HELP! ANOTHER Seagate Drive has let me down.

[crstagg]

In 48 years of experience with PC with internal HHDs I have only had one experience with an HD failure and that was with my the 15 year old system I am posting from now. Luckily this system is configured as a Raid 1 (2 640GB HDs) for the boot drive and 6 other HDs from 500GB to 4TB plus a 256GB SSD. The failed HD was one of the Raid 1 HDs all I had to do was swap the connections to another HD and rebuild the Raid from the other Raid 1 HD. Only problem was that by then there were no 640GB HDs available so I bought the same model 1TB HD and used just 640GB of the 1TB. BTW my first experience 48 years ago was an IBM XT running DOS 3.1 with a whopping 10MB HD. Total cost of over $4000 (but not my $s). This 15 year old system has also had a failed power supply and the pump for the liquid CPU cooler has failed. But it still runs. Yes, I have bought newer systems in the last 15 years but they were laptops and the latest being a Microsoft Surface. Since buying the Surface 17 months ago I have decided to never buy another laptop.

Before someone asks why have 6 other drives 2 internal and 4 external: It was for backup. This system (Cyberpower AMD Phenom II 3.2ghz) was purchased for my Investment Advisory business as well as to use with MSTS. Had to have customer data well backed up. Rotated 4 HDs mounted externally in a 2 slot SATA adapter via USB. Periodically removed HDs to a safe and replaced with one from the safe. As I accumulated more and more MSTS add-ons, I got another 2 slot SATA adapter for using one HD for storing MSTS Downloads and another to backup my MSTS install(s). Once I got the SSD all my MSTS installs were moved to the SSD.

Maybe next year: New desktop. i9 with 2 2TB SSDs in Raid1, and 1TB SSD for MSTS/ORTS.

[lateagain]

UPDATE:

Well I got the Seagate Tools Bootable stuff to install using my old Win7 box and the newer box duly booted (without having to fiddle with the Bios settings) using Linux. The software ran perfectly and the process was as simple as the instructions made it look.

That's where the good news ended. The software could only "see" a tiny 3.6Gb sector on the 2Tb disc. I tried all the tool options and the best I got was "trying to get to files beyond bad sector" (words to that effect) and after a long wait a FAIL.

So I tried the "trial versions" of Minitools and EaseUS and they both came up with the same result. That's when I called "Time of Death", as they say in A&E when the patient expires.

Of course this ISN'T life and death and is only just one of life's "curved balls" so as I type this on my Win7 box the new SSD is formatting on the "New" Win10 box. With any luck any missing utilities, apps and programmes that aren't already on my backup will still be there to download. On the bright side some long redundant software will not waste space on the new SSD and re-downloaded stuff will at least be the latest versions?

I've no plans for the failed disc and when the "Sata to USB" cable I ordered arrives I'll at least be able to try some other freebie recovery software to see if anything might find the locked in data. It's not even worth reformatting because there's nothing I want to keep that I'd trust to a flaky drive anyway.

A quick browse of the box's "events log" shows that the drive "disappeared" on the 13th!!! Anyone else just a tads superstitious? LOL!

Thanks for the help guys. Google is fine for finding stuff but actual experience feedback is far more useful.

[ex-railwayman]

Certainly the first Seagate that died on me was shown in a quick Google Search to be part of a specific batch that scores of folk had posted complaints about.
The one thing I don't get is the passion for BIG capacity drives? The bigger the drive the greater the damage it's failure will cause?

I think you were just unlucky with your purchase Geoff, I obtained a Seagate Ultra Touch 1TB SSD 3 weeks ago, it has a 4.8/5.0 review on Amazon from 1,240 reviews, so, I hope it doesn't blow up now.......

I think the reason for BIG SSDs is that PC games these days are huge to download and install, the recent series of Battlefield, CallofDuty, etc, etc, each one takes over 150GBs to download from Steam, if you obtain the whole franchise set you'd need 2/3 SSDs to put it all on.

Cheerz. Steve.

[lateagain]

I think you were just unlucky with your purchase Geoff, I obtained a Seagate Ultra Touch 1TB SSD 3 weeks ago, it has a 4.8/5.0 review on Amazon from 1,240 reviews, so, I hope it doesn't blow up now.......
Cheerz. Steve.

I hope for your sake it doesn't too Steve. However their mechanical drives consistently come out top in reviews and always seem to have top specs ......but that's worth squat when they die....

My advice is BACK-UP and I mean every save, and certainly every download or stored document or picture.

A good search is "Problems with Seagate drive", because then if there is a concern over a certain model, batch, size etc. you'll find no shortage of hits.

It has to be mostly a batch issue because if all their models were keeling over there wouldn't be so many good reviews.

I've put the disk aside now and I'm building up the stuff that got trashed but when I'm back up to speed there are a couple more "recovery" apps I'll have a go with. NOT holding my breath.

BTW mine was a 2Tb and I've replaced it with a 2Tb Crucial SSD. They got "best all rounder" review and I don't need "cutting edge" for my usage.

[MsSheare]

I recently picked up a new SSD with my new computer and was surprised to find out that you can NOT defrag them only optimize them as defragging cuts down the lifespan of the SSD.

[bwbrgb]

With SSD drives it's better IMHO to use your optimizing software just to analyze the drive (s ) before doing any thing such as optimizing or especially defrag . Even optimizing uses read/write so unless the drive is in bad shape - - leave it alone .
Also make sure you turn off any software that automatically optimizes or defrags your drives . There are lots of good free analyzers out there.
You will extend the life of the SSD substantially .

[ex-railwayman]

I recently picked up a new SSD with my new computer and was surprised to find out that you can NOT defrag them only optimize them as defragging cuts down the lifespan of the SSD.

Yes, I was informed that an SSD doesn't have any moving parts inside them, unlike a basic hard drive, so, you shouldn't defrag them as it's a pointless exercise, and you might unwittingly damage something.

So far, I'm chuffed to bits with my SSD, it boots up quicker, the tiles on my train game load faster, it's brilliant, can't think why I never got one year's ago, in fact I'm thinking of buying another one soon, unsure if it will be a Seagate one, though.

Cheerz. Steve.

[rdayt]

Here's my experience with hard drives and SSDs.
I worked on slot machines for 30 years and in the last 15 they started using hard drives and SSDs for storage.
In gaming use they are typically written to once to load the OS and game firmware then they are used only for reading from to load the game into memory and then only when the game boots.
The drives were ordinary consumer drives of varying capacities from most of the major manufacturers.
It wasn't uncommon to have to replace the drives but it didn't happen all of the time. I probably had to replace 30 or 40 drives over the years.
The ones that had to be replaced, all of the time, were Seagate HDs and Transend SSDs. Never had issues with any other brands.
I've also had a personal Seagate hard drive crap out on me.
Of course your mileage may vary but this is what I've seen.
On another note I still have a 32MB Western Digital hard drive from 1988 that still works. I use it as a paperweight.

Randy

[MsSheare]

there is a very good thread here how to turn off windows 10 optimize

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/new...ves-too-often/

[qballbandit]

I tried that, and as soon as I unchecked my "C" drive, the "OK" button greyed out so I couldn't complete the process.