Seagate 1TB Barracuda 7200.11 Bulk/OEM Hard Drive ST31000340AS by Seagate
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Digital camera reviews of Seagate 1TB Barracuda 7200.11 Bulk/OEM Hard Drive ST31000340AS
Digital camera Review: Amazon.com failed to ship properly
Summary: 1 Stars
The drive itself is not the problem but Amazon.com failed to ship it properly. The hard-drive was packed in a generic Amazon.com box with NOT enough protection. The box ONLY contained a bare hard-drive and no manuals, cables, screws, or software.
I would not recommend buying any hard-drives from Amazon.com.
Digital camera Review: An Ok drive.
Summary: 4 Stars
Pros: Fast, lots of room
Cons: More bad sectors that I liked, needs to be well cooled when transferring lots of data, noisy head seeks.
I'm glad I check the drive for errors before trusting with my data. That way I got the bad sectors out of the way first so my data would be at less of a risk.
If you plan on using this drive in a dock, you may need a fan to keep the drive cool.
Digital camera Review: Article: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives failing
Summary: 1 Stars
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives failing
[...]
Left, right and centre
By Paul Taylor
Tue Jan 13 2009, 03:20
SEAGATE'S FLAGSHIP desktop Barracuda 7200.11 drives, in particular the 1TB (ST31000340AS) units, are failing at an alarming rate and prompting outrage from their faithful customers.
A new self-bricking feature apparently resides in faulty firmware microcode which will rear its ugly head sometime at boot detection. Essentially the drive will be working as normal for a while, then - out of the blue - it'll brick itself to death. The next time you reboot your computer the drive will simply lock itself up as a failsafe and won't be detected by the BIOS. In other words, there's power, spin-up, but no detection to enable booting.
Naturally the Seagate forums (as well as many other customer-driven forums, like etailers and hardware sites) are flooded with testimonies of customers' experiences with Seagate support. These are helpful enough to ship you a new drive, as per the warranty, but invariably the drives end up bricking as well.
Fail
RMA and Data Recovery Centres are also reporting that there's a very high rate of failure on these drives. One user in particular reports having set up a 6 TB drive array and over the course of 1 month having half the drives fail on him. No official stats are available, but at least one RMA middleman has told us there's about 30-40% failure rates.
According to data recovery experts Seagate has diagnosed the problem and issued a new firmware to address it. However, drives that have already been affected can't have the firmware applied to them due to their locked-down status.
Users are extra-peeved because beyond the usual RMA drill, if they want to recover the data on those drives they can get stuck with a hefty data recovery bill to pay.
Over a month into the problem Seagate had still not come back to customers with an official solution. Despite the company updating the firmware on newer drives, it has issued no recall on the firmware-defective drives that are still on shop shelves. They must be waiting for some grand event to come and go, say a shareholder meeting?
Drive origin and firmware seem to be Thailand and SD15, but at least one user reports having had identical problems with a unit from the Wuxi(ng) fab and the SD35 firmware.
Of course, we've mailed and called Seagate about this, but it seems their execs are too busy to pick up the phone or write back. We'll just refer them to that longstanding truth that good names are built over years and shattered in seconds.
Digital camera Review: BEWARE !!! BAD DRIVE !!! NO SUPPORT !!! NO WARRANTY !!!
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought this drive on Sept 26, 2008. Amazon was right on with shipping and delivery.
The drive went south and was not longer recognized by the BIOS or the OS (Vista). Trying to get help and/or warranty service from Seagate is just NOT an option. Seagate has turned a deaf ear on all of their users. Go to their website and read some of the posts.
As I am writing this I am in queue with Seagate on speakerphone and I've been listening to their catchy tune for about an hour.
I have since purchased a 1TB Western Digital from Amazon. Again Amazon has been great and the WD drive is working great.
I RECOMMEND THAT ALL STAY AWAY FROM ANY SEAGATE PRODUCT. I ALSO RECOMEND THAT AMAZON REVIEW THEIR WORKING RELATIONSHIP WITH SEAGATE. SOME MAY CONSIDER THIS A PROBLEM WITH AMAZON.
PERSONALLY I DON'T THINK AMAZON SHOULD BE DEALING WITH A VENDOR THAT DOES NOT STAND BEHIND THEIR PRODUCTS.
Ron
Digital camera Review: BIOS no longer can detect the hard drive
Summary: 1 Stars
Bought one of these Seagate 1TB drives for my home PC. Wanted lots of storage for videos and what-not. Its a home PC, not an office PC so it gets less use as a result. Worked for almost a year, though it made enough noise, then one morning I went to boot up the PC and the BIOS could not even detect the hard drive. When I googled for more information I found this is an extremely common and permanent problem with this line of Seagate hard drives (not just the 1TB model). To get the data back you must take it to a data recovery specialist as the hard drive is not repairable once this occurs. Wish I had know about this issue back when I bought the unit. Unhappy does not begin to describe how I feel, especially since my other PC has been up and running since 1998 and never once had an issue with its hard drive (other than lack of space, hence the 1TB drive on the new PC)
Buy from another maker (by the way, Maxtor is now owned by Seagate so beware of their units also).