# Seagate faces class-action lawsuit over 3TB hard drive failure rates



## HalfEatenPie (Feb 2, 2016)

> Almost a year ago, we covered Backblaze’s decision to phase out Seagate 3TB drives after seeing unacceptably high failure rates from one drive in particular, the ST3000DM001. Now, Seagate is facing a class action lawsuits brought on behalf of its customers who bought that particular model — and Blackblaze’s data is mentioned prominently in the suit...



Full Article: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/222267-seagate-faces-lawsuit-over-3tb-hard-drive-failure-rates


My only response to this is: lol.


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## drmike (Feb 3, 2016)

Seagate has been lots of fails back to at least 1TB days.


I won't buy any Seagate drive and haven't in past 3 years.  Last few I bought all failed way prematurely.


Might be a flawed legal basis (i.e. Backblaze usage data) but the point stands and the bad press Seagate will get, will slump their sales.  That's all bastard companies like that understand... Usually only way to correct mess.


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## rds100 (Feb 3, 2016)

What would be the justification of such a lawsuit? I mean a drive fails, Seagate replaces it for for free under the warranty, case closed. Now if they refuse replacing the failed drives while in warranty period, this would be a different story.


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## HalfEatenPie (Feb 3, 2016)

IANAL, so honestly my guesses are the same as bullshit so don't really mind me.


But I would speculate they could potentially make a case that (as this was during the Thailand flood and drive crisis) Seagate knew they were selling bad drives.  


This however would require a proper investigation and probably would require a fair amount of resources.   Also IANAL so that might not actually be an argument, but who knows.


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## qps (Feb 3, 2016)

Anyone remember the ST3500320AS and other related drives?  It was another epic fail from Seagate.  We had to spend some significant $$$$ on data recovery on one of those drives.  I think they also had another bad model in the generation of drives between these two.


Their enterprise drives are a bit better, but we still see quite a few failures with those too.


I will say that Seagate's RMA process is the best of all of the drive manufacturers, but that's about all they have going for them lately.


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## HalfEatenPie (Feb 3, 2016)

qps said:


> Anyone remember the ST3500320AS and other related drives?  It was another epic fail from Seagate.  We had to spend some significant $$$$ on data recovery on one of those drives.  I think they also had another bad model in the generation of drives between these two.
> 
> 
> Their enterprise drives are a bit better, but we still see quite a few failures with those too.
> ...



Haha.


At least there's that gold coin in a pile of poo.


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## fm7 (Feb 3, 2016)

Jared Newman | PCWorld | Feb 2, 2016
...

*The story behind the story:* As we’ve noted in the past, Backblaze’s data may not represent the average consumer experience. The company puts its drives through rigorous use, which may in turn put greater wear on drives that are designed to spin down and save power when they’re not needed. That’s not to say Seagate isn’t at fault, but the case isn’t so cut-and-dry given the many variables that can factor into hard drive failure.

...


http://www.pcworld.com/article/3028981/storage/seagate-slapped-with-a-class-action-lawsuit-over-hard-drive-failure-rates.html


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## HalfEatenPie (Feb 3, 2016)

Good point @fm7.  After all Backblaze I think does a burn-in test before deploying them.  Could potentially cause some issues.


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## Darwin (Feb 3, 2016)

HalfEatenPie said:


> But I would speculate they could potentially make a case that (as this was during the Thailand flood and drive crisis) Seagate knew they were selling bad drives



Not a lawyer too, but most customer and contract law have rules that can be used to sue when one part deliberated omitted or falsified information. It won't be easy, but I bet the MTBF of these disks can be proved to be worse then what was announced.


As you, I too bet that these are the grounds for that suit


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## DomainBop (Feb 3, 2016)

Where does the line form for the class action on the 1.5TB ST31500341AS? (<--word of warning, if you see a 1.5TB drive on Hetzner's serverbidding.com run the other way because it's probably one of these).  NewEgg reviews: 3 stars, 2741 reviews



> _DomainBop said in the LET CestPit years ago:_
> 
> 
> Hetzner's ServerBidding is serving up barbecued hard drives today: 51°C-55 °C temperature, 22,000+ hours, 3 of the drives had errors, and drive #4 with 5500 reallocated sectors was toast according to smartctl. ST31500341AS=Crap drives. Server returned within an hour of receiving it.



Once upon a time (the 1990's) I bought Seagate almost exclusively,  but now...nope.


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## graeme (Feb 3, 2016)

It looks as though the case is based on:

1) Higher failure rate than advertised
2) A high proportion of replacements were also defective

https://www.hbsslaw.com/cases/seagate/pressrelease/seagate-hard-drives-consumers-file-national-class-action-lawsuit-against-seagate-for-defective-hard-drives


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## dave (Feb 3, 2016)

I have 4 of the Seagate 3tb drives.  Two were returned under warranty after dying in less than a year.  Right now, 3 of the 4 are dead (including the replacements).  No longer under warranty.  The 4th is on it's last leg.


The warranty return process was really easy, but now they're out of warranty.


It would be nice if the suit could get Seagate to replace out of warranty drives, preferably with a different model.


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## graeme (Feb 3, 2016)

It is not just about the Backblaze data (which is evidence that the drives were less reliable than comparable drives) but that plus a high level of consumer complaints. They also quote Amazon and Newegg customer reviews.


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## drmike (Feb 3, 2016)

graeme said:


> It is not just about the Backblaze data (which is evidence that the drives were less reliable than comparable drives) but that plus a high level of consumer complaints. They also quote Amazon and Newegg customer reviews.



Let us hope.  I've been stung by Seagate so many times that I won't take a free drive at this point.


They need to get held accountable.


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## tmzVPS-Daniel (Feb 3, 2016)

rds100 said:


> What would be the justification of such a lawsuit? I mean a drive fails, Seagate replaces it for for free under the warranty, case closed. Now if they refuse replacing the failed drives while in warranty period, this would be a different story.



They have to last a certain while before they fail. They are having a majority of them failing prematurely which is not good. 


- Daniel


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## vpsadm (Feb 11, 2016)

A very long time ago, Seagate was the gold standard for tough, high quality, long lasting hard drives. It is sad to see how far they have fallen.


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## drmike (Feb 13, 2016)

vpsadm said:


> A very long time ago, Seagate was the gold standard for tough, high quality, long lasting hard drives. It is sad to see how far they have fallen.



Just guessing, but I think they shipped R&D out of the States / severely decreased their presence in the States.


Like most tech, there is this swirling of the drain to bring costs down while selling insane volumes / dollars... Two uneven sides subject to cause a break in the middle of the see saw... That's what I feel we continue to see with Seagate.


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## ChrisM (Feb 18, 2016)

Seagates 8TB drive already has some spectacularly crap reviews. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XS423SC


"Seagate providing 8TB of data storage for the week long life of your drive."


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## qps (Feb 18, 2016)

KnownHost-ChrisM said:


> Seagates 8TB drive already has some spectacularly crap reviews. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XS423SC
> 
> 
> "Seagate providing 8TB of data storage for the week long life of your drive."



Non-standard mounting screw holes would make that drive difficult to use in many applications.


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## vpsadm (Feb 18, 2016)

qps said:


> Non-standard mounting screw holes would make that drive difficult to use in many applications.



I saw that and looked at the photos, and I thought, "What were they thinking?"


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## vpsadm (Feb 18, 2016)

P.S. The person who designed the mounting screw holes obviously has no previous experience or understanding of the requirements for drive housings. The person I really wonder about is whoever signed off on the design for "approved for manufacturing."


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