Seagate 7200.22 1.5 TB - Yay or Nay?

[SLR_65]

Hi Guys,

I have a Seagate 750gb drive in my HTPC right now but it's getting kinda full so I'm looking at adding a drive.

I see Western Digital has their new 2tb green drive out and so far the reviews are good, but it's expensive compared to the Seagate 1.5tb drive.

The Seagate has had some firmware issues that caused some stuttering when pulling data off the drive, definitely not a good thing for a HTPC drive! But it seems they've released new firmware for these drives and the reviews seem to be generally good as of late. It also seems the data stuttering problem crept up more when used in RAID arrays and I wouldn't be using it in a RAID array.

The Seagate goes for about $130 and the Western Digital for around $250, so for about the same money I could go with two Seagates and end up with a tb more storage so I'm seriously thinking about giving one a try and if I'm happy buying another one to replace my 750gb (I'll move it to my main pc).

Has anyone here used this drive? If so is it behaving for you, or would you not wish it on your worst enemy?

Any and all comments welcomed!

The specific drive I'm looking at is the:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

Thanks!

Steve

[-stattik-]

Has anyone here used this drive? If so is it behaving for you, or would you not wish it on your worst enemy?

Any and all comments w

I have two that are mirrored. No problems yet. Transfer speeds top out at around 72MB/sec.

[reven]

i got 2 seagates 1.5TB. my experience with them has been awful, i'll never buy another seagate drive.

the new firmware has seem to have fixed the issues, but still they rushed to release a product and the result was a piece of crap, also their tech support (you had to contact them to get the firmware update) was a PITA, and extremely rude. worst product ive ever purchased.

they seem to have been fixed now, but do you really want to trust all your movies etc on a drive with a shady history?

[SLR_65]

i got 2 seagates 1.5TB. my experience with them has been awful, i'll never buy another seagate drive.

the new firmware has seem to have fixed the issues, but still they rushed to release a product and the result was a piece of crap, also their tech support (you had to contact them to get the firmware update) was a PITA, and extremely rude. worst product ive ever purchased.

they seem to have been fixed now, but do you really want to trust all your movies etc on a drive with a shady history?

Well . . . from what I gather it was a performance issue, not a reliability issue. There have been some dead drives on the NewEgg feedback but if you've ever seen how NewEgg packages drives you'd understand where the dead drives are coming from.

I've had to use their tech support after getting a couple dead drives from NewEgg (for the first 30 days NewEgg will replace the drive, after that you have to go to the mfg.) and it wasn't a fun experience, but I got the job done in the end.

I'm not overly concerned with the content of the drive as everything on it will be backed up on DVD so it would just be a loss of time reloading if something catastrophic happens, but again it seems that the majority the problems were performance and not in reliability and it seems the new firmware has fixed it, at leat I hope it has which is why I'm asking the people on this forum - the people who are using the drive in the same manner as I would be.

I agree it's concerning, which is why I'm hesitating, but it's a really good price!

TTYL,

Steve

[johnsonx42]

This may be worth reading:

http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=540

[reven]

Well . . . from what I gather it was a performance issue, not a reliability issue. There have been some dead drives on the NewEgg feedback but if you've ever seen how NewEgg packages drives you'd understand where the dead drives are coming from.

I've had to use their tech support after getting a couple dead drives from NewEgg (for the first 30 days NewEgg will replace the drive, after that you have to go to the mfg.) and it wasn't a fun experience, but I got the job done in the end.

I'm not overly concerned with the content of the drive as everything on it will be backed up on DVD so it would just be a loss of time reloading if something catastrophic happens, but again it seems that the majority the problems were performance and not in reliability and it seems the new firmware has fixed it, at leat I hope it has which is why I'm asking the people on this forum - the people who are using the drive in the same manner as I would be.

I agree it's concerning, which is why I'm hesitating, but it's a really good price!

TTYL,

Steve

the issue was the cache write lockup, basically the drive would go dead for a minute. in a normal box this isnt that big of a deal (well it is), but i had mine in a drobo, and the drobo (raid 5 type device) would have to be rebooted to fix the problem. pain in the arse and terrible tech support, they just really burned me and treated me like crap so yeah, i hate seagate now.

[SLR_65]

Only two people are using this drive???

[rob11252]

I have this drive for about a month now. At the beginning it was really sloooow, it was resetting itself to PIO mode. I reset it to DMA 5 times I think, then the problem went away.
I am satisfied with it, never had a problem with it going dead for a minute (probably it's fixed by now).

[ACTCMS]

Only two people are using this drive???

Could be...

I'm still at the 750Gb stage... I always stay away from the bleeding edge stuff, but I've used Seagate drives for years - never had a problem yet, so I can't comment on their support ethos. However, it looks to me like they put it out too soon, but they've got it fixed now.

My 2p worth...

[ApexHack]

I got a Freeagent 1.5TB external USB the other day. I haven't used it yet but have been reading about some of the problems. I'm not that worried about firmware, that's something I could probably fix.

I've been debating as to whether or not I should pull the drive out of the case. I don't really want to use it as an external, but I also don't want to void the warranty. If it was easier to take apart I wouldn't be fudging around, but it looks like I'll have to destroy the case to remove the drive. No screws.