Seagate slapped with class action lawsuit over hard drive failure rate

[BlueGuy]

If I didn't have system images and other important data on these drives I'd give it ago. .

Well, I consider that to be important enough to always use some kind of removable to store critical
items. In the Win98 days, I used those SCSI LS100 [100MB] drives to store images,(legacy from my old Atari TT) then later started burning images to DVDs(once I got the hang of Windoze s/w) and in the future, since I've been including card readers in all my builds, of moving to Compact Flash and/or Secure Digital because some times the image can exceed the capacity of even a dual layer {BR} DVD.
For now, because they're cheap, I still use DVDs but with a file splitter/joiner I found at Majorgeeks in the utilities section.

It depends on how precious the data is to you.

 

[mjf]

Well, I consider that to be important enough to always use some kind of removable to store critical
items.
....
For now, because they're cheap, I still use DVDs but with a file splitter/joiner I found at Majorgeeks in the utilities section.

It depends on how precious the data is to you.

I use basic sata HDDs in a docking station. I have numerous external WD drives in WD enclosures but I've already commented on their deficiencies. I would never rely on CD/DVDs for long term data storage unless they were certified archive quality and they are expensive.

 

[BlueGuy]

I would never rely on CD/DVDs for long term data storage unless they were certified archive quality and they are expensive.

Define long term, I make a fresh image DVD every few months, making the previous obsolete, yet the
4.2 gig DVD from the old Win98 Fujitsu drive, 15 years old is still intact and I use it to write to my work partitions, those things that are still useful, even though the Fujitsu drive hasn't gone belly up.
However it is IDE, requiring the IDE PCI card I just put away in 2013, for reading.

Even my 12-inch LD collection of 300 disks[from better times] 'laser rot' or if you want to call it 'optical rot' only five of the LDs have symptoms of such, long since replaced by superior digital copies. I keep them around rather than send them to a landfill or like that scene in "Back to the Future II" where Marty
and Doc Brown are in the alley[2015] and you see un-sleeved [bare] LaserDiscs wrapped up on shipping pallets, ready for disposal (inside joke..as Universal had huge investment in Phillip's LD format in the 1980s). I trust optical/digital more than I trust magnetic, just one shot of EMP, or just a stray field from some bad electrical wiring, and poof.....magnetic storage gone.

Why do you think early Macs, Commodore and Atari computers had their OSs on ROM chips? all you needed back then were configuration files edited, on floppy or expensive 10Megabyte HDDs and you were good to go, lose a disk, and you could still bootup to the basic desktop.

Let's get this thread back on topic, I really wasn't expecting a debate on my days off....


To each their own......................

 

[Borg 386]

I still use CDR's & DVD's to store important/personal files. Granted, they are subject to bit rot, but that's something I don't have to worry about for a while. Once it's written on the disk & stored in a safe place, you truly have a hard copy that has no chance of failure (unless you give the CD to a small child or someone that's careless, then the resulting scratches could ruin it.).

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I still use CDR's & DVD's to store important/personal files. Granted, they are subject to bit rot, but that's something I don't have to worry about for a while. Once it's written on the disk & stored in a safe place, you truly have a hard copy that has no chance of failure (unless you give the CD to a small child or someone that's careless, then the resulting scratches could ruin it.).

The optical disks are ok unless you have several hundred GB of data to store.

 

[mjf]

Care and Handling of CDs and DVDs — A Guide for Librarians and Archivi

National Institute of Standards and Technology
[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Special Publication 500-252, October 2003, Final
NIST Digital Media Group: digitalPhysicalMediaAndDevice
Storage conditions are important as well as the quality of the manufacture.
[/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]"> Few, if any, life expectancy reports for these discs have been published by independent laboratories. An accelerated aging study at
NIST estimated the life expectancy of one type of DVD-R for authoring disc to be 30 years if stored at 25°C (77°F) and 50% relative humidity. This testing for R discs is in the preliminary stages, and much
more needs to be done."

"> The life expectancy (LE) of optical discs depends on many factors,
some controllable by the user, others not.
Factors that affect disc life expectancy include the following:
• type
• manufacturing quality
• condition of the disc before recording
• quality of the disc recording
• handling and maintenance
• environmental conditions"

They also say that manufacturers typically specify a shelf life of ~5 years before writing. So old CD/DVDs should not be used.
In short I'd make at least 2 copies for say documents, photos etc. I'd never use DVDs for a system image.
The other thing which may not be mentioned in the report is the effect of your DVD writer alignment. If the alignment is out then you may have difficulty reading the CD/DVD on a properly aligned unit.

 

[lehnerus2000]

I should have kept my my mouth shut.

My oldest WD Green HDD (June 2009) suddenly stopped yesterday (a few minutes into a video).
The last time I checked the SMART data it was still looking good.

Over six years of use doesn't seem too bad though.

 

[mjf]

Most of my important data is on a 1TB Seagate split into 2 partitions. It would have to be ~ 5 years old. HDDs are like big dogs - Never fully trust them. I periodically clone this data drive to a 1TB WD Black kept in a docking station. When the Seagate dies I'll plug in the WD Black, buy a new HDD and continue the process.

 

[maxseven]

I would never rely on CD/DVDs for long term data storage unless they were certified archive quality and they are expensive.

Define long term, I make a fresh image DVD every few months, making the previous obsolete, yet the
4.2 gig DVD from the old Win98 Fujitsu drive, 15 years old is still intact and I use it to write to my work partitions, those things that are still useful, even though the Fujitsu drive hasn't gone belly up.
However it is IDE, requiring the IDE PCI card I just put away in 2013, for reading.

Even my 12-inch LD collection of 300 disks[from better times] 'laser rot' or if you want to call it 'optical rot' only five of the LDs have symptoms of such, long since replaced by superior digital copies. I keep them around rather than send them to a landfill or like that scene in "Back to the Future II" where Marty
and Doc Brown are in the alley[2015] and you see un-sleeved [bare] LaserDiscs wrapped up on shipping pallets, ready for disposal (inside joke..as Universal had huge investment in Phillip's LD format in the 1980s). I trust optical/digital more than I trust magnetic, just one shot of EMP, or just a stray field from some bad electrical wiring, and poof.....magnetic storage gone.

Why do you think early Macs, Commodore and Atari computers had their OSs on ROM chips? all you needed back then were configuration files edited, on floppy or expensive 10Megabyte HDDs and you were good to go, lose a disk, and you could still bootup to the basic desktop.

Let's get this thread back on topic, I really wasn't expecting a debate on my days off....


To each their own......................

I stumbled into this thread and enjoyed your post BlueGuy--I have some 1200-1400 Laserdiscs and a whole bunch of Discovision discs gathering dust!

IMO the best current archival disc solution is M-DISC. Seems to me the Army tested and the White House uses and although they are billed as (M)illenial storage i.e. 1,000 years, I'll be happy if they're readable for the rest of my life anyway.

I have a spindle of 25GB discs but I think they might have 50 and 100GB discs now too. They are NOT expensive, at least not by comparison to the value of your personal photos, videos, and documents. I would not use them to archive e.g. movies that one could buy again if necessary.

 

[Borg 386]

The optical disks are ok unless you have several hundred GB of data to store.

That unfortunately is true. But using them for pictures, music, etc., works good for me. It's definitely not a good medium for large amounts of files. But still, I trust those better then having all my files on a HDD only to have it fail one day & loose it all.

Just out of curiosity, I set up doing a system image for Win 7 on disks to see how many it would take. It said the image would need 8 DVD R's.

 

[ThrashZone]

Yep price RW disks
Disks are good for somethings but are becoming unpractical.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

...But still, I trust those better then having all my files on a HDD only to have it fail one day & loose it all...

That's true of any media, not just HDDs. Data isn't safe unless it exists in at least three different places, such as on the computer, a local backup that isn't connected to the computer except when updating the backup, and on an offsite backup. That way, if one medium dies, you will still have your data on the other two.

HDDs are far more convenient and, volume for volume, much, much less expensive than optical disks, especially with larger amounts of data. As long as as you have proper data redundancy, they are just as safe as using optical disks or even tape.

An example of a basic backup scheme using HDDs would be to have one instance of your data on one or more HDDs in your computer, another copy on one or more HDDs that you keep at home but also keep disconnected from the computer except when updating the backup (external HDDs are the most popular for this although one can also use internal type HDDs in a dock or hot swap bay), and a third copy kept on one or more HDDs offsite, such as at a trusted friend's or neighbor's house, in a lockjed desk or locker at work, or a bank safe deposit box. The offsite and on site copies should be swapped frequently to keep the offsite copy as up to date as possible.

Since an offsite backup is up to date only to the date the backup was last updated, one way to avoid losing data added or changed after the last time the offsite backup was updated is to also maintain a cloud backup using a reputable paid cloud backup service, such as Carbonite.com, Crashplan, or Backblaze (stay away from free cloud storage sites; those are not very secure and are notorious for disappearing without warning). A cloud backup site can also be used solely for the offsite backup but recovery will be slow. However, by using both the cloud backup and one or more offsite HDDs, one can recover most of one's data from the offsite backup. Recovering the remainder from the cloud backup will take far less time since you have already recovered most of the data.

My own backup scheme is somewhat more complex (ok, anal) but it is still essentially the same as above, except I use twice as many HDDs in the onsite and offsite backups (four backup copies altogether instead of two) as well as the cloud backup (I use Carbonite.com).

 

[Kenshin20]

built a computer for my uncle many years ago. i used one of my slave HDD that i want it to replace Seagate 320gb and that guy still rocking on my uncle's computer. unfortunately the HDD that i replaced for failed on my twice already.

 

[Laith]

I've been really impressed with Hitachi drives. Very good performance and they have an extremely low failure rate.
Not sure what's happened to Seagate, but they've been getting progressively worse over the years. They used to make rock solid drives but I wouldn't recommend them anymore.

I had a Hitachi drive in my old laptop that did fail on me, and that was the only ever drive to fail on me. Currently i have a Seagate drive in my build and i can confirm that it is running perfectly, only downside is that it takes about 6 minutes to completely boot. I have no idea if this is related to Windows and all the programs i have installed on Windows or just simply the drive being slow?

 

[ThrashZone]

Yikes that is a boot that needs the boot

 

[Laith]

Yikes that is a boot that needs the boot

LOL!

 

[Indianatone]

You might want to download a copy of HD Sentinal to check out the drive and replace it if needed.
Hard Disk Sentinel Trial version - HDD health and temperature monitoring

 

[Laith]

I did run SeaTools on it like 20 days ago but i'll try HD Sentinel.

EDIT: HD Sentinel says everything is Perfect and that no action is needed.

 

[ThrashZone]

Weird :/

 

[Laith]

Probably because all the software i've installed, even though i've only taken up 331GB, i will try a clean boot later though.