Thailand floods and Seagate HD prices

A few weeks ago 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT bare drives were $130 at
NewEgg; by the end of last week they were $250. But on Saturday I bought
the retail version of the same drive at the Chicago-area Fry's for $160
(limit one per customer).

Two weeks ago I bought a retail-package 2TB Barracuda LP at Best Buy for
$100; this week the regular price is shown as $90, and they are on sale
for $75 -- and they do price adjustments within 30 days. NewEgg no
longer lists them.

Those drives are all made in China, but I think that some components or
sub-assemblies come from the flood-affected factories in Thailand.

Perce

On Nov 2, 2:04*pm, "Percival P. Cassidy" wrote:
A few weeks ago 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT bare drives were $130 at
NewEgg; by the end of last week they were $250. But on Saturday I bought
the retail version of the same drive at the Chicago-area Fry's for $160
(limit one per customer).

Two weeks ago I bought a retail-package 2TB Barracuda LP at Best Buy for
$100; this week the regular price is shown as $90, and they are on sale
for $75 -- and they do price adjustments within 30 days. NewEgg no
longer lists them.

Those drives are all made in China, but I think that some components or
sub-assemblies come from the flood-affected factories in Thailand.

Perce

2 weeks ago I bought a 2TB WD drive for £79.99. Yesterday they were
about £120, both at PC World. Online prices looked similar.

Michael
www.cnwrecovery.com

wrote
Percival P. Cassidy wrote

A few weeks ago 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT bare drives were
$130 at NewEgg; by the end of last week they were $250. But
on Saturday I bought the retail version of the same drive at the
Chicago-area Fry's for $160 (limit one per customer).

Two weeks ago I bought a retail-package 2TB Barracuda LP
at Best Buy for $100; this week the regular price is shown as
$90, and they are on sale for $75 -- and they do price adjustments
within 30 days. NewEgg no longer lists them.

Those drives are all made in China, but I think that some components
or sub-assemblies come from the flood-affected factories in Thailand.

2 weeks ago I bought a 2TB WD drive for £79.99. Yesterday they
were about £120, both at PC World. Online prices looked similar.

I've automated the price check with the 2TB drives I currently buy, the
Samsung greens and have only seen a $10 jump from $75 to $85 australian.

I also monitor the 3TB drives waiting to see when they are the best $/GB, they
are nothing like that yet, and have seen a jump from $149 to $165 with those.

Those are the best prices available in my country.

On 3/11/2011 1:04 AM, Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
A few weeks ago 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT bare drives were $130 at
NewEgg; by the end of last week they were $250. But on Saturday I bought
the retail version of the same drive at the Chicago-area Fry's for $160
(limit one per customer).

Two weeks ago I bought a retail-package 2TB Barracuda LP at Best Buy for
$100; this week the regular price is shown as $90, and they are on sale
for $75 -- and they do price adjustments within 30 days. NewEgg no
longer lists them.

Those drives are all made in China, but I think that some components or
sub-assemblies come from the flood-affected factories in Thailand.

Perce

After having 3 out of 5 Seagate 1 Terabyte drives die recently, and
being assured that the remaining 2 will soon suffer a similar fate, I no
longer buy Seagate drives.

--

Krypsis

In article , Krypsis wrote:
On 3/11/2011 1:04 AM, Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
A few weeks ago 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT bare drives were $130 at
NewEgg; by the end of last week they were $250. But on Saturday I bought
the retail version of the same drive at the Chicago-area Fry's for $160
(limit one per customer).

Two weeks ago I bought a retail-package 2TB Barracuda LP at Best Buy for
$100; this week the regular price is shown as $90, and they are on sale
for $75 -- and they do price adjustments within 30 days. NewEgg no
longer lists them.

Those drives are all made in China, but I think that some components or
sub-assemblies come from the flood-affected factories in Thailand.

Perce

After having 3 out of 5 Seagate 1 Terabyte drives die recently, and
being assured that the remaining 2 will soon suffer a similar fate, I no
longer buy Seagate drives.


You did get the memo about the firmware update to prevent this??????? The
firmware was released way over a year ago to fix the issues for the 750Gb thru
the 1.5 TB drives.

On 3/11/2011 2:43 PM, GMAN wrote:
In m.au, wrote:
On 3/11/2011 1:04 AM, Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
A few weeks ago 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT bare drives were $130 at
NewEgg; by the end of last week they were $250. But on Saturday I bought
the retail version of the same drive at the Chicago-area Fry's for $160
(limit one per customer).

Two weeks ago I bought a retail-package 2TB Barracuda LP at Best Buy for
$100; this week the regular price is shown as $90, and they are on sale
for $75 -- and they do price adjustments within 30 days. NewEgg no
longer lists them.

Those drives are all made in China, but I think that some components or
sub-assemblies come from the flood-affected factories in Thailand.

Perce

After having 3 out of 5 Seagate 1 Terabyte drives die recently, and
being assured that the remaining 2 will soon suffer a similar fate, I no
longer buy Seagate drives.


You did get the memo about the firmware update to prevent this??????? The
firmware was released way over a year ago to fix the issues for the 750Gb thru
the 1.5 TB drives.

No memo but I found out the bad news from the dealer from whom I
purchased the drives. After losing the first drive, I contacted Seagate
and updated the firmware. I was warned by the dealer rep that the fix
wasn't a guarantee as his experience was that the entire 7200.11 batch
was faulty and the update merely stopgap. He was right, shortly after
the update I lost two more. The remaining 2 drives are no longer in a
raid 5 configuration and are, for want of a better term, spares. They
will not be used for critical duties.

Seagate is well and truly off my radar now!

--

Krypsis

Krypsis wrote:
On 3/11/2011 2:43 PM, GMAN wrote:
[...]
You did get the memo about the firmware update to prevent this??????? The
firmware was released way over a year ago to fix the issues for the 750Gb thru
the 1.5 TB drives.

No memo but I found out the bad news from the dealer from whom I
purchased the drives. After losing the first drive, I contacted Seagate
and updated the firmware. I was warned by the dealer rep that the fix
wasn't a guarantee as his experience was that the entire 7200.11 batch
was faulty and the update merely stopgap.

Interesting. So there is some other mess-up in there as well.

He was right, shortly after
the update I lost two more. The remaining 2 drives are no longer in a
raid 5 configuration and are, for want of a better term, spares. They
will not be used for critical duties.

Seagate is well and truly off my radar now!

Unfortunately, they are about to buy the Samsung HDD division.
And WD will buy the Hitachi Storage Division. Not good.
And at least for large storage spaces, SSD is not an alternative.

Arno
--
Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email:
GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F
----
Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans

In article , Krypsis wrote:
On 3/11/2011 2:43 PM, GMAN wrote:
In m.au,
wrote:
On 3/11/2011 1:04 AM, Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
A few weeks ago 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT bare drives were $130 at
NewEgg; by the end of last week they were $250. But on Saturday I bought
the retail version of the same drive at the Chicago-area Fry's for $160
(limit one per customer).

Two weeks ago I bought a retail-package 2TB Barracuda LP at Best Buy for
$100; this week the regular price is shown as $90, and they are on sale
for $75 -- and they do price adjustments within 30 days. NewEgg no
longer lists them.

Those drives are all made in China, but I think that some components or
sub-assemblies come from the flood-affected factories in Thailand.

Perce

After having 3 out of 5 Seagate 1 Terabyte drives die recently, and
being assured that the remaining 2 will soon suffer a similar fate, I no
longer buy Seagate drives.


You did get the memo about the firmware update to prevent this??????? The
firmware was released way over a year ago to fix the issues for the 750Gb
thru
the 1.5 TB drives.

No memo but I found out the bad news from the dealer from whom I
purchased the drives. After losing the first drive, I contacted Seagate
and updated the firmware. I was warned by the dealer rep that the fix
wasn't a guarantee as his experience was that the entire 7200.11 batch
was faulty and the update merely stopgap. He was right, shortly after
the update I lost two more. The remaining 2 drives are no longer in a
raid 5 configuration and are, for want of a better term, spares. They
will not be used for critical duties.

Seagate is well and truly off my radar now!

The 7200.11 are not enterprise drives and for the life of me i dont
understand why it suprises you that they fail in a RAID environment.



http://forums.storagereview.com/index.
php/topic/29208-how-to-use-desktop-drives-in-raid-without-tlererccctl/


"Hard drive manufacturers are drawing a distinction between "desktop" grade
and "enterprise" grade drives. The "desktop" grade drives can take a long time
(~2 minutes) to respond when they find an error, which causes most RAID
systems to label them as failed and drop them from the array.

The solution provided by the manufacturers is for us to purchase the
"enterprise" grade drives, at twice the cost, which report errors promptly
enough so that this isn't a problem. This "enterprise" feature is called TLER,
ERC, and CCTL.

On 4/11/2011 5:04 AM, GMAN wrote:
In m.au, wrote:
On 3/11/2011 2:43 PM, GMAN wrote:
In m.au,
wrote:
On 3/11/2011 1:04 AM, Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
A few weeks ago 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT bare drives were $130 at
NewEgg; by the end of last week they were $250. But on Saturday I bought
the retail version of the same drive at the Chicago-area Fry's for $160
(limit one per customer).

Two weeks ago I bought a retail-package 2TB Barracuda LP at Best Buy for
$100; this week the regular price is shown as $90, and they are on sale
for $75 -- and they do price adjustments within 30 days. NewEgg no
longer lists them.

Those drives are all made in China, but I think that some components or
sub-assemblies come from the flood-affected factories in Thailand.

Perce

After having 3 out of 5 Seagate 1 Terabyte drives die recently, and
being assured that the remaining 2 will soon suffer a similar fate, I no
longer buy Seagate drives.


You did get the memo about the firmware update to prevent this??????? The
firmware was released way over a year ago to fix the issues for the 750Gb
thru
the 1.5 TB drives.

No memo but I found out the bad news from the dealer from whom I
purchased the drives. After losing the first drive, I contacted Seagate
and updated the firmware. I was warned by the dealer rep that the fix
wasn't a guarantee as his experience was that the entire 7200.11 batch
was faulty and the update merely stopgap. He was right, shortly after
the update I lost two more. The remaining 2 drives are no longer in a
raid 5 configuration and are, for want of a better term, spares. They
will not be used for critical duties.

Seagate is well and truly off my radar now!

The 7200.11 are not enterprise drives and for the life of me i dont
understand why it suprises you that they fail in a RAID environment.

My "RAID5 array" was only ever turned on when required to store or
access data and this would amount to no more than a few hours a week.
Hardly an "enterprise" system. Had I wanted a 100% duty cycle storage
system, then I would have purchased the appropriate drives for it, most
probably 10 or 15k SCSI. My needs simply didn't warrant such expense.


http://forums.storagereview.com/index.
php/topic/29208-how-to-use-desktop-drives-in-raid-without-tlererccctl/


"Hard drive manufacturers are drawing a distinction between "desktop" grade
and "enterprise" grade drives. The "desktop" grade drives can take a long time
(~2 minutes) to respond when they find an error, which causes most RAID
systems to label them as failed and drop them from the array.

Neither the platter surface nor the heads are the source of the problems
I experienced. The drive would simply "brick" itself due to firmware
issues. One of my drives, which I supposedly purchased as "new" had
already been back to the factory for repair. It was then onsold as new
through normal retail outlets. I only found this out when I contacted
Seagate with my issues via their helpdesk and quoted the relevant
numbers to them. Nice one Seagate. And, yes, it came with complete
factory sealed packaging. as did all the others.

The solution provided by the manufacturers is for us to purchase the
"enterprise" grade drives, at twice the cost, which report errors promptly
enough so that this isn't a problem. This "enterprise" feature is called TLER,
ERC, and CCTL.

As stated above, my needs aren't in any way as severe as an "enterprise"
so desktop drives were all I figured I needed. Besides, one drive failed
in my daily desktop. Unlike the RAID systemn, the desktop motherboard
does power the drive down when not in use which, in my case, was
probably 80% - 90% of the time.

--

Krypsis

On Wed, 02 Nov 2011 10:04:46 -0400, "Percival P. Cassidy"
wrote:

A few weeks ago 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT bare drives were $130 at
NewEgg; by the end of last week they were $250. But on Saturday I bought
the retail version of the same drive at the Chicago-area Fry's for $160
(limit one per customer).

Two weeks ago I bought a retail-package 2TB Barracuda LP at Best Buy for
$100; this week the regular price is shown as $90, and they are on sale
for $75 -- and they do price adjustments within 30 days. NewEgg no
longer lists them.

Those drives are all made in China, but I think that some components or
sub-assemblies come from the flood-affected factories in Thailand.


That won't last for long. On Newegg.com the 1TB Western Digital Caviar
Green has gone from about $50 a month ago to $129. It's also gone from
free shipping to $7.29 for shipping. The same sort of price increase
is happening with the rest of the 1TB and larger drives from all
manufacturers. Even the prices for 500GB drives are getting out of
hand with the cheapest on Newegg being the Samsung Spinpoing F3EG
500GB 5400RPM at $99.99 and $7.28 for shipping.