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Thursday, 12 October 2006, 18:50:50 EDT

Sometime in 2004 either Best Buy or CompUSA, I can't remember which, had an awesome deal on Seagate hard drives. I had two Western Digital drives in my machine at the time; one was an old drive I had used for a primary drive, but was then using as a storage drive, and the other a newer drive. The storage drive was at least three years old and the primary at least two. So I decided to buy one of the Seagate drives to replace my primary drive and finally retire the aging storage drive (I gave it to my roommate and I believe he is still using it). Well, this past June my Seagate drive developed a few hundred bad sectors and I had to ship it off to Seagate for a replacement. They got the drive on the twenty-seventh of June and were not able (out of stock they said) to send me a replacement until August 18. When I got the drive on August 22 it was 20GB short of the drive I sent them; I sent them a 140GB drive and they sent me a 120GB in return! I never even broke the seal on the anti-static bag before getting a new RMA authorization. It took them another two weeks to get the correct drive to me. About three days ago this replacement drive started chirping. That's right, the drive sounds like a damn bird. The Western Digital drive that used to be my primary drive, and became my storage drive when I bought the Seagate, is still working and has yet to show signs of imminent failure. Can you guess what I am going to do to fix the Seagate drive? Yep. I'm going to buy a new Western Digital.

Seagate used to be the cream of the crop. They made solid drives that would last a long, long, time. You won't hear about me buying one of their drives any time soon, though. This experience has left me with a dismal view of Seagate Technology's products. I'll be hitting the drive with Darik's Boot and Nuke and selling it on eBay. Maybe someone will actually pay me ten or fifteen dollars for it so that I can pay off one tenth of the cost for the replacement drive.