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Warranty and other failure rates in Seagate branded drives

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saturation:
I came across a detailed look at common warranty issues around Seagate and its other branded drives.

Their website details common failures that are causes for returns, as well as attempts at fraud.

http://www.seagate.com/support/warranty-and-replacements/void-warranty-checklist/

What strikes me is that one type of failure was very uncommon in the past: separating PCB parts or connector traces, because these would be caught in quality inspection or environmental exposure testing.

This is less a concern for single or small volume drive users, but more for military and commercial RAID and rack installations, where higher heat and vibration exposure are more likely. 

TechItApart:
Back in 2008 I think, when 3.5 inch USB hard drives were just getting cheap I bought a couple of Seagate drives for backup. They both died within 18 months with very light use. Not to say all Seagate stuff is bad but I've got WD drives from around 2009 still spinning just fine.

wkb:

--- Quote from: TechItApart on January 13, 2016, 09:01:49 pm ---Back in 2008 I think, when 3.5 inch USB hard drives were just getting cheap I bought a couple of Seagate drives for backup. They both died within 18 months with very light use. Not to say all Seagate stuff is bad but I've got WD drives from around 2009 still spinning just fine.

--- End quote ---

Which proves exactly nothing at all. Having worked in enterprise storage for a couple of decades I can tell you that each and every disk vendor has its good and bad days.  Drives that suck by design, inherently good designs that have sucky batches due to productions issues (e.g. contamination) etc etc etc

TechItApart:

--- Quote from: wkb on January 14, 2016, 10:15:26 pm ---
--- Quote from: TechItApart on January 13, 2016, 09:01:49 pm ---Back in 2008 I think, when 3.5 inch USB hard drives were just getting cheap I bought a couple of Seagate drives for backup. They both died within 18 months with very light use. Not to say all Seagate stuff is bad but I've got WD drives from around 2009 still spinning just fine.

--- End quote ---

Which proves exactly nothing at all. Having worked in enterprise storage for a couple of decades I can tell you that each and every disk vendor has its good and bad days.  Drives that suck by design, inherently good designs that have sucky batches due to productions issues (e.g. contamination) etc etc etc

--- End quote ---

Yeah I get that my point is complete conjecture but the guys at Backblaze have been testing drives for years and their data validates my point, Seagate drives are far more likely to fail that some other brands.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-for-q2-2015/
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q3-2015/

engiadina:
I do not think that those statistics are very helpful. We have two storage servers with 10 disks of 2TB each. The model number of the used harddrives was the very same (Seagate) but one server was bought two years before the other.
The harddrives from the first server are still running, now reaching 40000 hours of uptime. Only one drive has failed yet.
In the second server all drives had failed between 25000 and 27000 hours uptime and had to be replaced.
Obviously they changed the design but kept the model number.

But I have to say, that no drive failed out of those numbers given. Following specs they even perform much better than expected. Seagate specifies this drive for an uptime of 2500 hours. So even the newer drives could not be complained about!

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