Hard Drive Failures

[Paul G]

What's the shortest amount of time before you have had a failure from a recently installed hard drive?

We installed a new drive probably less than six months ago and about two weeks back it started showing bad sectors which just got worse. It was a data drive only for pics and docs, no program files. Now I have it with a friend seeing what he can recover for me.

Less than 6 months out of a new (quality brand) drive...not impressed. The one we put in the tower when we built the system 4 years ago is still running fine. Go figure!

[Harves]

I had one of my Samsung drives fail on my new machine within a couple of months, which is apparently rare for Samsung to have a failure. The warranty was honoured no problems at all, although it took a few weeks to go through the system.

That's why I have a second drive, to regularly backup my files. Things can and do go wrong unfortunately, I hope your friend can recover your files from the drive easily.

[pgbphotographytas]

I have seen drives fail within anything from a couple of weeks to ones that are still going after 4 years of daily use.

I have all my photos on 4 hard drives, 1 at home, 1 I carry with me and 2 stay at work.

[phild]

I bought a couple of seagate 500Gb HDD's and had one fail a few days after install. It was replaced under warranty, but I found that the problem was common with this model and that Seagate had a firmware update to correct it.

Hdd's have always had variable reliability, and in my experience all brands have their bad batches.

[Speedway]

In over 10 years I have never had a HDD failure, the oldest in my current computer (200Gb secondary backup) is 8 years old. Most of mine have been Seagate.
Keith.

[Q97]

2 days.

[Sammi]

I bought a couple of seagate 500Gb HDD's and had one fail a few days after install. It was replaced under warranty, but I found that the problem was common with this model and that Seagate had a firmware update to correct it.

Same but with seagates 1 TB drives, first one totally bricked itself within a week of being installed .sent it back and got the new one, after a month it started doing the same thing but was still being picked up in bios rang seagate and they said it hasnt yet bricked itself so they sent me via email the firmware update for that particular HDD and walla almost 12mths later and its still going strong.

[Paul G]

That's good to know Sammi!
Mine's a Seagate too. (500GB Barracuda) I've noticed them selling out very cheap at a few places recently - ie: $50 - $60 instead of the usual $120 - $150.

I guess after my friend has tried to recover what he can I will investigate the warrenty process but I will need another drive before then anyway to put the recovered data on - fingers crossed. Also looking at extra backup now. Just have to remember to backup more regularly as I fear I'm going to lose a few files from this episode.

[Sammi]

Theres actually a huge thread on whirlpool regarding the 500 and tb seagate drives, this was the only way i knew to not give up on the second one and ring seagate as it was still being picked up in the bios meaning it hadnt bricked... just wouldnt pick up in sys tool, seagate tools or allow access, after the firmware update everythings AOK