Is the old rule of thumb (seagate drives = best, but reliability issues for the big drives) still true? I've made similar posts for the other Free Agent Desk products, in hopes of getting a response. I've always bought seagate externals. Last time I was in the market (06) the consensus continued to be: a. Seagate makes the best hardware at the consumer level, but, b. above a certain capacity (?at the time 300GB?) reliability issues / data corruption issues increase dramatically. At the time, I ended up buying two full docks of 250GB free agents, and am still happy with that product.Anyone know if hardware reliability / data corruption issues are still a problem for the larger capacity drives? These 'Free Agent 2.0' lines look great, but I'd hate to have issues a year or two from now. Is the old rule of thumb (seagate drives = best, but reliability issues for the big drives) still true? I've made similar posts for the other Free Agent Desk products, in hopes of getting a... » Read More Is the old rule of thumb (seagate drives = best, but reliability issues for the big drives) still true? I've made similar posts for the other Free Agent Desk products, in hopes of getting a response. I've always bought seagate externals. Last time I was in the market (06) the consensus continued to be: a. Seagate makes the best hardware at the consumer level, but, b. above a certain capacity (?at the time 300GB?) reliability issues / data corruption issues increase dramatically. At the time, I ended up buying two full docks of 250GB free agents, and am still happy with that product.Anyone know if hardware reliability / data corruption issues are still a problem for the larger capacity drives? These 'Free Agent 2.0' lines look great, but I'd hate to have issues a year or two from now. « Show Less
482504
That may be true, but I've noticed that Seagate gives you a five-year warranty while Western Digital gives you only one. As long as you don't keep your ONLY copy of something important on the drive, I would go with the Seagate knowing that you'll have at least five years of replacements in case it fails.
482505
That is no rule of thumb I have ever heard in my 15 years in IT. Seagate/Maxtor makes up the 'lower tier' of drive brands. Hitachi/Samsung are slightly more reliable. WD is still reliability king. Even if you get a good Seagate/Maxtor drive they are prone to fail after a few years, right after the warranty expires. The large capacity drive firmware issues they've been having this last year or so has just sullied their reputation even further and the kind of bugs they've had recently in fully released firmware is inexcusable. Seagate has recently earned their rep as the bottom rung hard drive supplier firmly and deservedly and that by a country mile. That is no rule of thumb I have ever heard in my 15 years in IT. Seagate/Maxtor makes up the 'lower tier' of drive brands. Hitachi/Samsung are slightly more reliable. WD is still reliability king. Even if you get a good Seagate/Maxtor drive they are prone to fail after a few years, right after the warranty expires. The large capacity drive firmware issues they've been having this last year or so has just sullied their reputation even further and the kind of bugs they've had recently in fully released firmware is inexcusable. Seagate has recently earned their rep as the bottom rung hard... » Read More That is no rule of thumb I have ever heard in my 15 years in IT. Seagate/Maxtor makes up the 'lower tier' of drive brands. Hitachi/Samsung are slightly more reliable. WD is still reliability king. Even if you get a good Seagate/Maxtor drive they are prone to fail after a few years, right after the warranty expires. The large capacity drive firmware issues they've been having this last year or so has just sullied their reputation even further and the kind of bugs they've had recently in fully released firmware is inexcusable. Seagate has recently earned their rep as the bottom rung hard drive supplier firmly and deservedly and that by a country mile. « Show Less
482506
I have been loking around for an external drive, and I've noticed they all fail! IMO the best way to gois to have 2 of the drives and do a periodic copy of each to each. I have a free agent on my mac and it has been working perfectly, but I am looking for a drive to back up between a PC and a mac. Two cheap drives may be more reliable than a single more expensive, since they all fail and you cant "pay out" of the uncertainty. Change that: Buy two expensive hard drives and dont even fool with the Seagates..
482507
i agree seagate is not even worth looking at now just taking up shelf space. i have older maxtor, WD and other drives and still running good. I got a seagate from an expensive company that sells decent computers but after 1st power up of a 1tb single disk plugged it in and drive shut down and stopped working. i got a WD for almost the same price.
482508
Are you sure you read the warranty correctly? Seagate's Warranty FAQ has this to say:"Q. How long is the limited warranty for the replacement drive? "A. The remainder of the original limited warranty or 90 days, whichever is longer."This extends an expiring warranty by 90 days.
252679
I have a variety installed - mainly used for storage of movies/music and vmware. If you want reliability, stick with the reds. I went for cost - so have WD, Seagate and Hitachi. Have only had 1 WD give me an issue in 3 years (10 3 Tb drives) - so when the 3 Tb drive failed, I replaced it with a 4 Tb and let the hybrid raid expand..
191938
I installed 2 "Seagate Backup Plus 4TB USB 3.0 Black Desktop Hard Drive STCA4000100" and it seems to be working fine. I found it cheaper to pull them from the housings.
1600662
It has been my experience that these drives will last for several years. I should add that I run open source operating systems and they do considerably less virtual memory caching('thrashing') to the device than the commercially produced operating systems. In my opinion, Toshiba drives are solid, reliable products.
803031
NOT from this seller - I checked both serial numbers on Seagates Warranty Validation page and see "The product you identified was sold as a system component. Please contact your place of purchase for service."I have a failed drive, and no response from the seller - can't send it back to Seagate.. uh oh.
822815
Really, any of the current internal offerings by Seagate that are heavily discounted both on here and new egg would be more than suitable. I would suggest a model with at least 7,200 rpm disc speed for a smoother transfer experience. This docking station is amazing for the record. It's been my fave gadget buy of the year so far. Hope this helps, Robert
470328
I have owned MANY SANDISK drives, and none of them ever failed. I can tell you that thumb drives DO fail, especially the cheap ones. So, if you value your data, and don't want to lose it, spend the money on a SANDISK.
889570
This is a new drive. However, a recent report indicates that HGST and Western Digital have significantly better reliability than Seagate.
721283
Hello, I went to Seagate's site, typed the model and serial #'s in from one of the drives I ordered. The site shows the warranty will expire 12-21-2018. The drives arrived sealed in anti-static foil surrounded with foam in plain wire cardboard boxes. Have installed 4 drives so far with no issues.
513138
I would use nothing BUT these drives in anything I built or upgraded. They're a bit pricier, and no one ever thinks about it, but the warranty on THESE hard drives, the WD Black series, is a full 5Y. VERY few other mfrs even offer a 5y warranty. And WD drives earn that warranty reputation, I haven't had a WD drive fail, EVER. In each case -- over a dozen -- they've become useless through increasing capacity, never mechanical/electronic failure. That is, I probably have an 80gig WD drive that's still functioning. It's just not worth plugging in and taking up a SATA channel when I can get that capacity on a freaking flash drive nowadays... Yes, they're that good. You can "save money" by buying something cheaper. But you'll pay in the long run with headaches from lost data, or time spent rebuilding your windows/software/os and tweaking it back to the way you had it. The HD is the soul of your machine. Everything else fails, you can practically swap a part back in and you're up and running. But the HD fails and you've got a multiday to longer term headache to get things back to "normal". And, for general purposes, they're among the best drives in performance terms, too. Tom's Hardware may rate something else marginally faster, but not by much. And not by enough to drag you away from WD Black. As the old saw goes, once you go Black, you'll never go back. :-D
218585
yes absolutely. my advice is to just ignore all the seagate info on the drive. I basically just put it all in a folder that says "seagate sys info" and never disturb it. If you let it set stuff up, then you could become a slave to its rules. Basically just treat it as a big fat flash drive. Copy all, and it will only update the new stuff. It is incredibly reliable and fast
527108
ABSOLUTELY. I have been using a pair of 3TB, a pair of 4T and a pair of 1 TB seagates for some time with no problems. I do not use any of their special back-up software. (KIK, Ph.D.)
2174787
I believe so but as it was always breaking and the Tech Support was so bad I literally threw it away. I would subscribe to Carbonite which is a FAR superior product and they have really good technical support. I believe that Seagate also produce a reasonable back up product but I have never used it. I hope that helps
1285837
I'm going to only answer this from the perspective of a personal opinion. I have never owned a DROBO older models or newer models. However Many of the folks I know that have owned them don't see to be going back to them as they expand. I have at least 6 different TB drives from LaCie. They have been pretty reliable all things considered. It's what I'll use in the future and what I recommends to friends. If they start failing on me which all drives seem to do sooner or later I might change. The Lacie 5 appears to be fairly easy to upgrade or change drives out. I like having that option though I haven't used it yet.
47711
I just put a 3TB Seagate drive in one of these and it worked. One of my laptops had a weird issue, but other machines did not. TDMSERVICE.EXE consumed massive amounts of RAM (3+GB) a few times before it acted normal. A different laptop of the same make/model did not have the same problem. That first laptop has issues adding hardware anyways, so I don't think it's a combination of the enclosure and drive.
697990
Thank you for contacting us. I am not sure so I looked at other posts about this. It seems they are very close in performance but this stood out: "The other thing to keep in mind when choosing a drive is that Western Digital?s enterprise drives are meant to be constantly in use, 24/7. The consumer drives are rated for 300,000 load/unload cycles, whereas the enterprise drives are are rated for double that at 600,000 load/unload cycles. This means the enterprise drive is guaranteed to have a longer use-life than a consumer drive under identical conditions." Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.
684174
It's been a long, long time since I've bought an Iomega diskette type drive. Compared to a USB Hard Drive (like Seagate Backup Plus) the older Iomega is much slower and less reliable. In my opinion it's way past its prime. I would take your friend's advice and get a USB hard drive. If your Win7 computer supports USB 3.0 I would definitely get a 3.0 USB Hard Drive. 3.0 is 10 times as fast as 2.0 and really flies. That's my opinion. Good luck with your decision. --- Sam