Bad Seagate hard drives.....

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by dlb, Aug 19, 2010.

  1. dlb

    dlb MajorGeek

    The PC shop where I work recently had an order for 10 PCs to be used in an office environment as basic workstations, they didn't need any spectacular power. We built 10 PCs with 2gb DDR2, dual core 2.80ghz Intel Pentiums, and 250gb SATA Seagate hard drives. We bought a total of 14 of these drives, and have experienced a 50% failure rate. That's right, 7 of 14 drives were bad. 2 of 'em burnt up as soon as the PC was powered on, acrid smoke and everything. One of the drives caused the PC to hard lock during post, and 4 others caused the PC to have no video, no beep, even though the PC powered on. Since 2 of the drives burnt up, they obviously could not be tested with a diagnostic tool. But the others all failed. Today, I was installing one of these drives, and it didn't work. So, thinking of all the failures, I opened a new drive: straight out of the factory sealed static bag to a diagnostic on my "shop" PC that I use for data recovery, diagnostics, etc. The drive failed the Seatools "short generic" test almost immediately after the test was started. Yup- directly from a factory sealed bag to a diagnostic, and the drive failed. Wow. So- has anyone heard anything about Seagate releasing a quantity of faulty drives into retail channels? The serial numbers all start with 9VY7.
     
  2. dlb

    dlb MajorGeek

    After doing some research, I have found no info at all about a "bad batch" of drives from Seagate. All I found was some whining on other forums with some GROSSLY misinformed and inexperienced people offering "advice". :eek YIKES! I found some stuff from a few years ago (again from people that have no real knowledge about what they were saying) about Seagate moving their manufacturing to China and therefore the quality has gone in the toilet. However, I run 3 Seagate SATA drives in my home PC of varying sizes (a 750gb for drive C, a 320gb for D, a 250gb for E soon to be another 750) and have never had a single issue in the 3+ years I've been using these drives. But I do think a "bad batch" has made it into retail channels. Since we just got this lot of 250gb drives on Monday Aug 16, maybe word hasn't made it out just yet. I can't imagine that a 50% failure rate would be confined to just our shop, plus it was drives from two separate orders from our distributor. The first 10 drives were ordered on Thurs or Fri (Aug 12 or 13), and the 2nd order of 4 drives was placed on Tues Aug 17. Like I said above, all the drives have the same 9VY7 sequence at the start of the serial number which tells me that the are all of the same "batch" or manufacturing run.

    As more info comes to light, I will post it. This kind of thing is unacceptable and should be exposed and openly discussed.

    (BTW - I know what I'm doing; I have built hundreds of PCs; I have cloned/formatted/installed probably over 1000 hard drives; when two drives burn when power is applied on two completely different and separate PCs, it is NOT a problem on my end; if I make a mistake, I own up to it; there's no way I destroyed 7 of 14 brand new hard drives; besides, one failed a factory diagnostic immediately after being removed from the factory packaging and connect to a KNOWN healthy and very functional PC)

    (BTW 2 - if it seems like I'm being a bit defensive, well, maybe I am; I had to talk with our distributor of 15 years on the phone, and he implied that maybe I had "made a mistake" and destroyed half the drives . . . I'm a bit pissed off right now :boxing )
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2010
  3. theefool

    theefool Geekified

    That kinda reminds me of a situation at an old job (shore duty in the military) where we ordered 50 HP computers. 10 were bad out of the box. Though, we did get the 10 replaced, no questions asked.
     
  4. Caliban

    Caliban I don't need no steenkin' title!

    While back, I bought some Klein hand tools from the hardware store next to a textile mill I was working with - expensive, but guaranteed for life. After using a mid-sized flat blade screwdriver for years as a screwdriver, chisel, punch, prybar, shorting bar, you name it, I decided to replace it...naturally, the store clerks gave me some grief about how I had used the tool...I didn't care, so, REAL LOUD, I started raising Cain about the warranty, the amount of business I brought to them, general ethics, yada-yada, with customers looking at me weird...needless to say, they quickly shut me up by giving me a new screwdriver...

    My point, of course, is to raise hell with your distributor and/or Seagate - REAL LOUD!

    Good luck...
     

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