, but that's to be expected, since the population is heavily skewed towards them (4 Samsungs, 24 WDs, plus some more stuff spread naround laptops and external drives - mostly Toshiba, I guesstimate).
I even have a Deathstar in my ancient desktop, though it's the not-problematic 40GB model.

At the moment I have 20 Seagates in my FreeNAS machine, one each in my HTPC and notebook, and a handful in a couple of desktops. One of the original ST32000641AS drives (5-year warranty) failed after 18 months or so and was replaced under warranty by an ST2000DM001. Another drive whose model number I forget was replaced under warranty by an ST2000DM001 as well. One ST2000DM001 (not one of the warranty replacements) showed a few read errors after the expiration of its 2-year warranty, but SeaTools appears to have fixed it. I also have Seagate externals of 2TB (2.5in.), 3TB, 4TB, and 5TB capacities.

One thing I find odd is that sometimes I have found multiples of the same model on a store shelf, some with a 1-year warranty and some with a 2-year warranty.

 

[Yatti420]

Seagate's aren't really that bad.. As you can see (I'm not saying blackblaze data is accurate at all).. I just don't by that they are failing as fast as claimed by some on specific models (like 2TB).. We all know the 3TB is flawed but I would argue this is as much design as it is risk buying new product... The 3tb WDs (do they exist?) of the same time frame can't be much better!

 

[jgreco]

It's kinda too bad that doesn't go back a few more years, but it shows that things are complicated. Also, I don't approve of breaking "Hitachi" and "HGST" out separately since they're effectively the same thing; adding the two together raises their numbers upwards a bit.

 

[joeschmuck]

I think the quantity of drives in the results provided from Backblaze should be taken into consideration because we have no idea if the reason a drive manufacturer reliability is due to more devices overall are being utilized. For example the WD Red line has gained a lot of ground as a NAS drive thus more drives are being utilized and more failures overall will be seen so maybe that is why the WD number rose. And with Seagate maybe there were less sold because of reliability and that was why their number dropped. It would be good to know more about the data collected to generate this chart.

 

[jgreco]

A lot of analysis has been done on the quality (or rather lack thereof) the Backblaze data, and it is widely understood to be one grade above toilet paper quality for a variety of reasons. However, no one else is sharing numbers the way they do, so it's the best thing generally available, alas.

 

[Bidule0hm]

OTHH I recall they share the raw data so maybe we can extract more useful info from that :)

 

[Yatti420]

A lot of analysis has been done on the quality (or rather lack thereof) the Backblaze data, and it is widely understood to be one grade above toilet paper quality for a variety of reasons. However, no one else is sharing numbers the way they do, so it's the best thing generally available, alas.

Because it's 2016.. It seems along with Justin it's ok to pubish this quality of work.. When I first read their stuff all these data questions came to mind..Sadly far to many people place emphasis on it.. It's a good starting point but shouldn't be considered it's weight in gold.. More like it's weight in poop..

TBH the only way I believe would be to run your own analysis on their unedited (raw - hopefully) data..

 

[jgreco]

The problem isn't the raw data, it's that they're fixated on whatever crap bottom-of-the-barrel drives they buy in order to support their business, which are typically low end consumer desktop grade drives. They don't buy a lot of different models and so their results are only representative of certain drive models, purchased during certain periods of time, etc.

 

[Yatti420]

The problem isn't the raw data, it's that they're fixated on whatever crap bottom-of-the-barrel drives they buy in order to support their business, which are typically low end consumer desktop grade drives. They don't buy a lot of different models and so their results are only representative of certain drive models, purchased during certain periods of time, etc.

No arguments here.. I'm just going to post the screenshot anytime anybody says to buy WD lol.. If the trend continues it will confirm what I believe in my heart that WD is worse ;) ... Cheers - To the future I guess.. I don't even count 1.5tb and 3tb.. I just always avoided for what I believed was poor design etc..

 

[jgreco]

Yeah, I got tired of hearing all the anti-Seagate crap, which, y'know, I'm actually fine with except that with no better quality alternatives is just counterproductive. The best advice is not to "buy WD" or "buy Seagate" but rather "thoughtfully buy a combination of things unlikely to compromise your redundancy."

 

[joeschmuck]

To be honest, once it becomes time for me to purchase a new set of drives, I'll evaluate what is on the market for what I need and warranty coverage and of course cost. I would not be surprised if I purchased a pair of 5TB SSDs to replace my six 2TB drives, cost not limiting it of course.

 

[TXAG26]

For what it's worth, I nerd out reading legalese. I picked up a new 8TB WDC My Book yesterday and it had a little booklet for legal "terms of use" of the product. Boiled down, it basically said if you use this drive and are somehow aggrieved, you are agreeing to binding arbitration and agree to expressly waive joining or creating a "class" with regards to a class action suit. Not sure how such language has been interpreted by the courts, but my first thought is it would be held to be unenforceable, but who knows. Just thought it was interesting that other drive manufacturers are actively trying to nip such suits in the bud!