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I've been a fan of Seagate drives for a long time, but they have finally dropped a bomb on us. The 7200.11 class drives in all sizes have had an extraordinarily high failure rate since they came out, manifesting as disappearing from POST autosize or coming up with a size of zero anywhere from an hour to four months after install.
Most still think this is a firmware problem, but I began to suspect differently when after months of these reports, Seagate still hasn't officially acknowledged the problem. They stopped responding to support emails in early December; when called they promise a response within 2 hours which never comes; and RMAs are replaced with the same model and firmware. This behavior adds up to a much more serious problem than firmware.
Seagate closed a forum thread about this problem, and are not responding to questions there. In response customers started a new thread here , and today the following post was made:
Some are skeptical and say that the recovery company is just trying to make a buck. But this is the final nail in the coffin, AFAIC:
Seagate Ships Desktop Hard Drive With World's Highest Areal Density -- 500GB Per Disk
What?! 7200.12 is out now, when 7200.11 is only a couple months old? Tells me that 7200.11 is fatally flawed, so FWIW to you friends.
Most still think this is a firmware problem, but I began to suspect differently when after months of these reports, Seagate still hasn't officially acknowledged the problem. They stopped responding to support emails in early December; when called they promise a response within 2 hours which never comes; and RMAs are replaced with the same model and firmware. This behavior adds up to a much more serious problem than firmware.
Seagate closed a forum thread about this problem, and are not responding to questions there. In response customers started a new thread here , and today the following post was made:
Quote:
Hi,
Today I got back my HDD from Data recovery service. Since they ask 1000 USD and I dont want to spend so much for 2 weeks Seagate HDD usage, I got my HDD back.
The guy at recovery service was rather kind. He says he gets Seagate HDD every day for recovery. Since they have clean labs, they do some head replacements. They get some parts directly from Seagate. He does not advice to do at home, as dust may complicate things. So guys work in clean environment! He says in his experience, HDD from 500 Gb are not reliable, tend to fail. Most problem is head misalignment.
Here are his comments after evaluation:
"Our data recovery specialist had done an evaluation on your hard disk. There are multiple file structure damage and read write errors on the hard disk due to a head misalignment. The firmware and translator on the hard disk is also corrupted.
We will need to use an identical head to replace the head in the hard disk our clean lab, reload the firmware and fix the translator to enable data retrieval.
Data should be recoverable if translator corruption is not too severe."
Some are skeptical and say that the recovery company is just trying to make a buck. But this is the final nail in the coffin, AFAIC:
Seagate Ships Desktop Hard Drive With World's Highest Areal Density -- 500GB Per Disk
What?! 7200.12 is out now, when 7200.11 is only a couple months old? Tells me that 7200.11 is fatally flawed, so FWIW to you friends.