Is the old rule of thumb (seagate drives = best, but reliability issues for the big drives) still true? I've made similar posts for the other Free Agent Desk products, in hopes of getting a response. I've always bought seagate externals. Last time I was in the market (06) the consensus continued to be: a. Seagate makes the best hardware at the consumer level, but, b. above a certain capacity (?at the time 300GB?) reliability issues / data corruption issues increase dramatically. At the time, I ended up buying two full docks of 250GB free agents, and am still happy with that product.Anyone know if hardware reliability / data corruption issues are still a problem for the larger capacity drives? These 'Free Agent 2.0' lines look great, but I'd hate to have issues a year or two from now. Is the old rule of thumb (seagate drives = best, but reliability issues for the big drives) still true? I've made similar posts for the other Free Agent Desk products, in hopes of getting a... » Read More Is the old rule of thumb (seagate drives = best, but reliability issues for the big drives) still true? I've made similar posts for the other Free Agent Desk products, in hopes of getting a response. I've always bought seagate externals. Last time I was in the market (06) the consensus continued to be: a. Seagate makes the best hardware at the consumer level, but, b. above a certain capacity (?at the time 300GB?) reliability issues / data corruption issues increase dramatically. At the time, I ended up buying two full docks of 250GB free agents, and am still happy with that product.Anyone know if hardware reliability / data corruption issues are still a problem for the larger capacity drives? These 'Free Agent 2.0' lines look great, but I'd hate to have issues a year or two from now. « Show Less
482504
That may be true, but I've noticed that Seagate gives you a five-year warranty while Western Digital gives you only one. As long as you don't keep your ONLY copy of something important on the drive, I would go with the Seagate knowing that you'll have at least five years of replacements in case it fails.
482505
That is no rule of thumb I have ever heard in my 15 years in IT. Seagate/Maxtor makes up the 'lower tier' of drive brands. Hitachi/Samsung are slightly more reliable. WD is still reliability king. Even if you get a good Seagate/Maxtor drive they are prone to fail after a few years, right after the warranty expires. The large capacity drive firmware issues they've been having this last year or so has just sullied their reputation even further and the kind of bugs they've had recently in fully released firmware is inexcusable. Seagate has recently earned their rep as the bottom rung hard drive supplier firmly and deservedly and that by a country mile. That is no rule of thumb I have ever heard in my 15 years in IT. Seagate/Maxtor makes up the 'lower tier' of drive brands. Hitachi/Samsung are slightly more reliable. WD is still reliability king. Even if you get a good Seagate/Maxtor drive they are prone to fail after a few years, right after the warranty expires. The large capacity drive firmware issues they've been having this last year or so has just sullied their reputation even further and the kind of bugs they've had recently in fully released firmware is inexcusable. Seagate has recently earned their rep as the bottom rung hard... » Read More That is no rule of thumb I have ever heard in my 15 years in IT. Seagate/Maxtor makes up the 'lower tier' of drive brands. Hitachi/Samsung are slightly more reliable. WD is still reliability king. Even if you get a good Seagate/Maxtor drive they are prone to fail after a few years, right after the warranty expires. The large capacity drive firmware issues they've been having this last year or so has just sullied their reputation even further and the kind of bugs they've had recently in fully released firmware is inexcusable. Seagate has recently earned their rep as the bottom rung hard drive supplier firmly and deservedly and that by a country mile. « Show Less
482506
I have been loking around for an external drive, and I've noticed they all fail! IMO the best way to gois to have 2 of the drives and do a periodic copy of each to each. I have a free agent on my mac and it has been working perfectly, but I am looking for a drive to back up between a PC and a mac. Two cheap drives may be more reliable than a single more expensive, since they all fail and you cant "pay out" of the uncertainty. Change that: Buy two expensive hard drives and dont even fool with the Seagates..
482507
i agree seagate is not even worth looking at now just taking up shelf space. i have older maxtor, WD and other drives and still running good. I got a seagate from an expensive company that sells decent computers but after 1st power up of a 1tb single disk plugged it in and drive shut down and stopped working. i got a WD for almost the same price.
482508
Are you sure you read the warranty correctly? Seagate's Warranty FAQ has this to say:"Q. How long is the limited warranty for the replacement drive? "A. The remainder of the original limited warranty or 90 days, whichever is longer."This extends an expiring warranty by 90 days.
1327928
From past experiences with WD I stopped using them several years ago. Seagate or Hitachi would be a better choice in my opinion.
822816
Best Hard drive - don't see what this has to do with the dock itself. As for "good" or "best" hard drive, I'd say any bare SATA drive will work, since your connection runs through a USB 3.0 connection port, I doubt there is any need to seek, or spend extra to buy the "fastest" drive out there, just go for a drive with a good reputation for reliability.
522268
If you are going to get a 2.5 drive, go with the 6.0mbps transfer rate!! or you will not get the full functionallity that comes with having the solid state portion of the drive. It requires you to be able to set the drive up as ACHI in the BIOS, or else it will just function like any other 3.0mbps hard drive. I have 3 Seagate 500 Hybrids in a raid with each drive partitioned in half. giving me a theoretical 6 drives at 250 gb per drive. I like having my games on their own partitions, for faster read times, and my startups are under 2 mins.
96349
Dr. Bozarth, I take all reviews with a grain of salt of course. I also noticed the disparity in the ratings between the two sites. I usually frequent thehomeservershow.com. Many of the forum members are I.T. Professionals, or like myself, a medical professional with a keen interest in technology. The Western Digital Green Drives were the go to drives in the past, but were not ideal for NAS/RAID situations. Many of the members have had good luck with the RED drives, but still recommend a program such as SpinRite or HD Tune Pro to evaluate the drive before putting it into service. I can only recall one situation where a member reported a DOA Red Drive, and many more situations where the Green drives presented problems. The recommended drives for your scenario would be the WD Red drives or the Seagate NAS drives. RAID-1 would be a good solution, and a cloud backup such as CrashPlan on top of that. I have personally purchased two 3TB Red drives and have had no problems with them in the 6-12 months I have owned them. Hope this helps.
1684879
I'd STRONGLY recommend against using an old drive in the device. By using one not from Synology's list, you risk poor performance. It would be a drag to set it up and then have slow performance. Don't use an old drive -- they all have a maximum life, and yours could be close to the end and you would never know. Since you're putting it in a 1-bay enclosure with no redundancy, you want to install the most reliable disk you can.
191938
I installed 2 "Seagate Backup Plus 4TB USB 3.0 Black Desktop Hard Drive STCA4000100" and it seems to be working fine. I found it cheaper to pull them from the housings.
474696
Great question. Simple answer, performance will be about the same, so go with the lower cost with higher reliability drive. For me, the choice was easy as it was quite a bit cheaper than the 7,200 models. A year later, I still love this little drive so I don't think you will have any issues if you follow in my tracks.
1767980
Honestly I don't think I ever paid attention... but I would assume it came with standard 2 year warranty. In any case, these hard drives don't tend to fail months after purchased, either they're DOA (dead on arrival) / die in the first few hours of use because they're defective, or they last for years. My last Seagate external HDD lasted me for TEN years, hence why I bought this one. I wouldn't worry about it too much, Seagate has pretty decent customer support.
809744
I have both the 256gb and the 1tb USB drives. So far I am quite impressed by the transfer speed and reliability of them. So much that I carry a great deal of information to include pictures and songs. So far neither one of them failed on me. You need to verify that the drive is a legitimate one by checking that on the USB port connector has the serial number engraved. I understand that there are some cheap ones on the market with a much lesser performance and capacity from what is described! I hope this may help!
708152
It's been a while since I ordered this, but I *think* it was the bare drive. Can't be sure, but on another note, I wouldn't recommend Seagate. I own a computer repair shop, and we see more Seagate drives crash than any of the other brands combined. Go with a Western Digital!
1285837
I'm going to only answer this from the perspective of a personal opinion. I have never owned a DROBO older models or newer models. However Many of the folks I know that have owned them don't see to be going back to them as they expand. I have at least 6 different TB drives from LaCie. They have been pretty reliable all things considered. It's what I'll use in the future and what I recommends to friends. If they start failing on me which all drives seem to do sooner or later I might change. The Lacie 5 appears to be fairly easy to upgrade or change drives out. I like having that option though I haven't used it yet.
1162992
Works great for me. Have 6. We are photography studio. Use them for storing images and templates used in daily tuning of studio. So they are plugged in/out often. We keep all our photoshop stuff on one drive, to keep off workstation. It is used with both workstations & laptop. Switching between the three often. Never issue. I do, however, replace those drives as well. If it's a drive that gets a lot of use, I replace it every 18 months. Just to be safe.
1600661
I have had the drive as my main operating system, as well as mass storage drive for almost a year, and so far, it has been reliable, fast, and quiet. However, as the previous person responded, I am using Linux, which does put less stress on the drive and the file system is a bit better at file allocation, ETC...My experience is very positive in this environment. (Using the 3TB version partitioned into three sections)
803031
NOT from this seller - I checked both serial numbers on Seagates Warranty Validation page and see "The product you identified was sold as a system component. Please contact your place of purchase for service."I have a failed drive, and no response from the seller - can't send it back to Seagate.. uh oh.
1590998
sure be ok. it is ok when i use the 1Tb. but it is better that you check with the Seagate service team
2062744
I've had the best luck in any NAS or NAS-type device (home-built PC utilized as a NAS) with the WD-Red drives. Any other 2-4TB drives I've tried have failed within the first 12 months of use. If this is going to be a 7x24 device, then I highly recommend spending the little bit extra for the Red series - they have better vibration isolation for multiple drive installations and always-on access. Drive failures were drastically reduced once I switched over to Red drives - this is across three different NAS devices, different vendors (Thecus, WD, and home-built).