Seagate hard drives with DM in the model name

[lcoughey]

Up until recently, I'd just tell you that all drives are cheap and to make sure that they are backed up. But, in the case of newer Seagate drives, they are so bad that I can't help but suggest that everyone just not use them.

I wrote a blog on my website showing all the DM models (http://www.recoveryforce.com/seagate-hard-drive-failures/), but it does not mean that other newer Seagate models aren't affected, too.

I seriously recommend that you not sell these drives and make sure that all your client data that is stored on one of these drives is backed up very frequently. There is little warning about the failures and the damage is severe.

Unless you are able to gain fast access and can clone the drive with ddrescue, I don't recommend that you attempt anything with these drives if there is any data of value on the drive. The technician servicing the drive below attempt to swap the PCB and run software without any luck...as you can clearly see. It was likely just as bad when they received it, but because the window of opportunity is with these drives is very small, you really cannot afford to take any risks.

 

[JustInspired]

Wow. Are those plastic or metal particles? How did that happen?

 

[mr m]

Thanks for the heads up, pun intended!

 

[Larry Sabo]

Looks like when the drive booted up, it shredded the boot. Seriously, where did all of that debris come from? It should have been thrown off the platters by centrifugal force when the platters spun up.

 

[Markverhyden]

Pixie dust!!!!! LOL!!!!

 

[lcoughey]

That is the surface scraped from the platters. This picture is from a different drive than the one in my blog post.

The centrifugal force will only help to a certain point...this is beyond that point. I see drives like this at least once a week...thus far, it has been two this week already.

 

[Eagle21]

...
I wrote a blog on my website showing all the DM models (http://www.recoveryforce.com/seagate-hard-drive-failures/), but it does not mean that other newer Seagate models aren't affected, too.

You write "... a particular series of Seagate hard drive that may suddenly fail with severe damage, without warning. Added to that, these drives are very difficult to recover from, if recoverable at all, resulting in expensive quotes."
That sounds to me like how many SSD drives behave, by default! Welcome to the computing future, or should I say, the present.

I have a Seagate ST2000DM001 and it has worked OK for me so far - about 18 months.
There are firmware updates for this series of drives (I applied one to my drive), which you do not mention. Perhaps the firmware update improves their longevity.

 

[lcoughey]

You write "... a particular series of Seagate hard drive that may suddenly fail with severe damage, without warning. Added to that, these drives are very difficult to recover from, if recoverable at all, resulting in expensive quotes."
That sounds to me like how many SSD drives behave, by default! Welcome to the computing future, or should I say, the present.

Yup...SSD will help bring the data recovery world back to very high pricing.

I have a Seagate ST2000DM001 and it has worked OK for me so far - about 18 months.
There are firmware updates for this series of drives (I applied one to my drive), which you do not mention. Perhaps the firmware update improves their longevity.

Firmware can help with firmware issues, but won't help with physical head crashes. Just keep your data backed up and hope that your keeps chugging along without incident.

 

[joydivision]

Just checked my main office machine, which I use to store images on long term, (they are also backed up a on a portable) and it is a 2TB SG with DM in the model number .

As all my business documents are on the cloud, the email is IMAP etc it won't be in the end of the world if it fails, but I will know not to trust the drive.

Thanks

 

[coffee]

I have a Seagate ST1000DM003 running for about a year and a half. No problems. I do backup to another non DM seagate drive of same size.

Where these drives of yours purchased from same vendor? Sometimes you have to consider the vendor and how they are handling the drives or the delivery agent.

I have not experienced that problem and I have some out there in some customer's computers.

coffee

 

[seedubya]

I have 3 in with PCImage at the moment. Failed RAID in a NAS. Sean in PCI told me the same thing - he's seeing far too many of them

 

[coffee]

I have 3 in with PCImage at the moment. Failed RAID in a NAS. Sean in PCI told me the same thing - he's seeing far too many of them

How long have these drives been running?

coffee



sidenote:
Would be nice if those that post to this thread give some stats about how long the failed drive has been running.

 

[dombooth]

Very rare I use 'DM' drives nowadays, as I use the SSHD's, awesome drives.

Dom

 

[seedubya]

How long have these drives been running?

coffee



sidenote:
Would be nice if those that post to this thread give some stats about how long the failed drive has been running.

About 20 months.

 

[Eagle21]

For this hard drive series Seagate did the dishonest 'trick' of releasing different drives with the same model number.

For example, for my ST2000DM001 2 TB drive there is a 2x 1 TB platter version, and a 3x 666 GB platter version (which is about 25% slower). I think they are made in different factories, possibly by different subcontracting companies.

So perhaps one batch of a specific sub-version of the hard drive, made by one specific factory is bad. (or perhaps they are all bad).

 

[lcoughey]

Here is a list of a few I've seen here over the past few weeks:

Model, PN, FW, DATE, Site
ST3000DM001, 9YN166-500, CC4B, 13062, TK
ST2000DM001, 1CH164-300, CC43, 13132, TK
ST2000DM001, 9YN164-500, CC4B, 12407, SU
ST2000DM001, 9YN164-302, CC4C, 12432, WU
ST1000DM003, 9YN162-500, CC4B, 12474, SU
ST1000DM003, 9YN162-500, CC4B, 12474, SU
ST3000DM001, 9YN166-302, CC4C, 12286, SU

Without looking at the specific job details, it could be possible that the drives with the 9YNxxx-xxx part number may be the common factor...definitely not the factory, firmware or date. We would need a much larger list before we could make better observations.

For now, I still stand by the suggestion to just steer clear of these drives or make sure that backups are 100%.

 

[joydivision]

Mine is on that list, but I am not too worried as the images I store on there are just as a precaution in case one of my portable dies, they are essentially backups of a backup.

Do you know if these drives are more likely to fail or is just that the failures are very sudden?

 

[lcoughey]

Do you know if these drives are more likely to fail or is just that the failures are very sudden?

It just seems that this series of drive fails suddenly and it seems to be worse than the average drive we see. There has been a lot of chatter amongst my data recovery professional peers around the world and we all agree, these drives are junk.

 

[Altster]

So what is Seagate saying about all of this?

 

[seedubya]

So what is Seagate saying about all of this?

I haven't gone to them yet as I'm focused on getting the data recovered. Both drives in my NAS failed within days of each other. Of course it happened when I wasn't in the house during waking hours for a couple of weeks because I was so busy so I just never used it. One day my wife tells me she can't access it and I check it out. Then my I can tell by the logs on the boot drive that the first drive failed 3 days before the second. To complicate matters it's ZFS.