A number of great Seagate HDD prices on Amazon US. Shipped and sold by Amazon. Appears many models have 39% off currently
Seagate IronWolf Pro 20TB - $328.89
Seagate IronWolf Pro 18TB - $279.22
Seagate IronWolf Pro 16TB - $249.30
Seagate IronWolf 12TB - $189.47
Seagate IronWolf 8TB - $129.63
CamelCamelCamel.
So my drive fails the short self test immediately, but passes the short generic test and 2 minute generic test.
Anyone know how to interpret this or what to follow up with?
Can you please tell me which tool you are using to test it?
Seatools
Thanks
If a disk fails any legitimate test you should replace it.
Seagate asked me to run long generic and if it passes then drive is ok. Reckon I should push for an RMA?
2x 16TB drives are powering up and detecting with the powered external adapter connected to Win10 laptop. Any idea which software to use for testing these drives? Appreciate if anyone can assist. no NAS yet.
Another two DOAs here. Even if we only hear about the failures here, the failure rate is rather concerning. The packaging arrived in good condition, so it appears these drives are either very easily damaged, or there is a more widespread issue.
Has anyone done an RMA from New Zealand? From what I've read, AU customers can return their drives to Sydney, but Seagate is requiring NZ customers to send the drives to Hong Kong.
Still waiting to hear from Amazon for an alternative to a refund.
my 20TB is DOA - i am in NZ. I have contacted Amazon who offered a full refund & they'll collect it for free (DHL) or I have to send it back to Hong Kong, at my cost for a "free" replacement.
I haven't investigated shipping cost, but if im paying more then its less of a deal - I will likely just get the refund from amazon
You can just RMA to Seagate directly and get a replacement
Yeah, that is at my cost ..
Seagate requires New Zealand customers to RMA via Hong Kong. I asked if I could ship the drives to Sydney, but they declined my request.
To courier two drives, I ended up paying around $NZ80. I wasn't willing to trust them to express post, which would have been about $20 less IIRC.
No other retailer I have ever purchased drives from has required DOA drives to be shipped back to the manufacturer. It's normally a straight swap for DOA. I wouldn't mind so much if customers were treated fairly, but we weren't. Some were offered credit to buy again at the new price, others weren't. Amazon certainly hasn't acted in good faith in my case.
@SirHumphreyAppleby: Sorry to hear that. I would suggest calling Amazon and asking to speak to a supervisor. In my experience, senior team members are more considerate as opposed to the first line of call receivers.
@bonechiller: Tried calling. Someone was to get back to me… the response went nowhere. After that, I managed to get my issue to the "Executive Customer Relations team" (by e-mailing their press office address). I sent them a full outline of the issue and all the evidence of other users' requests being resolved by way of credit, but the next reply came from the "Amazon Customer Support" team like all the rest. Not a single response from Amazon even acknowledged the issue. It'll be another one for the ACCC to add to their database, unfortunately.
I received 4x 12tb's over the weekend. Standard cardboard packaging sent as most described here. 1 drive is DOA and returned back to Amazon for immediate refund already. This was a great deal, pity there is so many DOA's reported. I couldn't be bothered waiting on the Seagate RMA process so I ordered another 12tb locally.
Surprised by the number of reported DOA drives here. All 8 drives I ordered seem to be fine, though all I did so far was do a short self-test on each using HD Sentinel.
Seagate RMA process was super fast the last time I used it - they ship out a new drive the next day after they receive yours.
How are your failed rate tested?
I don't trust the external usb dock, because I installed it, and turn it on, not detecting the drive at all, so I have to wiggle and make sure, and it seem to be fine, never do long test via USB.
For me a direct SATA6 connection to the MB. I'm getting speed of 223MB/s write speed for large files.
My 20TB generic long test took 24hrs..
Received my 3x 8TB Ironwolf drives today. As others mentioned, they were all packed and secured in separate boxes that were then in one larger box.
Two drives have a green label and dated 10 Feb 2023. One has a red label dated 26 Nov 2022.
They all connect fine and copy files ok with around 210-230MB/s transfer using an external USB adapter.
Will setup for longer tests using SeaTools next.
12TB DOA. Clicks on startup. Can't initialise. Just going to send it back to Amazon. I'm not that desperate for storage.
received my 4x20TB yesterday (after a 2 day hold in customs which worried me but ended up being nothing!).. 1 out of the 4 drives DOA.. just clicks away repeatedly when fired up.. going through RMA with Seagate on it. The 4 individual HDD boxes were packed in a larger box - nothing looked damaged and the DOA drive was one of the middle ones.. (so unlikely it was damaged in transit) - i hope it is really the 5-7 day turn around the support site seems to indicate.. but even with a delay it would be better than a refund
4x 12TB received, all working fine.
My 2 orders for a total of 6 x Pro 16TB was delivered today as a single parcel.
Each drive is in an individual cardboard box as reported by others.
Will unbox and test drives later in my spare PC.
Have been testing my drives. So far first one passed SeaTools short and long generic tests. Took about 18hrs.
Second drive tested passes short test but keeps aborting the long test. There's a log file with this being the last few entries:
[05/03/23 - 03:03:34 AM][TID: 4904][LN: 0][SEVERITY:ERRO][ ] Device \.\PhysicalDrive1, Error count 50, skipping to next LBA
[05/03/23 - 03:03:34 AM][TID: 4904][LN: 0][SEVERITY:ERRO][ ] Device \.\PhysicalDrive1, Read LBA Failed for LBA 3871957490
[05/03/23 - 03:03:34 AM][TID: 4904][LN: 0][SEVERITY:ERRO][ ] Device \.\PhysicalDrive1, Error count exceeded at LBA 3871957490
[05/03/23 - 03:03:34 AM][TID: 7452][LN: 0][SEVERITY:ERRO][ ] updateDriveOperationStatus - Drive \.\PhysicalDrive1, not found in DiskMap
Does this sound like the drive is bad?
Are you able to disconnect the drive and try a different power and sata cable to see if the same problem comes up?
No, I only have one usb to sata adapter that I'm using to test it with. I don't have an actual desktop pc to put it in, so have to use an external usb adapter.
2x 16TB Pro's arrived today. I don't have space in the my case for another drive but have a Pluggable USB-Sata caddy which works pretty well - but only 1 drive at a time unfortunately. Using Hard Disk Sentinel Pro to run a Surface Test (Read) which should complete in 18 hours. I was going to run an Extended Test but based on this forum thread https://www.hdsentinel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=13493 I decided that the Surface (Read) test should be enough.
Fingers crossed it's not DOA but at least it span up so that seems more promising then some have had! Will see how the 2nd drive goes once this one completes.
My 4x12tb HDDs arrived on Friday last week. I did a Long Generic test with the Seagate tool on the first disk and it passed.
I have just kicked off the test on another 2 disks at the same time this time.
So far so good. They should be done in the next 18 hours or so. Then I will test the last one.
I am on the 4th drive test now and the first 3 passed ok.
Am I doing the correct test by doing a Long Generic test? Or should I be doing the self test?
All 4 of mine passed the Extended Generic test with the Seagate tool.
Just for future reference if anyone stumbles upon this.
Can confirm, packaging was terrible for this drive. it was just in a cardboard box.
Also one of my two HDDs (20tb) came in dead on arrival.
Amazon customer service has been shit so far. automated services dont offer replacements, only refunds.
I'll be attempting a replacement through seagate instead. Hopefully they have better packaging.?
I thought the cardboard box was reasonably secure.
Unfortunately, that was somewhat undermined by placing the said cardbord box loosely in an oversized envelope where it no doubt received a battering between source and destination half way round the world. Anticipating that the upcoming disk check will be a toss of the coin based on feedback above…
I feel these drives had manufacturing issues before they were sent out, and Seagate knew about it. Testing my 3rd drive at the moment, but seems like 1 out of the 3 I got has drive issues.
The cardboard packaging is actually quite good for 1 disk. The other option is hard foam packaging but that is usually for 4-6 disks.
I bought 1x20tb but it is late, in the amazon page it says “ We are very sorry that your delivery is late. If you have not received your package by today, you can come back here the next day for a refund.”
Is it coming by Auspost? Anyone else with the same problem?
Same here unfortunately. It was marked as clearing customs / 'RECEIVED BY CARRIER' on the 25th then no activity. Amazon marked it as late and said I could apply for a refund today.
Just went in to look at the order and it updated overnight. Now says it's coming via CODExpress. Putting the tracking ID in their tracking page gives no info though, only have what's on the order page.
Hope yours gets updated soon
mine stuck at "Carrier picked up the package." since 22 April.
Hope I can get good luck like yours
I gave Amazon a call they kindly allow me put another order and promise to refund the price difference once I received the new order
Mine are listed as: Your package may be lost
The last update was april 26 at mascot nsw.
I've been waiting on a HDD deal to upgrade my NAS for 2 months and I miss out on the deal of the year by 2 weeks. /facepalm
That hurts
My 2 x16tb after 40 hours of stress testing, both are fine.
They also stay at around 40 degrees constantly when under stress. which imo is quite good.
That's good to know, I just started long self test on yesterday as per your suggestion, thanks. My 2x16 TB when connected by Seatools shows same serial number and firmware reported as 0. Is it simmering that should i be worried about?
do 1 disk connected at a time.
Yes, it's one disk at a time connected with usb adapter. I closed the seatools when I'm connecting the next one. Still both ones are showing same one, not sure why.
@IDontKnowWhyImHere: If its in an external usb then it cannot detect certain information on the disk as the controller stops it
Forgot to switch the fan on while doing a surface test and the drive hit 57C for about 2hrs before I noticed. Hopefully that’s not enough to cause some damage. 😬
My 20tb one arrived last week, and it makes ticking noises when reading or writing….
should i go for Amazon refund (they don't do replacement with this one) or claim Seagate warrant replacement?
My 16TB does this ticking occasionally, should i be worried or this is normal? This is my first drive so not sure what is expected out of this.
2 out of 4 of my drives ticked a few times when they first started but stopped after a few seconds.
Now when the computer starts they dont tick.
Thats good. I am seeing this sound occasionally. I will observe it more. Are you using it with a USB adapter or via any NAS?
@IDontKnowWhyImHere: No, I put mine directly into my computer. Plugged into the motherboard like a normal internal HDD. I did this just for testing the drives with the seagate tool and once they all pass I will then put them into my NAS.
both my disks don't tick at all
Mine was dead on arrival. The refund process was pretty painless tho
My 18tb drive was also dead as well. :(
Lucky amazon offered credit difference on a new order.
Amazon has done nothing more than offer me a refund, let alone address the issue of inconsistent treatment of customers.
Quite frankly, I am disgusted. I've been buying from Amazon over two decades, and on the rare occasions I have had problems, they have always put things right. This debacle has pretty much destroyed all the good will they'd built up over the years.
Additional side note to my purchase of 12x20TB drives.
11 Drives are fine and 1 had issues which is with Seagate now for RMA and has been approved and awaiting confirmation of a replacement.
Today I received a surprise email from Amazon of a refund on my order to be provided for the following reason: Export fee reduced.
Funny enough, this equates to my entire Import Fees Deposit.
My 2x16tb drives both passed checks in HD Sentinel. Both took about 21 hours to check the whole drive. Currently being added to my SHR. Quieter than expected which is a bonus - no louder than the 6tb WD Red I had in there already at least.
Did you have to purchase the HD sentinel app? I couldn't get the trial version to do any more than SMART check.
Yeah I did, I had the same issue and thought hey, it's the cost of doing business - have other drives I'll use it on and will try and get it to monitor my NAS drives regularly too
I am hearing these sounds while testing 'Self Long Test' in Seatools. Is it normal for HD to make this noise? Please refer to this video.
This is my first external drive so unsure if this is expected. There are no issues with the test results and 22 hours of testing is passed.
YouTube Video Reference - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Hxd9XDnCAFc
Samething happens if I play a video and also while seeking it makes that sound continuously.
Sounds pretty normal to me. I don't think people realize that these drives, in particular, Iron Wolf Pro's and large capacity drives are naturally loud, it can sound like there is an issue.
Thanks for the feedback. It's good to know that these sounds are normal. I'm running the surface scan now in HD sentinel and so far its good as well. May be Im too much worried since I don't know what is normal sound :D
bought 1 12TB nas drive. DOA. will sort out return for warranty. :(
My two 16tb arrived. 1 is DOA :(
Did the tracking info update to tell you about delivery, or did just show up? I havent had an update for 12 days and hearing about the DOA many are reporting, im.not sure whether to juwt cancel the order.
ditto :( Packaging seems ok. Kinda wondering why so many DOA.
So what are the IT / logistics / Amazon guru’s theories on why we’re seeing such a ludicrously high percentage of new drives showing up as DOA?
Ludicrously high is a bit of an exaggeration. Generally people complain when arrivals are faulty; most others won't mention it.
I had 4 * 20tb drives arrive with no issues with my Synology 920+.
I beg to differ. The volume of comments noting failures is multiples higher than any other harddrive deals (or those for any other shippable product) where the same vocal complainants logic may apply.
I believe there is an issue, but I'm unsure what the cause is.
I find it difficult to believe that Seagate is knowingly shipping faulty products, as has been suggested. The damage to their reputation would be immense. These products are targeted at large business and enterprise customers - as with first class and business class passengers, these customers are small in number, but highly profitable. If you're seeing a 50% DOA rate (as I did) from your new NAS drives, you're not going to be a customer much longer.
While shipping damage is what I would consider the most likely explanation, the packaging seems fine to me, and it has been my experience in the past that drives shipped in original packaging are rarely damaged in transit. There has been no apparent abuse of these drives, and even if Amazon did drop a pallet of them in a warehouse somewhere, this issue affects dozens of drives (that we know about) of different capacities, manufactured on different dates. It just doesn't seem plausible that they were somehow mishandled en masse.
@SirHumphreyAppleby: Agree with all of your assumptions, Sir Humphrey.
But the timing of a once in every Olympiad sale price alongside such an elevated fail rate just seems too coincidental to ignore. Perhaps the warehouse manager at Amazon who decided to reposition the Seagate harddrive section, next to the Acme magnet section decided that a pre-emptive firesale would lessen the impact of so many frustrated customers. We may never know…
@SirHumphreyAppleby: There are 3 options, one was on the manufacturers side of things which does happen, the disk is faulty from manufacture. The 2nd option is the disks were incorrectly handled at the warehouse level at amazon which is much more likely. If you apply a force to a disk even if the disk does not show the results of that force physically like dropping a pallet, the bottom half may be severely damaged but the top half of the disks would look fine, however that impact force will make them faulty. The 3rd option is damage through transit, which happens between the manufacturer and warehouse then out to the customer.
When you take into account that most people who are complaining have doas, but you arent seeing the counter to that of all the people getting working disks, it seems heavily skewed to the doa side of things. Considering the volume of orders the doa might only be 2-3% of all orders, but because most people are complaining about doas, it looks to be about 10-20% doa which is considerable but maybe not comparative to the true number.
If you are a cynical person like me, then i would say this was no accident by amazon, instead of spending 1000s of man hours to determine which disk is faulty, then sending it back to seagate, they dumped them on the Australian market at around cost price plus postage costs, sent the disks out, and we tested them for amazon costing them the least amount possible to do so. That is why they refund the faulty disks and do not provide replacements. Then we send them directly to seagate ourselves if we want a replacement at our own cost, cause it costs amazon nothing.
@garetz: It's certainly interesting. I don't recall seeing this number of DOAs being reported in previous deals even if you consider number of DOAs vs click throughs. It's also interesting to see DOAs seem to be reported despite variance in capacity and even Amazon fulfilment center let alone batch. Very hard to pin down exactly what's going on.
Are all the failed disks DOA (not recognised or failed instantly) or did anyone have your disks failed only after a long and extensive test?
My disks seemed to work well so far after some brief tests and I’m thinking if it’s worth it to spend a few more days to do the long and extensive tests.
Mine failed to initialise. Just beeps. Doesnt show up in disk manager.
When i attached my one to my NAS, it just said there "error", no details. When i attached it to my computer, BIOS can't even "see" it. And was also making a lot of screeching sound.
Thanks guys for comments. It looks like most if not all the failed drives are DOA which we can recognise instantly rather than having to go through extensive testings then.
My 4 x Drives arrived fine, SMART extended tests all passed. In Synology 423+ NAS with SHR all working fine. They can be loud whilst seeking.
I had 2 orders
1x20 tb arrived in Aust on the 24th and transferred to other carrier at 7pm
2x16 tb arrived in Aust on the 26th and transferred to other carrier at 4pm
Last tracking update on Amazon was when transfer took place no updates since
Apparently a company called SEKO is involved and their tracking indicates they the packages were delivered to me at the EXACT time that they were transferred to the other carrier (must be using teleportation)
Now Amazon wont talk to them to find out what is going on , and SEKO wont talk to me as they will only talk to Amazon
Guess its time to give up and get a refund
How unpleasant…
I was refunded export fees today:
Item: Seagate IronWolf Pro 20TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD – CMR 3.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM 256MB Cache for RAID Network Attached Storage, Rescue Servi Quantity: 4 ASIN: B09MKK1YCK
Reason for refund: Export fee reduced
Here's the breakdown of your refund for this item: Export Charge Refund: $196.64
For anyone going down the RMA path with Seagate path:
Received my replacement HDD from Seagate. It appears to be a brand new drive.
Sticker on the drive is exactly the same (reason why I say that is that every time I had a WD come back from RMA - The original WD drive I sent back had red colouring on it and the returned drive had a white sticker label - identifying it as a refurb).
The packaging was immaculate - best packaging I have seen to date. Entire box cushioned with so much soft packaging foam that there is absolutely no chance of any movement or damage to occur to the drive within it. 16cm of foam on top and bottom with 6cm on either side.
Packaged in brand new Anti Static bag and identified as Product of Thailand. DOM is March 2023.
All things considered, $330 for the drive from Amazon + ~$20-$25 for priority shipping return via Australia Post to Sydney = ~$350-$360 total for the drive.
Well within reason so still be an amazing bargain given the extra 9 Business days to wait for this. Sent back on Sat 29/04/23 and have a replacement on 11/05/23.
Plugged the drive in and immediately runs and quick health disk check's all passed.
Have you tried the long SeaTools test? 2 of mine pass the quick test, but abort the long test around 10hrs into the test with lots of LBA errors.
They also fail HD Tune Pro's error scan test, aborting when a bad sector is picked up.
It's really odd behavior so I'm thinking it's time to send then to Seagate for replacements.
Complete long test that QNAP has available on its drives passed. Took just over 20 Hours but all good.
That's good to hear. I'm going to pack mine up and send them back to Seagate.
Thanks for letting us know! Interesting to see that is a new drive. I ended up sending the RMA drive back to Amazon and re-purchasing at the higher price (with a credit based on the price difference). I got the new drive a couple days ago - seems to be fine so far, although I haven't had the time to fully write test it.
Ordered mine within 10 minutes of the deal being posted and it's apparently only just arrived at the Auspost sorting centre. Talk about slowwwwww delivery.
Be interesting to see if it passes the long SeaTools test. I think 2 out of 3 of mine are faulty so will be looking into either Seagate replacements or Amazon refund.
Figures. HDD's are typically much slower than SSD's…
I also ordered in the first hour and mine seemed to arrive a lot later than others who ordered half a day later.
I ordered mine 2X 18TB on the 19th and reached Australia on the 26th, after that no information. Amazon tracking says " We're very sorry that your delivery is so late. Although it may still arrive, you can request a refund now."
Just be aware if you do that they will re-direct the delivery in-transit. You will not get the product and a refund.
I only ordered 1x 8TB as a spare and it was refunded without any explanation last week.
Judging by the amount of DOA and issues, maybe it was for the best.
DOA seem to be hit a miss. I had 4x 12tb drives and all of them passed the quick and long tests. Lucky I suppose.
The DOAs all seem to be for the 16TB and 20TB drives. All 8 of my 8TB drives are fine, passed 3 cycles of UNRAID Preclear and an extended SMART test.
I've finished running the extended S.M.A.R.T tests on 4 x 16tb's and they all passed.
That would be poor old Sixteen Terabyte Terry. Man is he gonna be pissed…