Re: [tlug] Seagate Firmware Bug.

[Lyle H Saxon <llletters@example.com>]

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 9:41 AM, Edward Middleton wrote:
> Lyle, Up until now I have preferred Seagate drives because they seemed
> to be the least worst of the lot.  IBM had a lot of problems with their
> drives before they were sold to Hitachi.

The problem seemed to be related to how their drives would physically
stop if they weren't accessed for a while, and then - in some cases -
one of the heads would stick to the platter and nasty things would
happen when the platter started up again.  The generation of IBM
drives after this (and before they sold the drive business to Hitachi)
seemed to fix this problem by having the heads moved from time to time
if the drive was not used for a bit.  In fact, I posted to this list
about that - being initially concerned that the strange noises the
drive made (when it periodically moved the heads) were a problem.
Internet research turned up the cause of the noise, and - seven years
later - that drive is still working fine.

> I have had bad experiences with all
> the Western Digital drives I have owned.  The earlier WD drives
> performed better then the equivalent Seagate drives, but run much hotter
> and developed data corruption.

I lost one Western Digital drive, and the others tended to be really
noisy, although they worked.

> How many of the drives you have used
> were bought new?

Um... while I initially started out with exclusively used stuff, I've
been replacing the drives in machines with new ones for myself and
friends for years now, so I guess the answer is something like 15
different drives - mostly IBM or Hitachi.

Of the old used laptop drives I used about eight years ago, I lost one
Seagate, and had another that worked, but was very noisy.

> Do you monitor smart parameters on the drives you
> use?  In particular, do you monitor temperature,  read error rate and
> reallocated sectors?

For the most part no - but I've been having good luck with the Hitachi
drives....

Lyle