Anyone else had problems with Seagate external hard drives?

[NoJobRob]

I bought a Seagate 2TB external hard drive today at Walmart. It's the biggest POS external hard drive I've ever owned. It's the FreeAgent GoFlex model. I knew I should have gone with Western Digital... They were sold out of the WD 2TB drives so I went with the Seagate. Anyway, it didn't show up in "My Computer" like it should. It was recognized in "Device Manager" though. I went through all hell troubleshooting this POS, searched all over the internet for a solution. I'm almost done partitioning this thing so we'll see if that works. But either way I'm returning this $124 paper weight in the morning and buying the Western Digital 1TB that they do have. I really want to reinstall windows on my "craptop" (my old laptop) but I need somewhere to store my files in the mean time, plus I just need more storage space. I'd order one online but shipping all the way out here to Hawaii can take a long time.

So has anyone else had any nightmares with Seagate's inferior products? LOL

[NoJobRob]

Oh, and get this, apparently you can only use this thing with ONE computer. What the hell? LOL That makes it pretty much useless, unless of course you want a $124 object to keep your napkin from blowing away when you're eating outside... LOL

[Alstar]

I had a Seagate 1TB once and it worked pretty well, but it was noisy and heated easily, and the shape was just silly. Eventually the awkward shape meant I was running out of places to situate it it, the awkward positioning meant I tripped over its wire and knocked it on the floor, it broke way too easily. Had no software problems with it though, but if an external HD isn't plug'n'play then it's a piece of crap. I've now had a WD one for years and it's quiet, keeps cool, has an easy-to-manage shape, and pretty much blends into the background. Absolutely no problems with it whatsoever. It seems sturdy enough to withstand impacts but I'm not about to test that.

[NoJobRob]

Originally Posted by Alstar

I had a Seagate 1TB once and it worked pretty well, but it was noisy and heated easily, and the shape was just silly. Eventually the awkward shape meant I was running out of places to situate it it, the awkward positioning meant I tripped over its wire and knocked it on the floor, it broke way too easily. Had no software problems with it though, but if an external HD isn't plug'n'play then it's a piece of crap. I've now had a WD one for years and it's quiet, keeps cool, has an easy-to-manage shape, and pretty much blends into the background. Absolutely no problems with it whatsoever. It seems sturdy enough to withstand impacts but I'm not about to test that.

I have a 300 gig USB powered Seagate which has been great, so I don't know what the folks at Seagate are smoking these days. If their newer products are indicative of the company's future, then I don't think they'll be around very long. LOL

[ellie]

I always stayed away from seagate, I always heard about issues with their HD.

Having said that I have heard at times the same issue with Western Digital, but I have to say I have three WD hard-drives...and there has been no issue so far (touch wood).

[ragtag]

Firstly. Unless the drive has some weird built in encryption, you should be able to format it to whatever file format you want, and use it with as many computers as you like.

Seagate drives are ok, though I've generally been more happy with WD. I work as an IT manager, so go through a lot of hard drives. For external drives, LaCie has been the most problematic for us. We've had quite a few drives where the controller has died, while the disk inside, was ok. That said, we have an aging Apple raid, with a total of 56 Seageate drives in it, and we have 3-4 of these die a year now. The raid is over five years old, and the drives have been working 24-7 for all that time, so it's kind of to be expected.

[sssputnik]

I bought my son a Maxtor external hard drive for his gaming needs. It kurplunked after a few months.

They wanted me to pay:

$140 to get my files back
$60 to get it replaced with a refurbished one because of the shipping, etc..

I couldn't use my own packaging, because it has to be wrapped a SPECIFIC way and in certain packaging. It was insane. And if you sent it back wrong they wouldn't accept it.
And if you look for the packaging 'they want', you could only buy it in packs of 5. Then when you do get there packaging because you have no other options, you have 14 days to get it back to their facility.

I was furious. And let them know on the phone. It was so unfair. I will never buy another Seagate product again!

[NoJobRob]

Originally Posted by sssputnik

I bought my son a Maxtor external hard drive for his gaming needs. It kurplunked after a few months.

They wanted me to pay:

$140 to get my files back
$60 to get it replaced with a refurbished one because of the shipping, etc..

I couldn't use my own packaging, because it has to be wrapped a SPECIFIC way and in certain packaging. It was insane. And if you sent it back wrong they wouldn't accept it.
And if you look for the packaging 'they want', you could only buy it in packs of 5. Then when you do get there packaging because you have no other options, you have 14 days to get it back to their facility.

I was furious. And let them know on the phone. It was so unfair. I will never buy another Seagate product again!

Same here. I returned the POS Seagate and got the Western Digital 2TB hard drive this morning. They were out yesterday but had one this morning, so I yoinked it. And guess what? It took a whole 90 seconds to have it ready to use. Imagine that... something working properly! LOL I'm never buying another Seagate product as long as I live.

[ragtag]

As a side note. This would be a good time for anyone who doesn't have a backup of their files, to make one. Hard drives fail, more as a rule rather than an exception...it's just a matter of time.

In my experience, external hard drives and laptop drives tend to fail more than those in workstations, most likely because they're on the move a lot, and get jostled around. But all hard drives can fail, even enterprise class drives in dust free temperature controlled server rooms fail.

So go make a backup of your important files now, because your hard drive might fail tomorrow.

[danthony]

Good advice, I try to take at least a full backup weekly. On top of that, it helps to take a full image of the drive with something like symantec ghost or another imaging product. You can restore settings e.t.c. in no time.

Originally Posted by ragtag

As a side note. This would be a good time for anyone who doesn't have a backup of their files, to make one. Hard drives fail, more as a rule rather than an exception...it's just a matter of time.

In my experience, external hard drives and laptop drives tend to fail more than those in workstations, most likely because they're on the move a lot, and get jostled around. But all hard drives can fail, even enterprise class drives in dust free temperature controlled server rooms fail.

So go make a backup of your important files now, because your hard drive might fail tomorrow.

[ellie]

Originally Posted by ragtag

As a side note. This would be a good time for anyone who doesn't have a backup of their files, to make one. Hard drives fail, more as a rule rather than an exception...it's just a matter of time.

In my experience, external hard drives and laptop drives tend to fail more than those in workstations, most likely because they're on the move a lot, and get jostled around. But all hard drives can fail, even enterprise class drives in dust free temperature controlled server rooms fail.

So go make a backup of your important files now, because your hard drive might fail tomorrow.

Yup, I just did a full system backup yesterday and today on 3 external hardrives. I do it incase one fails. It's always good to leave a HD elsewhere off premises too, or use online backups like Online Backup, Data Backup & Remote Backup Solutions | Mozy

[alexb5784]

I bought a brand new external Seagate Hard Drive and could never get it to work with my Mac or the PC at my job. This was back in 2009. My friend bought one for himself this year and it refused to work with his Mac or my PC laptop. I don't recommend this brand.

Check out review sites such as PC Magazine before you buy anything else in the future.

Hard Drive Comparisons - PC Magazine

[AdvTech]

Originally Posted by ellie

Yup, I just did a full system backup yesterday and today on 3 external hardrives. I do it incase one fails. It's always good to leave a HD elsewhere off premises too, or use online backups like Online Backup, Data Backup & Remote Backup Solutions | Mozy

Mozy. Interesting. Can you store all your family vids there and then watch it anywhere with an Internet access without having to download it?

[ellie]

Originally Posted by alexb5784

I bought a brand new external Seagate Hard Drive and could never get it to work with my Mac or the PC at my job. This was back in 2009. My friend bought one for himself this year and it refused to work with his Mac or my PC laptop. I don't recommend this brand.

Check out review sites such as PC Magazine before you buy anything else in the future.

Hard Drive Comparisons - PC Magazine

You have to format pc hard drives for mac beforehand.

You can format HD's to read mac and pc, but it's limited to files of a 2 gig - for copying files over.

So I just format my external HD for mac only (using mac extended journaled), which means it can't be read on a pc, and vice versa.

You do this under mac>utilites>disk utlities>erase and select journaled mac...make sure have no files on the external HD before you do this.

[ellie]

Originally Posted by AdvTech

Mozy. Interesting. Can you store all your family vids there and then watch it anywhere with an Internet access without having to download it?

Not sure...I have never used it myself, I used carbonite (service was crap) but you had to download it, but you could login from any computer to do it...which was handy.

[alexb5784]

We did format them and still had problems. On the Mac the hard drives didn't show up at all. On the PCs the hard drives showed up on the desktop but didn't display the full hard drive capacity. For example, a 500GB drive was displayed as a 15GB drive. It was a continuous complete mess. Then we got another brand and had zero installation problems

I don't recommend Seagate products.