It was a long time ago, but All thoughts are my own.
[AMA] I Used to Work at a Seagate Hard Drive Factory in Assembly, Ask Me Anything!
NotAnAudiophile on 22/07/2019 - 18:09
Related Stores
closed Comments
- 1
- 2
Yup. Those of us outside the clean room always thanked our lucky stars we weren't assigned inside…
Is it worth the price difference between the Barracuda & Barracuda Pro?
Will the Pro last 5 years before failing?
Will the standard Barracuda last more than their 2 year warranty?I shucked 4 x 8TB external drives recently & instead of the NAS drives in them, they had Barracuda's - very nice.
But the Barracuda has 2 year warranty & the NAS ones 3 years. But I read the NAS drives fail a lot.
Your thoughts?I think once you go to a certain level of enterprise drive, what the extra price buys is not engineering anymore, but the warranty and support.
What was the cost of the parts all put together?
How long did it take to assemble one hdd?
How much testing did you dototal cost prob few bucks since they source it whole… one hdd when it was done manually was about 3-5 minutes fully assembled from raw mats. but once automated a fully robotic system could have it done up in under 60 seconds easy… prob faster now since it's been like 14 years since i was in that field and yes i'm hijacking / riding upon this AMA :)
testing = six sigma … they want their product to reflect their brand… but then again they make so many six sigma = quite alot of returns ;) which to them doesn't really matter in the bigger scheme of things… i was quite unhappy that i purchased a nas red 4tb didn't use it brand new, decided to use it about 5/6 years later only to find it faulty and can't return it :(
I wouldn't know, we were never privy to parts costs.
Please describe a typical work day at Seagate for you personally.
Well. Get free transport to work. Get like a 5min back coffee. Take stock of what parts were left over from the previous shift. What models are we assembling today? If in pcb, what models are we assembling today? What was tested and are still running from the previous shift? 20 min lunch then a nap for 20 mins in the lunchroom or office. Repeat until end of shift.
Thanks OP!
how long is the estimate seagate external hdd life rate? from your experience working in there?
back in the day, seagates were bomb proof… not so sure now…
I'm just going off guesses here, but I'd say with the type of testing we put them through, with proper care they would be good for twice their warranty life span.
What sort of issues will I face, if I buy 5 of these Seagate drives, connect them via a powered USB3 hub, to a raspberry pi 4, and set them up in RAID5 (to get 20TB with 1 drive for parity) https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B01LXF3C7Z?smid=A4XRJ8S0WXSO0 ?
This would be running 24/7 as a "nas".Also, why are less drives shuckable these days? Is it cost-cutting, or do they just not want us bunging the drives in our game consoles and laptops?
Back in the day, Barracuda drives had a totally different platter system compared to the regular drives. So its not the capacity but how the media is arranged inside that makes a difference. Again, its engineering.
so are HDD still being produced or soon stop you reckon?
I think they will still be produced, but they'll probably get to the point of niche uses.
Have you been involved in any of the forensic data recovery ops? We had some drives with controller failure that we cannibilised another drive, or in the case of a head crash, remounted the platters onto another drive, both super painful.
Nope not me. Even if there were cases like that, they would be sent to the Engineers.
What specifically makes the drives marketed for NAS and NVR better (longer lasting) when compared to the typical PC variant?
Easy. MTBF.
So better quality foam in the box so they don't get bounced around so much before they are delivered to MSY or is there significantly better quality or better engineered component parts used in their construction which then generally provides for a greater MTBF, if so what parts are better/why in such drives?
You'll be surprised that mtbf is not only about the drive itself, the parts themselves also have mtbf, obviously the parts are from other manufacturers.
So at one point I was thinking of using laptop drives instead of desktop drives in a Nas (due to the lower power use), but the MTBF is an order of magnitude worse. Do you know why laptop drives are less reliable than desktop drives?
Simple answer is vibration. Other than that laptop drives need to be smaller, the chassis of desktop drives are more rigid, hence less vibration.
What brand do you use right now for storage?
Western Digital.
Why? lol
Funny reason, I never really liked Seagate as a name. I loved the old Maxtor and Conner names but they're the way of the dodo now.
Any major game changers in technology that you witnessed at the time in terms of HardDrive improvements, either at a PCB or drive platter level?
Also any cool industry stories you care to share from back in the day?
The thing is PMR drive technology has been around for decades. Not much innovation there. I actually think the HAMR tech coming up is promising.
Do you know the main source of HDD failures component wise? Is this the same for both early failure and those at End of Life?
I dont know exactly but engineers used t o talk a lot about magnetics and vubration.PCB is actually very hardy, it's always the moving platters that seemed to go first.
How difficult or expensive is it to read data from damaged harddrive? Say given some circular discs taken out from a broken harddrive, is there any easy way to read the data there?
We never did this, but engineers could. They would piece a hard drive together again from the disk platters themselves to be able to access it.
Do you guys look at the contents of HDDs once repaired?
Nope. Never.
What do you do with the faulty drives? Do you refurbish them for reuse/resale?
Not in my department…
What is the pay and hours like?
Answered previously..
Why did you leave the job and what do you do now?
Also, thoughts on the great IBM Deathstar click of death era? :)
Still in IT, but telecoms. Left to live in another country. Nah not much to say about the deathstar…
- 1
- 2
you're forgetting the nasa astronaut suiting up if you actually work on the production line for the 0.00000000000000000001 particles in the air …. class 10 enviro….