Seagate being sued for shoddy hard drives.

[Z300M]

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!

And I have read that if arbitrators find against the company they find it difficult to get additional cases.

 

[mattbbpl]

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!

This was held in an AT&T case years ago, IIRC correctly. Last I heard, the ultimate ramifications of that were still being tested as it brings into question precisely which rights can be waived away in an EULA.

 

[viniciusferrao]

Lol, I have 5 of these drives and when the 1st one went belly-up yanked them all. They have been sitting in a corner just gathering dust. Maybe I'll see how this all pans out. But, the lawsuit is coming from a CA where everyone sues so guess we will just have to wait and see. /Paging Saul Goodman!

I have 28 of those discs. 18 are dead, one is destroyed by my parter and 9 are still in production.

One is dying right now:
Device: /dev/da17 [SAT], Self-Test Log error count increased from 0 to 1
Device: /dev/da17 [SAT], 8 Offline uncorrectable sectors
Device: /dev/da17 [SAT], 8 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors

So that's my disks. Freaking Seagate. When I emailed them, they just answered that "Desktop Class Discs cannot be powered 24/7 and must be powercycled" -- Because we don't know physics.

Well that's my story. :(

 

[Z300M]

I have 28 of those discs. 18 are dead, one is destroyed by my parter and 9 are still in production.

One is dying right now:
Device: /dev/da17 [SAT], Self-Test Log error count increased from 0 to 1
Device: /dev/da17 [SAT], 8 Offline uncorrectable sectors
Device: /dev/da17 [SAT], 8 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors

So that's my disks. Freaking Seagate. When I emailed them, they just answered that "Desktop Class Discs cannot be powered 24/7 and must be powercycled" -- Because we don't know physics.

Well that's my story. :(

I remember reading a Seagate White Paper many years ago that discussed the differences between their desktop drives (which may have been mostly IDE at the time -- or perhaps it was in the early days of SATA) and their SCSI drives: Desktop drives intended for 8hrs/day, 5days/week use and not intended for use in multi-drive installations; SCSI drives intended for 24/7 use and designed to minimize mechanical feedback in multi-drive installations.

 

[jgreco]

I remember reading a Seagate White Paper many years ago that discussed the differences between their desktop drives (which may have been mostly IDE at the time -- or perhaps it was in the early days of SATA) and their SCSI drives: Desktop drives intended for 8hrs/day, 5days/week use and not intended for use in multi-drive installations; SCSI drives intended for 24/7 use and designed to minimize mechanical feedback in multi-drive installations.

Right. About twenty years ago, IDE was clearly winning the desktop (limited to two drives on the bus) while SCSI was used in multiple drive server applications (7/15 drives on the bus), so for awhile there wasn't really an issue ... the SCSI drives were made to better standards and included the "higher end" features.

Then along comes SATA/SAS about ten years ago. And suddenly the drive manufacturers realized they might have a problem, because some of us smartasses would put cheap consumer grade SATA drives into our enterprise SAS servers because we used RAID and didn't need the better performance characteristics. That has only grown with time, and now extends to pretty much everyone on this forum who isn't using at least Nearline SAS drives for their NAS storage. I guess I was a trendsetter, hahaha.

But the fact of the matter was that the desktop drives, while they do fail at maybe a somewhat higher rate than the enterprise drives, are also often about half the price, and two of them in RAID1 far exceed the reliability of a single enterprise drive.

A rating like "8 hrs/day 5 days/week" doesn't really make a lot of sense. What they're saying is that they want it used in an office desktop. The act of spinning up and warming up a HDD is stressful to the unit, so it is better to spin the drive continuously. The desktop drives are probably made with slightly less good components than the enterprise drives, but with the precision required in hard drives these days that may not be a big thing.

 

[Z300M]

Right. About twenty years ago, IDE was clearly winning the desktop (limited to two drives on the bus) while SCSI was used in multiple drive server applications (7/15 drives on the bus), so for awhile there wasn't really an issue ... the SCSI drives were made to better standards and included the "higher end" features.

Then along comes SATA/SAS about ten years ago. And suddenly the drive manufacturers realized they might have a problem, because some of us smartasses would put cheap consumer grade SATA drives into our enterprise SAS servers because we used RAID and didn't need the better performance characteristics. That has only grown with time, and now extends to pretty much everyone on this forum who isn't using at least Nearline SAS drives for their NAS storage. I guess I was a trendsetter, hahaha.

But the fact of the matter was that the desktop drives, while they do fail at maybe a somewhat higher rate than the enterprise drives, are also often about half the price, and two of them in RAID1 far exceed the reliability of a single enterprise drive.

A rating like "8 hrs/day 5 days/week" doesn't really make a lot of sense. What they're saying is that they want it used in an office desktop. The act of spinning up and warming up a HDD is stressful to the unit, so it is better to spin the drive continuously. The desktop drives are probably made with slightly less good components than the enterprise drives, but with the precision required in hard drives these days that may not be a big thing.

Do you think the claim that "enterprise" drives are engineered to minimize mechanical feedback between drives is still valid?

 

[jgreco]

Do you think the claim that "enterprise" drives are engineered to minimize mechanical feedback between drives is still valid?

Yes. It certainly is. Just like a Lexus is usually a better vehicle than a Toyota. But they're both made by the same company, sometimes even rolling off the same lines, using similar designs.

So the question you have to ask is whether or not a slightly less good car is acceptable, for a substantially lower price. I think the answer is often, yes.

 

[Darkk]

They make great paperweights.

The neodymium magnets in the hard drives can be repurposed or just have fun with them.

 

[jgreco]

http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/neodym.html

 

[anodos]

http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/neodym.html

http://www.vitalwonders.com/therapy.htm

 

[Ericloewe]

http://www.vitalwonders.com/therapy.htm

Ooh, let's see how much bullshit I can find without scrolling down!

inner balance (qi),

You mean I can achieve my bullshit balance with inductive charging? Cool, I just started using Qi with my new phone (well, last December), while I build up a decent amount of USB Type C cables and chargers - the charger was free in a promo deal with the phone and the slowest 32GB microSD card Amazon had in stock and I'm surprisingly happy with wireless charging.

Cleopatra used it for youth properties)

Inbreeding is not typically regarded as a sign of intelligence, though.

Galen of Pergamum [129-199 AD] used for drawing out impurities
and poisons; Hippocrates of Cos used the styptic iron oxides magnetite and hematite
to stop bleeding and control hemorrhage); Aetius of Amida Byzantine [550-600 AD]
treatment of hysteria, gout, spasm.)

Doesn't mean it worked.

the most powerful modern
diagnostic methods [PET, MRI]

MRI, yes. PET, heck no.
Actually, I'm not sure which is cooler. Reorienting the spin of hydrogen nuclei or annihilating Positrons and Electrons to generate gamma rays traveling in opposite directions.
So clearly PET-MRI has to be insanely cool.

And some scrolling reveals another level of bullshit!

 

[jgreco]

Ooh, let's see how much bullshit I can find without scrolling down!

I'm disappointed. Our UTM blocks the site.

 

[Ericloewe]

I'm disappointed. Our UTM blocks the site.

I hope that's because of employee productivity or general sanity reasons and not more concrete threats.

 

[jgreco]

I hope that's because of employee productivity or general sanity reasons and not more concrete threats.

It's the Wacky Wild Web. Always hard to know.

 

[anodos]

Actually, I'm not sure which is cooler. Reorienting the spin of hydrogen nuclei or annihilating Positrons and Electrons to generate gamma rays traveling in opposite directions.
So clearly PET-MRI has to be insanely cool.

I've heard that gamma rays can give you super powers.

 

[anodos]

I'm disappointed. Our UTM blocks the site.

Sorry. My google-fu was weak this morning.

 

[joeschmuck]

http://www.vitalwonders.com/therapy.htm

I have some snake oil for sell.

I've heard these types of claims too but for me, I re-purpose hard drive magnets as refrigerator magnets or in the office to retain paper on the steel doors (posting some company propaganda). We even have a large group of these magnets which hold our outside door open (they stick to the steel deck and act as a door stop).