Sorry, Venting, currently in the process of losing two more Hard Drives (SEAGATE SUCKS)

[SentaiBrad]

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There we go. The more intelligent response is that I have another two drives that are dying, except this time I caught it early. One drive was acting very poor, like it had bad sectors (very intermittent read / write speeds, and even losing connectiong completely two or three times), and so I ran a SMART scan with Crystal Disk Info. Well a second drive also failed the SMART test, on the same location, and looking up that error, it means that the drive is going to fail, soon. I took some screen shots of each error here and here as well. So, now I have to buy ANOTHER hard drive.

What makes things even worse too, I was restarting because that would solve, at least temporarily while I move stuff off of it, the speeds of the drive. Well, during the last reboot, MY WINDOWS 10 LOGIN COMPLETELY DISAPPEARED! I mean, gone. You get to that screen with the time and date, I press enter to bring up the Pin prompt, gone, same with the image. Even worse, Safe mode required my login, same with the advanced set-up (?!?!?!?!?!?!). I finally got back in, but now I need to restart cause I was messing around with the drive plugins, and my production drive is currently not active, and for a SATA Drive to show back up a restart is required. I'm currently moving off the stuff the drive will let me, I took screenshots of the rest and I have my Backblaze backup for the stuff that can't get copied over.

I've had it this year with computers, hard drives specifically, wanting to shit out on me. The screwed up part? ALL 3 DRIVES ARE FROM SEAGATE. So granted, one of the drives that is failing is rather old, but I have other Western Digital Drives and Toshiba drives that are way older and still rockin. So Newegg has a 5TB Toshiba on-sale till the 6th for $135 USD, I think I'm gonna grab that. Solves the failing drive problem, and I gain an extra 500GB, but it's BS this needs to happen in the first place.

Thanks for taking the time to read my rant, I appreciate it. It was cathartic.

[DOS76]

Brad when you get the login screen and there is no way to sign in usually pressing ctrl alt delete brings up the sign in at least in my experience and also what smart warning are you getting I get the excessive head parking a lot due to a way that the drives where spinning down due to power management settings but those drives have had those head parking (WD has since fixed this issue with the spin downs) warnings for years now and haven't failed. Most of my .smart warning say the drive doesn't seem ready to fail but those issues could cause problems that is all. Of course if your machine isn't working right then yeah maybe a new drive will fix you up.

Edited November 4, 2016 by DOS76

[SentaiBrad]

I tried Ctrl + Alt + Del, and nothing had happened. Never needed to do that before either. I did end up making it come back, but I am not sure exactly on which it was.

As for the SMART Tests, the screenshots show the errors for both. Both have "relocated sectors count", which a Wiki table shows as an error that means the drive is actively failing, especially if the value jumps up a few in a day. The first drive also has Current Pending Sector count and Uncorrectable Sector Count, which I think means a sector is failing or has failed and there is nothing the drive can do to fix it. The second drive only has the first Relocated Sectors Count error, but that was still one of the "this probably means death" signs.

[SentaiBrad]

Oh also, the first drive has been active 21,918 hours which is roughly 2 and a half years, and the other drive 35,907, which is about 4 years and 1 month. So the second drive has seen some wear, but they are rated for about 5-7 years, right? The common denominator in all of my drives failing in the last 4-5 years, was that they are all Seagate drives, this would make drives 3 and 4, maybe even 4 and 5, I can't quite remember (might be an exchanged drive or two in there).

[DOS76]

Oh yeah relocated sectors are very bad sorry to hear about your drives and also that they were Seagate as so have been my last 5 or 6 hard drive purchases.

[SentaiBrad]

Thanks for the responses Derek, even if they are confirming the death of two more of my drives. In a way, having a definitive answer helps, and I always know you'll be there to revel in my failing hardware. With the amount you have and the years you've been doing this for, you are more than uniquely qualified to understand.

[DOS76]

Yeah I've had a bunch of drives fail over the last decade (even though I'm 40 I've only been using a PC since then) that is why you need redundancy which is expensive but its worth it for when something fails.

[FistyDollars]

Seagate definitely sucks. I rarely have to replace any drives except when I need a higher capacity drive instead, but both times I've had drive failures, they've been Seagate. 

[SentaiBrad]

Yea, I don't know what to say anymore. They are cheaper drives, but sometimes not by much, and really the peace of mind and that extra longevity far outweighs the slight increase in price. I also love this saying, because I think it is so damn true, but also perfectly contradicting in a lot of situations, and in this case very true: You get what you pay for.

[CliveBarker]

I remember reading an article at anandtech about the lifespan of hard drives, Seagate came as the worst, i was lucky to read it before purchasing them so I went with Western Digital.

Hope you get things sorted out

[SentaiBrad]

There wasn't much to sort per-se, other than fixing that odd windows bug and getting stuff off before the drive is not usable anymore. At the time I bought these, I didn't have much of a choice for hard drives, I was very very limited on money and had to buy what I could afford, and Seagate drives provided the best $1 per GB. It was only after that I started to read and learn about the drives, and then they all started failing.

[RetroArcade]

I have heard of people buying a new drive and swapping out their old one for it and returning it. . . . .  I dunno, just saying. 

[DOS76]

I've done this before with an external and the girl actually checked the serial number on the bottom of the enclosure which was fine because I swapped it for a bad internal drive and used the right enclosure so I would be hesitant to just return a drive that the serial numbers are clearly visible. The drive was still under warranty when I returned it it was just much more expedient then waiting for an RMA from WD (this is my moral justification for my actions but the truth is WD and BestBuy can afford to take a loss much more than I can and I'm going to get them before I let them get me).

[RetroArcade]

Amazon ;D. If the serial number area of the box is scuffed up , oops. I honestly wouldn't feel bad about doing it if the drive is dying at less than what the manufacturer says it should last til. 

[SentaiBrad]

I'm mad, but im not gonna do that.