Seagate External Hard Drives

[Moses03]

My second Seagate FreeAgent Desktop 320 just died. This is two dead in less than 18 months. Fortunately I have dual external backup so I didn't lose any data. Funny, my little 40gig external Maxtor is still humming along after 6+ years of continous duty. Too bad Seagate swallowed up Maxtor!

Just picked up a Buffalo 250gig ministation for $60.00 at Frys. See how this one goes.

Moses

[TARPSBird]

Moses, sorry to hear about the dead external. I'm in the market for a new one and your incident gives me one more brand name to stay away from. :frown:

[oldwheat]

CRAP! I just bought a Seagate 500G external!

[GT182]

Moses, I've had the best luck with Maxtor HDDs. Had both a Seagate and Western Digital that died in less than 2 years. The 2 Maxtors 200GB HDDs I have now are still going strong after 4 years. My next one will hopefully be a 1TB Maxtor.

[Ridge]

I lost two 500gb Barracuda internal drives in less than 6 months when I built this computer...I use Western Digital in every build now..

[Lionheart]

Great.. I have 2 1TB HD's by Seagate.

Lets hope their 1TB drives are better.. (eeeks... )



Moses.. for $10.00 more, you can get a 1TB drive... :173go1:

[Moses03]

1TB is too much space. (Did I say that outloud? hehe) Just more sectors to go bad. :kilroy: Although I remember when 20gig hard drives seemed gigantic!

Hope you all have better luck with Seagate than I have.

[Henry]

1TB is too much space. (Did I say that outloud? hehe) Just more sectors to go bad. :kilroy: Although I remember when 20gig hard drives seemed gigantic!
I remember 1 gig :monkies:
wow
H

[crashaz]

LOL I remember much further back then that. You must be a youngin' when it comes to computers.:icon_lol:



I remember 1 gig :monkies:
wow
H

[Ridge]

The first computer I built (around 2003-2004), had a 4Gig hard drive...that drive was seriously the size of a CD-rom drive...

[FAC257]

Moses

I think the FreeAgents have a bit of a reputation for going bad. I had a fairly new one die myself while my old Maxtor which is much older has never skipped a beat.

Chances are is that the only thing that went bad is the "External Hardrive" garbage. The Seagate Barracuda inside may be just fine.

When mine died and I pulled off the exterior casing and stuck the HD inside my system it worked like brand new.

Here's one of the links to FreeAgent disassembly to get the hardrive out.
http://thydzik.com/how-to-disassemble-a-seagate-freeagent-pro/

FAC

[TARPSBird]

Had both a Seagate and Western Digital that died in less than 2 years.
Just 21 months for my Western Digital. To re-use my line from another HD thread, my kids had hamsters that lived longer than that. :mad: IMHO, that puts their product in the category of a throw-away. No wonder so many folks have a back-up for their back-up, you never know which one's gonna croak next.

[gigabyte]

Great.. I have 2 1TB HD's by Seagate.

Lets hope their 1TB drives are better.. (eeeks... )



Moses.. for $10.00 more, you can get a 1TB drive... :173go1:

Bill (and anyone else with 500gb or 1 tb Seagate drives) make sure you check the Seagate website, they had a firware update a few months back for quite a number of their drives particularly the 2 I mention above. Apparently these drives had a habit of turning into bricks and were useless until the update is applied, of course all data on the drive if it has failed would be lost, but if you apply the new firmware the drive works fine. I picked up 3 of them from a local shop for nothing and flashed them and they have been working great.

I have had good luck with Seagate over the years, not my absolute favorite, but I would never rule them out when shopping for a drive... just my humble opinion...

[gigabyte]

I remember 1 gig :monkies:
wow
H


I am seriously going to date myself now... my first system had a 5 MB (that is not a typo!) hard drive, a 5.25" FLOPPY disk and a whopping 64K (thats right K as in Kilo bytes) of RAM... I thought I could do anything with that beast, it was soooo cool. Oh yeah no mouse or colour screen only a wonderful shade of green, and no graphics either. Man things have changed in 25 years. Now that I think about it, back then Windows were things you looked through and washed when they got dirty... the OS on my first system was CPM if anyone remembers that.

[lefty]

My 500G Seagate has been running for a couple of years now.

The only beef with it was the stupid, utterly non-functioning E-SATA connection (never heard of anyone getting that to work). But I never did like SATA much anyway. It works fine on USB.

[Moses03]

Thanks for the link FAC. Just might try that before I break out the ballpeen hammer.



...No wonder so many folks have a back-up for their back-up, you never know which one's gonna croak next.

Ain't that the truth! :isadizzy:

[robert41]

Just picked up one of those Seagate FreeAgent 320. Hope it last for awhile.

[Milton Shupe]

Okay, in 1971 the IBM 360/20 I worked on had 12K RAM and no hard drives until 6 months later when we added 2 7.5MB hard drives, together the size of a desk. The disks were made up of 8-9 16" platters and each drive held a total of 7.5MB. The disks were removable/dismountable.

Of there were no monitors, and it had no console. All communication was done through dial type switches to alter register settings to start a job or end a job.

[Snuffy]

Seagate use to be the defacto hard drive that everyone aspired to ... away back when ...

My first computer came with a 20 meg harddrive ... seagate.

[Willy]

The next Western Digital that gives me a problem will be the first one.

[Lionheart]

Bill (and anyone else with 500gb or 1 tb Seagate drives) make sure you check the Seagate website, they had a firware update a few months back for quite a number of their drives particularly the 2 I mention above. Apparently these drives had a habit of turning into bricks and were useless until the update is applied, of course all data on the drive if it has failed would be lost, but if you apply the new firmware the drive works fine. I picked up 3 of them from a local shop for nothing and flashed them and they have been working great.

I have had good luck with Seagate over the years, not my absolute favorite, but I would never rule them out when shopping for a drive... just my humble opinion...


Thanks Mike,

Good to know. I'll look for that.


Things have gone well with my Seagates so far.



Bill

[Trans_23]

I have had two 120 gig Barricuda's running for 3 years now and not a hiccup.

[viking3]

Okay, in 1971 the IBM 360/20 I worked on had 12K RAM and no hard drives until 6 months later when we added 2 7.5MB hard drives, together the size of a desk. The disks were made up of 8-9 16" platters and each drive held a total of 7.5MB. The disks were removable/dismountable.

Of there were no monitors, and it had no console. All communication was done through dial type switches to alter register settings to start a job or end a job.

Jebus Milton, that's like 2 steps removed from the abacus. Seriously though I remember going up to the radar tower with my old man when I was kid(early 70s) and they had a whole floor for the SAGE computer. Same era.

Regards, Rob

P.S. I had a first generation 150Gb WD Raptor fail on me after 1 year, but I must say I was very happy with the warranty service.

[cheezyflier]

i also have a maxtor, 200G and have no problems with it. i got it on sale for a song

[FengZ]

i've been using the WD ones for a while, and they seem to function pretty well. I also like their new designs...they are called MyBook or something like that. The brushed aluminum ones are slick looking....goes well w/ Apple's stuff...

2 TB!:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=410

-feng

[RyanJames170]

lol wow my WD 80 gigs is 1.5 years old droped oh god 150 times case cracked open on one drop still humming along just nicly. I got it a good home the other day so no more drops now i hope.
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[Agung]

I've been using WD external drives for about a year now 2x 500Gig and 2x 1TB, reformatted to NTFS and never a problem... knock on wood. Never managed to come to grips with their Automatic backup software though but I use all four drives solely for backing up my files manually. Both 500Gig drives have identical content as do both 1TB drives :kilroy: Paranoia or common sense?