gojlt2 wrote:
> I just replaced 1 Maxtor and 2 Seagate hard drives with Western
> Digital. All are internal 3.5inch, 7200RPM, 8MB cache.
>
> The replacements were made based on SMART data on the drives read by
> www.grc.com SpinRite application. The Seagates and Maxtor
> (manufactured by Seagate) all reported massive Seek Errors, ECC
> Errors, Write Errors, and others that I don't recall. One of the
> Seagate drives was only 1 month old. I contacted Seagate on the new
> one, and was told to send it in for warranty replacement. I received a
> refurbished drive that had more errors than the one I sent them. YIKES
> - no more of this. The Seagate and Maxtor drives were all under
> warranty, and I chucked them.
>
> I now have 4 Western Digital drives. Not one is reporting any SMART
> errors; the oldest one is a 40MB and has over 30,000 hours reported by
> SMART data.

> Is this a fluke?

Nope.

> Does Seagate make defective drives?

Certainly some of them do die, just like with any manufacturer.

> Does Western Digital report SMART data correctly?

Yes.

> I am a bit suspicious since none of the WD drives show any SMART errors.

Post the SMART reports that Everest produces.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4181

Previously gojlt2 wrote:
> I just replaced 1 Maxtor and 2 Seagate hard drives with Western
> Digital. All are internal 3.5inch, 7200RPM, 8MB cache.

> The replacements were made based on SMART data on the drives read by
> www.grc.com SpinRite application. The Seagates and Maxtor
> (manufactured by Seagate) all reported massive Seek Errors, ECC
> Errors, Write Errors, and others that I don't recall. One of the
> Seagate drives was only 1 month old. I contacted Seagate on the new
> one, and was told to send it in for warranty replacement. I received a
> refurbished drive that had more errors than the one I sent them. YIKES
> - no more of this. The Seagate and Maxtor drives were all under
> warranty, and I chucked them.

> I now have 4 Western Digital drives. Not one is reporting any SMART
> errors; the oldest one is a 40MB and has over 30,000 hours reported by
> SMART data.

> Is this a fluke? Does Seagate make defective drives? Does Western
> Digital report SMART data correctly? I am a bit suspicious since none
> of the WD drives show any SMART errors.

Seagate has turned out some really bad drives lately. They used to be
dependable, but no more. Maxtor is owned by Seagate.

With seek errors, you can have external sources, such as a bad PSU,
though. I would be surprised to see seek errors in three different
drives at the same time without an external reason.

The ECC errors (ECC recoverd) are normal. Drives do not to
a precision seek on reading and often need to apply ECC
or re-read. ECC is faster these days. Write errors are
troubling, but can be the result of seeking problems.

Arno

Arno Wagner wrote in news:60durbF1qnnveU3@mid.individual.net
> Previously gojlt2 wrote:
> > I just replaced 1 Maxtor and 2 Seagate hard drives with Western
> > Digital. All are internal 3.5inch, 7200RPM, 8MB cache.
>
> > The replacements were made based on SMART data on the drives read by
> > www.grc.com SpinRite application. The Seagates and Maxtor
> > (manufactured by Seagate) all reported massive Seek Errors, ECC
> > Errors, Write Errors, and others that I don't recall. One of the
> > Seagate drives was only 1 month old. I contacted Seagate on the new
> > one, and was told to send it in for warranty replacement. I received a
> > refurbished drive that had more errors than the one I sent them. YIKES
> > - no more of this. The Seagate and Maxtor drives were all under
> > warranty, and I chucked them.
>
> > I now have 4 Western Digital drives. Not one is reporting any SMART
> > errors; the oldest one is a 40MB and has over 30,000 hours reported by
> > SMART data.
>
> > Is this a fluke? Does Seagate make defective drives? Does Western
> > Digital report SMART data correctly? I am a bit suspicious since none
> > of the WD drives show any SMART errors.
>
> Seagate has turned out some really bad drives lately. They used to be
> dependable, but no more.

> Maxtor is owned by Seagate.

Aha, that must be it.

>
> With seek errors, you can have external sources, such as a bad PSU,
> though. I would be surprised to see seek errors in three different
> drives at the same time without an external reason.
>
> The ECC errors (ECC recoverd) are normal. Drives do not to
> a precision seek on reading and often need to apply ECC

> or re-read.

Utter nonsense.

> ECC is faster these days.

No. Really? Who would have thought, eh.

> Write errors are troubling, but can be the result of seeking problems.

Clueless, as always.

>
> Arno

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:24:23 -0800 (PST), gojlt2
put finger to keyboard and composed:

>I just replaced 1 Maxtor and 2 Seagate hard drives with Western
>Digital. All are internal 3.5inch, 7200RPM, 8MB cache.
>
>The replacements were made based on SMART data on the drives read by
>www.grc.com SpinRite application. The Seagates and Maxtor
>(manufactured by Seagate) all reported massive Seek Errors, ECC
>Errors, Write Errors, and others that I don't recall. One of the
>Seagate drives was only 1 month old. I contacted Seagate on the new
>one, and was told to send it in for warranty replacement. I received a
>refurbished drive that had more errors than the one I sent them. YIKES
>- no more of this. The Seagate and Maxtor drives were all under
>warranty, and I chucked them.
>
>I now have 4 Western Digital drives. Not one is reporting any SMART
>errors; the oldest one is a 40MB and has over 30,000 hours reported by
>SMART data.
>
>Is this a fluke? Does Seagate make defective drives? Does Western
>Digital report SMART data correctly? I am a bit suspicious since none
>of the WD drives show any SMART errors.

Seagate drives appear to report big numbers for these parameters.

Here are some examples.

Good 120GB Seagate HD:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/SmartUDM/120GB.RPT

13GB Seagate HD with bad sectors:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/SmartUDM/13GB.RPT

Good 6GB Fujitsu HD:
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/SmartUDM/6GB.RPT

See this old post of mine where I attempted to make sense of my
Seagate SMART data.

Seagate SMART, Raw Read Error Rate, Seek Error Rate
http://tinyurl.com/38nxmj

My testing suggests that the Seek Error Rate number is actually a
count, not a rate, and it appears to count seeks rather than seek
errors. Hence it comes as no surprise to me that your refurbished
drive has larger values for these parameters.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

gojlt2 wrote:
>
> I just replaced 1 Maxtor and 2 Seagate hard drives with Western
> Digital. All are internal 3.5inch, 7200RPM, 8MB cache.
>
> The replacements were made based on SMART data on the drives read by
> www.grc.com SpinRite application. The Seagates and Maxtor
> (manufactured by Seagate) all reported massive Seek Errors, ECC
> Errors, Write Errors, and others that I don't recall. One of the
> Seagate drives was only 1 month old. I contacted Seagate on the new
> one, and was told to send it in for warranty replacement. I received a
> refurbished drive that had more errors than the one I sent them. YIKES
> - no more of this. The Seagate and Maxtor drives were all under
> warranty, and I chucked them.
>
> I now have 4 Western Digital drives. Not one is reporting any SMART
> errors; the oldest one is a 40MB and has over 30,000 hours reported by
> SMART data.
>
> Is this a fluke? Does Seagate make defective drives? Does Western
> Digital report SMART data correctly? I am a bit suspicious since none
> of the WD drives show any SMART errors.

I am currently de-engineering some Seagate drives, with the assistance
of a highly-qualified CNC engineer.

Seagate drives (at least their higher-capacity drives manufactured
within the past year) are displaying signs of manufacturing errors,
resulting in catastrophic failures.

Once this aberration has been confirmed, it will be made available to
the world's IT press.

For the time being, I no longer recommend Seagate drives; I am
receiving more of these for recovery than all other drives put
together. Only two years ago, I recommended nothing but Seagate.

The problem seems to stem from the construction (mal-construction) of
their fluid bearings.

I have been in touch with the European / Middle East CEO of Seagate who
is taking his time to respond to my requests for information.

Watch this space.


Duncan
--
Retrodata
www.retrodata.co.uk
Globally Local Data Recovery Experts

Previously Odie Ferrous wrote:
> gojlt2 wrote:
>>
>> I just replaced 1 Maxtor and 2 Seagate hard drives with Western
>> Digital. All are internal 3.5inch, 7200RPM, 8MB cache.
>>
>> The replacements were made based on SMART data on the drives read by
>> www.grc.com SpinRite application. The Seagates and Maxtor
>> (manufactured by Seagate) all reported massive Seek Errors, ECC
>> Errors, Write Errors, and others that I don't recall. One of the
>> Seagate drives was only 1 month old. I contacted Seagate on the new
>> one, and was told to send it in for warranty replacement. I received a
>> refurbished drive that had more errors than the one I sent them. YIKES
>> - no more of this. The Seagate and Maxtor drives were all under
>> warranty, and I chucked them.
>>
>> I now have 4 Western Digital drives. Not one is reporting any SMART
>> errors; the oldest one is a 40MB and has over 30,000 hours reported by
>> SMART data.
>>
>> Is this a fluke? Does Seagate make defective drives? Does Western
>> Digital report SMART data correctly? I am a bit suspicious since none
>> of the WD drives show any SMART errors.

> I am currently de-engineering some Seagate drives, with the assistance
> of a highly-qualified CNC engineer.

> Seagate drives (at least their higher-capacity drives manufactured
> within the past year) are displaying signs of manufacturing errors,
> resulting in catastrophic failures.

No surprise from my own (smaller, but independent) observations.

> Once this aberration has been confirmed, it will be made available to
> the world's IT press.

Cool. Please post a link here when the results become available.

> For the time being, I no longer recommend Seagate drives; I am
> receiving more of these for recovery than all other drives put
> together. Only two years ago, I recommended nothing but Seagate.

> The problem seems to stem from the construction (mal-construction) of
> their fluid bearings.

> I have been in touch with the European / Middle East CEO of Seagate who
> is taking his time to respond to my requests for information.

> Watch this space.

Will do.

Arno

Arno Wagner wrote in news:60f4qkF1njncpU3@mid.individual.net
> Previously Odie Ferrous wrote:
> > gojlt2 wrote:
> > >
> > > I just replaced 1 Maxtor and 2 Seagate hard drives with Western
> > > Digital. All are internal 3.5inch, 7200RPM, 8MB cache.
> > >
> > > The replacements were made based on SMART data on the drives read by
> > > www.grc.com SpinRite application. The Seagates and Maxtor
> > > (manufactured by Seagate) all reported massive Seek Errors, ECC
> > > Errors, Write Errors, and others that I don't recall. One of the
> > > Seagate drives was only 1 month old. I contacted Seagate on the new
> > > one, and was told to send it in for warranty replacement. I received a
> > > refurbished drive that had more errors than the one I sent them. YIKES
> > > - no more of this. The Seagate and Maxtor drives were all under
> > > warranty, and I chucked them.
> > >
> > > I now have 4 Western Digital drives. Not one is reporting any SMART
> > > errors; the oldest one is a 40MB and has over 30,000 hours reported by
> > > SMART data.
> > >
> > > Is this a fluke? Does Seagate make defective drives? Does Western
> > > Digital report SMART data correctly? I am a bit suspicious since none
> > > of the WD drives show any SMART errors.
>
> > I am currently de-engineering some Seagate drives, with the assistance

> > of a highly-qualified CNC engineer.

That's what you think.

>
> > Seagate drives (at least their higher-capacity drives manufactured
> > within the past year) are displaying signs of manufacturing errors,
> > resulting in catastrophic failures.

> No surprise from my own (smaller, but independent) observations.

Thats why you still buy them, eh babblebot.
To make your (smaller, but *independent*) observations.
So babblebot, how come you didn't strike us down with this earth shat-
tering news.

>
> > Once this aberration has been confirmed, it will be made available to
> > the world's IT press.

> Cool.

Cool? Come on babblebot, a bit more enthusiasm, please.

> Please post a link here when the results become available.

You won't be needing that since it will be news so blindingly hot
that it will burn the skin of your face babblebot. Literally.

>
> > For the time being, I no longer recommend Seagate drives; I am
> > receiving more of these for recovery than all other drives put
> > together. Only two years ago, I recommended nothing but Seagate.
>
> > The problem seems to stem from the construction (mal-construction) of
> > their fluid bearings.
>
> > I have been in touch with the European / Middle East CEO of Seagate who
> > is taking his time to respond to my requests for information.
>
> > Watch this space.

> Will do.

Yes please. And don't forget to hold your breath while doing it.

>
> Arno