Any one else have a Sad story?

[phillyk]

I just recently got all the main features of GBPVR working. See here
I have been trying to get my configuration ironed out for the last 3-4 weeks.

Guess what happened today without my realizing it?
As anyone who views the attachment in the thread above may realize...
My E:\ drive is returning errors. And guess what took me 4-5 hrs to specifically realize? My E: drive had compleletly "fallen off" "died" dead, as in BIOS cannot detect & after some tinkering reported pretty major failure.
It was a cheap 500gb maxtor, with 120gb of Ripped AVI & tv show's.
and an additional 13GB of mp3 & my last 1.5 weeks worth of Tv recordings.

I was REALLY begining to get to like my GBPVR box & setup.
*quietly goes off to shed tears*

[pcostanza]

Major bummer! Was it one of the Seagates that have a problem?
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/se...u_affected

[phillyk]

WD caviar 500 GB drive :-( having a recovery option would be AWSOME.
GOing to have to invest in some new drive's. .. .There goes my planned purchase of a Netbook.

[JonnyCam]

Well, I got a nice new 1TB external seagate drive, and had a lot of media etc on it - my partner took it to her work, and while someone was using it - they had the powercord draped over the floor and it inevitably got yanked onto the ground.
After which it made a very mechanicial grinding sound, and no response when plugged in.

[pcostanza]

Talked to Seagate today and they won't have the updated firmware until later this week (25th???). My drive is a back up and has shown no problems so far. It won't be used again until the firmware is upgraded.

[gEd]

bad luck there.

Once you have a replacement HD in place, you could try the old "place the broken HD in a ziplock bag in the freezer for 24hrs" trick.

http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01...-data.html

[whurlston]

Talked to Seagate today and they won't have the updated firmware until later this week (25th???). My drive is a back up and has shown no problems so far. It won't be used again until the firmware is upgraded.

They told me Tuesday or Wednesday (20th/21st).

[mvallevand]

My last GBPVR setup is on an XP system that won't boot into Windows because the motherboard reports an unrecoverable error. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I got a faster machine with Vista and any issues I had with GBPVR disappeared.

I also learned that RAID 0 is a completely stupid idea for a boot drive.

Martin

[reven]

Talked to Seagate today and they won't have the updated firmware until later this week (25th???). My drive is a back up and has shown no problems so far. It won't be used again until the firmware is upgraded.

yeah i had major issues with seagate and their 1.5tb drives, i had to get a firmware update to fix a "lockup" issue on the drives. it was a well known issue and discussed in depth on their forums (they tried to delete a few threads about this issue, to cover it up, until a few blog posts started reporting this), but man their tech support was a PITA. both drives were in a drobo/raid 5 device, and i stupidly said i had 2 drives and read out the serialnumber/model etc to the guy (which took forever, americans are really bad at understanding the rest of the world) and then he wouldnt do crap until i took out the other drive and gave him the info the other drive (they were exactly the same). i didnt want to take my raid down to do this, and he was "no sir, i cant let you have the firmware until you give me the other information", so i said "well just ignore that drive, and give me it for the first drive", "NO!". god i hate seagate now, real PITA.

then a few days later (after not receiving anything from the first guy) i rang their tech support in china, and she understood me perfectly fine (im a new zealander, english is our first language, english clearly wasn't hers, but she understood me 100% as did i with her). any who, she was great, got the firmware after 2 hours (had to be done by her supervisor or something).

but at the end of the day, ive learnt never get anything from seagate, their drives arent that crash hot, and their tech support is a real PITA. i will never recommend seagate to anyone.

[SLR_65]

I have a Seagate 750gb in my htpc. Got it on sale from NewEgg for a very good price. When it arrived and I installed it it wouldn't work, just made a clicking noise. NewEgg replaced the drive and the replacement did the same thing! New Egg again replaced the drive but I was on overtime at work and didn't have time to install it right away. When I did I found that drive was just plain dead! GRRRRR! :mad:

At this point I had to deal with Seagate for a replacement. They were fine, I used the automated option on the web site. One thing I picked up on was that Seagate wanted a big box with lots of foam in it for shipping - NOT the packing peanuts and carboard wrap thing NewEgg sent it in. Well, all I had was what NewEgg sent it in. Seagate's web site said they wont give warranty to improperly shipped drives so I was worried, but I packed it up in what NewEgg sent it in and I enclosed a note to that effect and even sent a copy of NewEgg's invoice.

They accepted the drive no problem and I got a replacement pretty quickly - this time shipped in a very sturdy box with lots of foam around it. This drive thus far has worked flawlessly.

Sooooo, I'm not sure if I'm upset with Seagate or NewEgg, I think NewEgg as I'm pretty sure it was their shoddy shipping that was causing the problems.

I've seen the new Seagate 1.5tb drives and considered them as I have some Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket and I really need more storage on the htpc! But I've been scared off my all the issues I've read about them. Those who are happy are very happy, those who aren't are very po'd. There seems to be a good number of happy customers though, but my luck isn't that good and I'm sure I'd get one of the problem drives so I'm waiting until all the recent reviews are good.

In the mean time . . . I keep seeing that Western Digital is supposed to have a new 2tb drive coming out for a good price $240 US from what I gather, so I've been thinking I may hold off for one of those as I've had much better luck with Western Digital in the past.

Anyway, a Seagate drive help up my htpc build for quite a while but I'm not sure if it was Seagate or NewEgg's fault.

Steve