Seagate Acknowledges Problems With 1.5-TB HDD

AnInkle writes "Seagate's 1.5TB Barracuda has been available for a couple months from multiple retailers. But shortly after release, reports of random freezes appeared on several sites. The hang apparently occurs in Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows Vista when streaming video or transferring files at low speeds. After a couple of weeks of silence, Seagate has finally officially acknowledged the problem. In a response to The Tech Report, they say they're investigating the 'issue' affecting 'a small number of Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives.' Acknowledging the 'inconvenience' is a start, but most users expect at least average performance and prompt service from the capacity king of data storage." In a related story, reader Lucas123 plugs a ComputerWorld piece examining the question of Seagate's plans to stay relevant at a time when SSDs increasingly capture OEM mindshare.

Comments

Half baked

[bjb]

I've been looking to buy a large second drive for my Mac and ALMOST hit the buy button on this drive a week ago. However, I noticed some 1-star comments on Amazon's reviews of the drive and have been watching this ever since.

The problem appears to manifest itself in lockups for 30 seconds or so at a time which kills music streaming, video streaming, etc. The only reports of success appear to be from people who are using it for an archive disk and thats it. Some people claim the problem can be avoided somewhat by disabling the write cache, but naturally you get a serious performance hit from that (especially since the memory cache is 32MB!)

Reading the forums, it appears that Seagate has not only thus told people that the drives aren't meant for a RAID environment, but even gone so far as to tell people that RAID doesn't stand for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, but rather "Independent Drives". Hmm. Seems that time has changed this definition (FOLDOC and Wikipedia seem to claim the change in name as well).

I'm rather disappointed since now that I have a taste for a 1.5TB drive, I'm not looking to buy "just" a 1TB. Hopefully one of these companies can resolve this.

On a more serious note, I read something in Maximum PC this month that there are thermal reliability issues with perpendicular storage technology? Does this mean that all perpendicular drives are less reliable?

Re:Half baked

[negRo_slim]

On a more serious note, I read something in Maximum PC this month that there are thermal reliability issues with perpendicular storage technology? Does this mean that all perpendicular drives are less reliable?

This link might be of use to you in that regard.

Echoes of Intel...

Re:Half baked

[Anonymous Coward]

Patterson, David; Gibson, Garth A.; Katz, Randy (1988). "A Case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)" (PDF). SIGMOD Conference: pp 109â"116.

http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1987/CSD-87-391.pdf

right....

Re:Half baked

[koko775]

I actually talked with Randy Katz about RAID, as I was in one of his classes at Berkeley. As late as last May, it still meant "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks".

Sorry to burst your bubble.

Re:Half baked

[Lumpy]

I stopped buying Segate a few months ago when I bought a set to upgrade my G5 editor. I purchased 5 750gig drives and 2 of the 5 were defective. They are getting as bad as the IBM deathstars were back in the late 90's/ early 00's. I have had to do data recovery on many drives this past year and over 1/2 were seagates.. Seagate used to be the drives that NEVER failed. and now they are sending low grade refurbs for any warranty replacements and the warranty replaced drives have only 90 days on them so that nice 5 year warranty turns into a 90 day warranty when the drive dies and is replaced.

I only do HD video editing so I can get away with tiny 750 gig drives, but I dont like having them fail on me like segates have been lately.

As for the SSD drive remarks.. I cant see SSD drives getting near the capacities and speed I need for HD video editing within the nest 3 years.

Re:Half baked

[Anonymous Coward]

Inexpensive has no meaning in RAIDs of today, if it ever did.

I can't believe that even after being shown incontrovertible proof by the guys who created the acronym and described in detail how the first 5 levels work, we still have some dipshit here saying "if it ever did".

Re:Half baked

[sjames]

... RAID doesn't stand for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, but rather "Independent Drives".

The name hasn't changed. RAID has never had anything to do with the price of the disks. You've always been able to make a RAID set out of expensive disks, and the biggest RAID packages usually are made up of expensive disks.

Yes, you could, but then you'd be missing the point. MAny did miss the point, in fact.

Independent Disks is a sort of marketing revisionism because they were tired of customers pointing out that "this isn't really inexpensive, is it?".

Re:Half baked

[Jherek Carnelian]

For whatever reasons the otherwise smart chaps who devised RAID decided to use that word, at no stage was it a characteristic of RAIDsets that they were made of inexpensive disks.

The term "inexpensive" in the RAID acronym is used to mean relative to the cost of a single disk with equal performance. It doesn't mean cheap it means cheaper.

Re:Half baked

[dougisfunny]

Regardless of whether the disks are inexpensive or not, wouldn't you agree that an array of disks are going to be independent no matter what?

Redundant Array of Codependent Disks?

Re:Half baked

[blahplusplus]

"I stopped buying Segate a few months ago when I bought a set to upgrade my G5 editor. I purchased 5 750gig drives and 2 of the 5 were defective. They are getting as bad as the IBM deathstars were back in the late 90's/ early 00's"

Your sample is not representative ... "I had x and y fail on me, therefore the maker of x and y is crap". I used to buy western digital, and over %50 of the drives failed before 3 years. Seagate backs their drives with 5 year warranties compared to everyone else, if anything I think that's a statement of confidence in their ability to create drives that outlast the competition. All hard disks are destined to fail at some point due to moving parts and after prolonged use, even flash drives have a limited lifetime (even if it will never see failure during the time it is used). This is just the nature of the beast.

The biggest improvement's in hard disk life in my experience has been in adding active cooling to the disks themselves. Ever since I've added active cooling, I've noticed a mark decrease in failure before the 3 year mark, and I tend to go through a lot of hard disks.

Re:Seagate is good

[dhanson865]

I keep reading about people going Seagate over Western Digital "for the 5 year warranty".

If you think that WD doesn't offer a 5 year warranty on any drives you are wrong. If you think there is only "the" 5 year warranty instead of "those" 5 year warranties then maybe I'm going to be a grammar nazi too.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=488 will get you started on 5 year warranty drives from WD.

WD1001FALS = 1TB
WD7501AALS = 750GB
WD6401AALS = 640GB (I'd recommend this drive)
WD5001AALS = 500GB

People are so quick to look to the top end but there is a reliability/speed/power/noise benefit to buying the sweet spot drive. Cost is in the eye of the beholder as the 640GB drive is lower in purchase price but won't be the best price per GB. Myself I'm willing to use the smaller drives, but then I'm the type that can still make out on a 250GB drive without being low on disk space.

As a single drive or in an array as long as you don't run out of space you gain performance using smaller drives so long as you buy carefully. In RAID more spindles equal more speed. As a single drive you can pick and choose the highest density platters (320/333/334 as the desired platters currently vs the 250GB platters that are still floating around the supply chain in so many drives)

Harsh Comments

[MaxwellEdison]

HDD manufacturers will always face a large amount of negative press. The reason is simple. If your DVD drive breaks...ho-hum I'm out $XX and need a new one. Guess I'm not watching Kung Fu Panda tonight. If your HDD breaks...OMFG!!!I had 5 years of tax returns, 20000 hours of music, 1000s of irreplaceable pictures!...and I'm out $XX!!!

Simply put, the cost of failure for a storage manufacturer is an order of magnitude above the rest of the industry. People don't just lose money, they lose memories, they lose costly business information. Of course you and I know that we should back up our data. But its hindsight talking, because we've probably lost data before too.

Though..

[Junta]

I think it shouldn't matter the definition, either way Seagate has no excuse. That out of the way..

But the whole theory of RAID doesn't dictate anything about price nor, in my opinion, even require them to be 'disks'. Maybe 'inexpensive disks' is the term coined by the originator, but I think the originator should recognize the more general applicability of the concept.

For ultimate wrongness with respect to the declared meaning, how about a RAID-0 of high-capacity SSDs. A non-redundant array of expensive non-disk things.