Canada Computers Seagate 3TB USB 3.0 Expansion Drive Portable External Hard Drive $109.99

Funcypuntz wrote: ↑ I am in the market for 3 or more TB drives for a good price (as per my previous thread) and doing a search I came across this one. I notice it's getting negative reviews. Could someone explain to me why, is it the drive itself, the seller, or should it be cheaper? Thanks!

PatK621 wrote: ↑ We've seen a spate of these drives in recent memory, and it's not like they are to be trusted. I've gone through 3 passport drives from WD and all failed. The last 2TB from Costco had a 3 year warrant and it failed in less than a year, I was pleasantly surprised when Costco took the return. (thought I'd have to go through RMA, that's one for Costco). Anyway I digress, some of these drives (WD for sure) are what is called 'frankendrives', interfaces that are melded to the drive and can be used in nothing else, and doesn't offer the option of throwing the interface aside and trying the raw drive in a desktop that has salvage tools. Top that with the fact that larger drives take larger amounts of energy and that USB ports are limited in this regard, so much so that at one point WD was offering a two plug 'Y' cable solution to users who complained the drive didn't even start-up. A lot of my friends have come by for a visit with one of these small drives (Seagate included) and the tranfer speeds are not at USB3 levels, one wonders what other issues (my friends say don't fill them up is the problem) guess they're not getting what they paid for.,

In short it's a one shot deal, Manufacturer Warranty: 1 Year, they're cute if it sits on the shelf as back-up but beyond that year.... you're gambling.

Suggestion: blow some money on a small SSD throw it into a USB portable case and it will do the job you wanted it to do. Leave mass storage to the full sized drives.

Jep4444 wrote: ↑ Unless you need the portable drive, I'd recommend getting a full sized drive as they tend to be more reliable.

venividivici wrote: ↑ Issue with these (if it is still the same drive models inside) was that they had higher than normal failure rate. I bought many of the 3TB portables (Expansion and I forget the name of the other model), plus the same 3TB internal drives and about 1/3 of them suffered from the 'click of death' sadly. There is actually a class action that is still underway. I put my name on the list, but who knows if it will ever go anywhere. I've never had a WD drive die on me yet, but that could just be shear luck more than anything. It's honestly a crap shoot with any HDD nowadays, but some models are much more prone than others.

venividivici wrote: ↑ There is actually a class action that is still underway. I put my name on the list, but who knows if it will ever go anywhere.

Jep4444 wrote: ↑ These aren't even the same sized drives as the ones in the lawsuit and despite what people think, just having the same model number means little to nothing considering Seagate uses the 2nd part of the model number to distinguish batches and that is very relevant. More importantly, the lawsuit is based off of flawed data and user reviews from sites where every other review for every drive is a failed drive. If they get anything, considering yourself lucky.

PatK621 wrote: ↑ Love to see a link to that action and put my name in.

venividivici wrote: ↑ I do realize now this is a 2.5" and not the 3.5" model - I merely went off information on the Canada Computers website, which actually designates it as a 3.5" drive in the specifications. That aside I still do not see how your assertion of 'skewed data' is fully correct. More than anything you might be able to say it is a gray area due to Backblaze using the consumer drives in an enterprise setting (and this was real world usage over actual test settings). Still the data is useful on various levels and many who work within data/storage fields have argued that.

I personally have ~25 of the ST3000DM001 drives and at least 1/4 of them I know for sure have completely failed, while the rest I have not confirmed one way or the other. All this was within normal consumer usage prior to the drives ceasing to function properly. After the Thailand flooding manufacturers jacked up prices, cut down warranties and it seems Seagate produced a suspect drive. This wouldn't be the first time that something like this happened where an entire drive model was plagued by an issue causing above average failure rates.

At the time I went with price point for the drives opting for the more affordable Seagate drives. At the time there was no reason to suggest to avoid these drives. Seagate used reliability of their 1TB platters as a selling point for the drives and yet they knocked warranties down to 1 year, why? Coincidence perhaps, but honestly if consumers were reporting high failure rates I think Seagate should have deemed there was a problem and perhaps offered replacements based on say a 3 year window as a courtesy if nothing else.

For what it is worth though to anyone who might be interested by the data: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/3tb-hard-drive-failure/ and I found some of the comments here to be interesting in dissecting Backblaze's data and people who know the field saying it had some relevance still: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/54 ... edibility/



https://www.hbsslaw.com/cases/seagate

Seems earlier this month a judge upheld the claims after Seagate attempted to have it dismissed. I added my name last year just to see what happens. Personally I'd love to have any data recovered and functioning drives again.