Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Scolex]

It sucks, but they aren't going to exchange it. I've now gone to NewEgg, who directed me to Seagate, who directed me to HP, who told me that it's outside the warranty period. It's over a year old, so I get that, but still-- if the drive has a known issue, it has a known issue, and should be fixed IMO. Looks like I'm gonna have to just shell out the cash for a new one. Sure as hell won't be buying a Seagate though if this is their idea of standing behind their products.

With that said, if you (or anyone else) knows of a better way to get these guys to RMA this for me (without having to personally send a letter written in my own blood to the CEO, as I hate it when people do that), I'm definitely open to suggestions!!!

That drive comes with a 2 year warranty so it should be covered by warranty contact Seagate again and advise them that it is outside HP's "system warranty" but still within the Seagate manufacturers warranty and they should replace it. If they still won't give you a RMA get nasty with them and tell them you will make it your personal mission to distribute the fact that they don't honor their warranty.

[glynor]

That might work, but OEM parts aren't covered by the same warranties as retail drives.  I had the same problem with a Seagate drive way back in the day in a PowerMac.  Same dang model number was still being sold everywhere with a 5 year warranty, but AppleCare's 1 year warranty had expired, and Seagate told me to suck it.  No warranty other than from the OEM.  They know the serial numbers.

It is anecdotal, but I buy a LOT of drives as a video editor.  I eat them like pills at work.

My failure rate on Seagates is MILES above all the others.  Hitachi has also been bad, but my sample size there is so small I can't really comment (I might have just gotten a couple bad seeds).  And of course the old DeathStar drives were bad but that was eons ago.

My Samsung drives have been great.
My WD drives have been great.

That's not to say I've never had them fail, but I haven't had the old "fail, RMA, works for two months, fails, RMA, works for three months, fails, out of warranty game" with them.

Google's big drive analysis documents don't seem to back that up.  Of course, when you buy in those kind of numbers, you might not get the same "stock" from Hitachi and Seagate that you or I do.  Who knows?

As far as waiting or not: are you saying I shouldn't wait because you think my existing drive is in the process of kicking the bucket in slomo, or because the WD Caviar Black 2TB won't come down further than that?

Definitely because I'd be extremely skeptical of the drive at this point.  Prices will ALWAYS come down further.  The prices have already fallen a TON in just the past two weeks.  We're now back at the same inventory levels "in the channel" that we had pre-flood.  Prices will continue to fall.  They're just trying to eek out that last little bit of these nice high profit margins.  Did you notice how there was a terrible flood, factories got destroyed, and then suddenly WD and Seagate both posted record profits and started buying companies left and right?  Yeah, I noticed.

Anyhow, the games up, and the prices are dropping now.

But, is it worth $35 to risk losing all that data?  Years of eating hard drives like candy has beat one truth into my skull.  If it starts acting funny, at all, in a way you can't explain fully, TAKE ACTION NOW!  Not tomorrow, not next week, but NOW.  Yesterday if you can manage it.

That, and, if it doesn't exist in at least two places, it doesn't exist at all.

[mojave]

That, and, if it doesn't exist in at least two places, it doesn't exist at all.

Glynor exists. There is no way someone can make three long posts in such a short time without existing in at least two places. 

[glynor]

Glynor exists. There is no way someone can make three long posts in such a short time without existing in at least two places.  

Hah!

Today was a file-copying day so I had lots of time while I waited for terabytes to transfer across the network and from disk to disk.  I actually got myself a couple of new drives for the office late last week, and I was prepping to install them (which is tomorrow's project).

For anyone who cares, I got an Intel 240GB 520-series SSD and a WD 2TB Black drive.  I'm replacing the original 750GB system drive in my Mac Pro with the SSD (nice) and upgrading my internal RAID with the 2TB drive.  Since this is a Mac Pro, which already has 4 3.5" hard drives stuffed in it, that also involved some creative work to add the extra drive.

But I got one of these nifty little devices and I'm going to stuff the SSD (and the old 750GB drive for giggles) in my empty optical bay.

[glynor]

What I do for my music is use CrashPlan. For free you can setup an offsite computer to backup to. I just connected an external drive to the remote computer and backup to that. Now I have off site backup for free.

I've been meaning to try CrashPlan out for a LONG time, but never got around to it.  The fact that John Siracusa strongly recommends it originally piqued my interest.  Now I've looked at it, finally, and I think I'm going to sign up.

Question about your use though:

When you do this offsite computer-to-computer backup (when you own both machines, I know the "friend" system is different), does it allow you to set it up to "replicate" the files?

In other words, my current system is that I have two 3TB WD Green drives that I use with those cool SATA drive docks.  I have one drive at the office and one at home.  At home, SyncBack automatically backs my main media RAID up onto this drive daily.  Then, every so often, I bring the one from work home and swap it for the one at home.

This allows me to access most/all of my media library while I'm at work (which is nice) and it provides offsite backup.

I'd love to use CrashPlan to keep the two drives in sync, without the "sneakernetting" the drives back and forth.  Set up CrashPlan to sync from the home external green drive to the office's external green drive.  But the issue is that I actually USE the drive at work (with MC) so I need it to "match" the home one exactly.  Does CrashPlan's system actually sync files individually and replicate file structures, or does it do a "backup archive" ala True Image with incremental diffs and compressed archives and whatnot?

I've trolled through their Feature Guides and whatnot, but couldn't find a simple answer to this question.

[InflatableMouse]

Hm, I had never heard of Crashplan.

Before I install it and try it out, does the free version simply replicate files and folders? How does that compare to the paid version of Allway Sync?

I've set that up to synchronise files across multiple locations. Is there any benefit from using Crashplan?

The good thing about Allway sync is that I can set it up to synchronise both ways. So I'm "backing up" my music folder to backup location and its replicating to the HTPC. The backup folder is one way (my pc to the backup location) and to the HTPC its both ways. So if I change tags or import new music on the HTPC, it gets replicated back to my PC and vice versa. This works almost flawless (almost, as I did have an issue once with new files being deleted and I had to reimport them from the backup location. Only happened once though, just need to pay attention ).

Allway sync can also use several suppliers of cloud storage or even just FTP to your own server somewhere.