"Seagate Personal Computer (PC) Hard Drives - User Review"

By Ron Stultz

19 April 2011

Summary: I know a limited sample but all of the Seagate hard drives I have bought and installed in the last 5 years (7 at least) have all failed during the 5 year warranty period.

Background:

Currently own 4 desktops and 2 laptops.

All desktops have at least one Seagate hard drive.

All laptops have at least one Seagate hard drive.

All current drives are of the serial ATA (SATA) type.

My desktops run 24/7 as servers on my local area network (LAN).

All desktop hard drives have a cooling fan attached and all run about 100 degrees or less, Fahrenheit.

All drives are powered by high quality power supplies.

All desktops are connected to an American Power Conversion (APC) Smart 1500 network server uninterruptable power supply (UPS), which limits line voltage variations and spikes.

All drives were procured locally, new, retail.

All drives came with 5 year warranty.

Seagate hard drive failures

In the last year, each of my Seagate hard drives (7) have failed. Some outright failure (disaster as data lost) and others would not pass Seagate's own Seatools testing.

Nice that all under 5 year warranty and new drive received from Seagate once old shipped to them but loss of data has been a disaster even with care in making backups.

Do not know current hard drive failure rate for industry but 7 drives out of 7 in 5 year period seems excessive or high.

Perhaps the fact that they running 24/7 is the cause?

Perhaps another manufacturer?

Why so many Seagate hard drives?

Cost is always a factor. If 500GB costs $60 from Seagate and same specification hard drive costs $70 from Western Digital, I have gone with cheaper Seagate.

Hard drives are a commodity item or so I thought.

Guess with my failure rate experiences with Seagate, going to have to try another brand.