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You win Seagate… I’m done and I’m breaking up with you.
The last of my Barracuda 7200.11’s cheated on me last night. After babying our relationship for more than three years… I turned my back for one minute and it bailed, taking my my OS, pictures, and everything else with it.
I know I shouldn’t be surprised. This was a doomed pairing from the start. Segate admitted to performance and stability issues not long after this drive went to market. It wasn’t limited to my model. It’s sister drives were affected too– in fact most of the family was flawed, suffering from random bricking and drive failure.
They released cruddy firmware updates to try and correct the behavioural problems, and then later firmware updates for the firmware updates. Many of the affected complained it was too late, that it was impossible to apply any updates once the damage was done because the firmware updates could not be applied once the drives were bricked.
My case has been a bit more unique. I started out with twin 500’s, mirror’s of one another. I know, twins right? Life couldn’t have been better.
Two years went by before the dream began to unravel. The first signs were subtle– like it took a little longer to get my queries answered, or my file copied. It’s sister drive often compensated, and I really didn’t notice as I was busy having fun with the guys… playing video games and exploring my hobbies.
Before long the stability issues started to show through– the occaisional ‘timeout’ and some random audible ‘disturbences’. They were still infrequent, but I noticed and promised to pay more attention to what was going on. That’s when things really started to heat up. I mean literally– the drive got hot. And not the good kind of hot. Meltdown hot.
And then it was over– it was gone. I saw a note posted from my BIOS on bootup that my RAID-1 config was degraded. My second drive was gone.
I was disappointed, but being relatively easy going and gifted at procrastinating I did nothing about it. About a year later my USB disk died. I was shocked at what I found when I pried open the casing. It was the Barracuda 7200.11’s cousin– another Barracuda (1 TB model). That separation hurt a bit more. I lost quite a bit on that one– I had come to depend on it for storing games, comics, and pictures.
A few months later I lost a 2TB disk… another Seagate Barracuda. I coudln’t believe my misfortune, and this time truthfully grieved at the loss. It cost me all of my movies and tv shows. In collecting digital media I always told yourself, ‘Ahh, if I lost all that I could get it again.’ And I suppose it’s true (mostly), but the recovery process takes time.
At that time I decided, that was it– no more Seagate hard drives. I bought a Synology DS212j NAS, and filled it with Western Digital Caviar Green drives (editors note: quiet, cool, and reliable) and promised to implement a backup strategy across the network. I counted myself lucky that I had kept my personal documents and finances backed up to another disk. One that I trusted. One that had never failed me.
Time does funny things to a relationship; It can heal all wounds, and help build trust. On the outset, these sound like good things– but when your significant other is an unstable time bomb waiting for the day to stab you in the back it teaches you that trust makes you blind.
And so here I sit, writing about my pain. I had another article ready for today, but I lost it. It was on my desktop– on the drive I tought I could count on.
It’s been 3 years now Seagate. I’ve lost three of your drives, and all my stuff several times over. I’m done victimizing myself, and buying your crappy hardware. This relationship is over.
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Is this like that time I broke up with the internet? It didn’t last. We’re back together and, frankly, I’m still miserable.
I wish you and Western Digital all the happiness you deserve.
I don’t think so– I picked up a nice hard drive at lunch at ravaged it this evening with windows, software, and games. It’s not as fast as my old one but it won’t be as high maintenance either. Suck it Seagate. Western Digital FTW.
No high end name brand hard drive manufacturer can replace a good backup solution!