Expected failure time Barracuda IV

Michael Dooley · Post by **Michael Dooley** » Sun Jan 25, 2004 10:01 pm

I'm the guy with a loud Dell 8250. and I've embarked on a campaign to quieten this noisey computer. Another Dell waits for similar tratment. And I'm building a quiet VIA along the lines of the linux server. However...

I've been shopping for Seagate Barracuda IV 40 gig hard drives, the ST340016A HD to be specific. And I've noticed that they appear to have only a one year warantee against failure. That doesn't compare too well with Western Digital's warantees (from years ago) as far as I can tell - 3 or probably more years than that. Do these Seagate drives fail at one year?

If not, is this drive a good buy at $51.00 including free shipping? When do they start exhibiting signs of failure? 18 months - two years?

Should I be shopping for some other make/model drive, given that I've never even come close to maxing out other HD's with 20 and 40 gigs?

Thanks for your time and help in getting to a state of "whispering" computers. This site and the people here have comtinually amazed me with their knowledge and capability to help others.

dukla2000 · Post by **dukla2000** » Mon Jan 26, 2004 12:57 am

Michael Dooley wrote:Do these Seagate drives fail at one year?

Maybe - it is all to do with statistics and (IMHO) temperature plays a large role.

One of the few proven failures because of manufacturing/design problems were the Deathstars. The rest all have to be judged by statistics until proven otherwise. Check this thread for a debate on the effect temps may or may not have: I stand by my post on 31 Oct which says if you can keep the ambient temp for the drive below 25C there is a 93% chance it will survive 5 years. Which is no guarantee it wont fail at 5 weeks but at least Seagate will replace the thing if that happens to you

kogi · Post by **kogi** » Mon Jan 26, 2004 2:40 am

It all depends what your data is worth to you.
Why not get a barracuda 7200.7, ST340014A.

kogi

efcoins · Post by **efcoins** » Mon Jan 26, 2004 6:00 am

"I've been shopping for Seagate Barracuda IV 40 gig hard drives"

Are you sure.

Barracuda IV went out of production a long time ago, they were replaced by Barracuda V which in turn was replaced by the Barracuda 7200.7 about a year ago.
Barracuda IV were only sold (new) with a 3 year warrenty, the ones you are looking sound as though they must be second hand.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Mon Jan 26, 2004 7:14 am

efcoins wrote: Barracuda IV were only sold (new) with a 3 year warrenty, the ones you are looking sound as though they must be second hand.

Actually, the last of the Barracuda IV's were indeed switched to the 1 year warranty. This happened around Nov-Dec 2002. The Barracuda IV's were still in production at that point so the latest ones came with a 1 year warranty. I was looking all over the place at that time, trying to find the older "3 year warranty version". They were still around but weere rapidly being replaced with the 1 year versions.

Michael Dooley · Post by **Michael Dooley** » Mon Jan 26, 2004 2:07 pm

Thanks dukla for posting that thread. I read through it all, and the ancillary threads - I learned a lot.

Kogi, my data is backed up every day in a working environment and weekly for other stuff like e-mail. The one year warranty was a little surprising.

Efcoins, yep, I'm shopping for the Barracuda IV. Don't know if they are second hand but the one I got from Upgrade Solutions looks new to me.

Ralf is right about the one year warranty situation. I was surprised to see this and it was the reason for my post. The Barracuda IV runs quieter than my Maxtor 20 gig and my WD 40 gig, but is noticably warmer to the touch.

One guy in the thread dukla pointed me to observed that hard drive replacement is not neccesarily tied to MTBF. AS computers develope, we acquire better and bigger storage devices. I think he's right - I have a slew of old drives ranging from 20 megs on up. I don't use a floppy anymore (except in unusual cases), I use a CDRW device. And so on...

I think I'd better clean out the spare parts crates. Thanks for your thoughts on my query. I'll probably get another Barracuda IV this week.

mrk22 · Post by **mrk22** » Mon Jan 26, 2004 3:17 pm

Michael Dooley wrote:I've been shopping for Seagate Barracuda IV 40 gig hard drives, the ST340016A HD to be specific. And I've noticed that they appear to have only a one year warantee against failure.

The industry as a whole tried to move to a 1 year warranty standard in order to reduce costs. It's not really a reflection on the reliability of modern hard drives, but a cost cutting measure probably suggested by a statistician. Let's not forget that many hard drives are RMAed that were damaged due to things like exessive heat and vibration that are probably the cause of the user. So the companies have a reason to want to shorten the warranty period.

It seems like the industry is bringing back 3 year warranties on certain drives as an value added feature.

DanceMan · Post by **DanceMan** » Mon Jan 26, 2004 4:50 pm

I would be very careful about that particular drive. My son bought one that failed in a year. It was replaced, at the cost of expensive shipping back to Seagate, with another that lasted four months. One of the members at HWC bought five at about the same time (approx June 02) and four of them failed. Scares me -- I bought one at the same time as my son that I haven't used yet. I've heard it was the platters -- glass? Just to be specific, I'm talking about the Bar IV 40G.

Michael Dooley · Post by **Michael Dooley** » Mon Jan 26, 2004 5:11 pm

Thanks for the warning Dance Man.

Mrk22, I figured that something like this was in play. The accountants are in charge.

The 40 gig Barracuda IV that I just acquired is so quiet when compared to the other drives I use daily that I thought I'd just replace the older noisey drives with these Seagate charmers that folks (generally) on this site, like.

Should I look elsewhere?

Post by **MikeC** » Mon Jan 26, 2004 5:29 pm

If heat and reliabilty can be said to be directly related, then the nearly-as-quiet 3yr warranty Samsung SP (7200rpm) drives are a better bet than the Barracuda IVs. They are on average at least 4~5 degrees C cooler than B-IVs, even a 2-platter Samsung vs a 1-platter Seagate. If you want even cooler and just as quiet or maybe even quieter than the B-IV, try Samsung's current 5400 rpm drives.

Tho in defense of the B-IV 40G drive, I went through maybe 20 and had only one failure, and I have not heard other experiences like DanceMan's.

The one falure was strange & freaky. The HDD was suddenly not being recognized, I opened the case, looked at things, booted again, nothing on screen. And even as I was watching, I noitced the paper label on the B-IV drive turning yellow, then brown. I touched the drive with a finger tip and immediate burned it. Pulled the AC cord off, then started to notice the burnt smell.

It may have been user error, I did make some changes to wiring just before all this happened... maybe the HDD was seeing some strange reverse 12V or 5V. But Seagate exchanged it under warranty w/o comment.

Michael Dooley · Post by **Michael Dooley** » Mon Jan 26, 2004 8:40 pm

Mike, I want cool and quiet. I'll investigate the Samsung 5400 drives.

Thanks -

Expected failure time Barracuda IV

Expected failure time Barracuda IV

Lies, damned lies and statistics!

Re: Expected failure time Barracuda IV