( 26 reviews )
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Posted: Jun 23 2009
This drive has a known reliability issue with a failure rate of around 30-40% after a few months of use. Thousands of people have reported the same error (just search the Internet for the model number). The problem is with the firmware shipped with the drive (SD15). You must upgrade the firmware to SD1A or it will all of the sudden stop working. If your drive hasn't failed yet, you can upgrade the firmware yourself using a tool provided by Seagate. But if the drive has already failed you have no choice but to have a data recovery service upgrade the firmware for you. I found this out because one of my drives turned into a brick with no warning. Fortunately after I called Seagate technical support, and persisted that the problem was with the drive firmware and not my computer, they agreed to fix the drive and perform data recovery for free. This entire process took 7 days, during which I was without a computer. But when I got the drive back, it worked fine and no data was lost. Still, the is the worst experience I've ever had with a hard drive, and I am never going to buy a Seagate product again. They should have issued a recall and advised all owners to upgrade the firmware *before* the drives failed instead of ignoring the problem for several months.
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Posted: May 26 2009
I bought this drive seven months ago and not it won't boot. BIOS doesn't recognize it. I can hear it spinning but nothing else. What a waste!
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Posted: May 2 2009
This product failed for me after 5 months of light use in an external enclosure with the extremely common BSY problem. The BIOS won't recognize the hard disk at all.
