Seagate ST2000DM001 Drive Fail & Warranty Return

thatguy91 · *Last edited by thatguy91; 04-22-2012 at 01:47.*

A couple of months ago I bought three of these new 2TB (1TB/platter) Seagate drives. They had occasionally made some 'noises' which I looked up and was apparently common with these drives - strange?!

Something didn't seem right with the operation of the drives, so using Seatools I did a long read test on them. Two of the three failed! So of course, I want to send them back for warranty. Since I bought these online its much quicker and easier to do it through Seagate directly, apparently...

I found Seagate's requirement for packaging the drive to be a little unreasonable. I can understand they want the drive to be packaged properly, but they seem to require specific specialist package that you can only really buy from a few online places and its not cheap.

My question is, have others had success in returning Seagate drives without spending a crapload on packaging? The warranty return for me is in Australia, so an Australian response would be appreciated. I would prefer greatly to just return these drives with more than adequate but non-required packaging, because its unreasonable to spend so much just to package and send the damn drives! I see their specific requirements nothing more than a means to put people off sending the drives in, and to knock back warranty if not sent to their strict, expensive requirements.

clawhamer · 04-23-2012, 01:08 | posts: 1,542 | Location: eastcoast.ca

Have you tried calling and talking with support directly, or did you get the return requirements from their site: Packing & Shipping Instructions?

Use original packaging when possible, such as packaging sent with Advanced Replacement Order:
• Enclose each drive in an ESD (electrostatic discharge) bag, in an anti-static plastic shell (SeaShell) or anti-static bubble wrap.
• Secure each unit in 2 inch-thick foam rubber in a corrugated box. Do not use popcorn, peanuts, bubble wrap or newspaper. If packaging more than one drive, use a separate container for each drive.
• Print the order number on the outside of each box.

IcE · 04-23-2012, 03:41 | posts: 6,989 | Location: Toledo, Ohio

Well I'm certainly not buying Seagate after hearing this...

thatguy91 · 04-23-2012, 04:03 | posts: 2,754 | Location: Australia

Quote:

Originally Posted by ice445

Well I'm certainly not buying Seagate after hearing this...

About the packaging requirements or the drives going crook? To be honest, I wouldn't recommend these drives to anyone, not after having 2 to bad. I have never had any issues with any other drives I have had. That said, it could have been a bad batch.

The packaging requirements though are a bit excessive. The Advanced Replacement Order is only a US thing, its not available to me. I have to pay the full cost of postage back to Seagate including packaging cost.

Interestingly though, my favourite local store where I would have bought them from doesn't stock them... maybe there's a reason!

IcE · 04-23-2012, 05:12 | posts: 6,989 | Location: Toledo, Ohio

Quote:

Originally Posted by thatguy91

About the packaging requirements or the drives going crook? To be honest, I wouldn't recommend these drives to anyone, not after having 2 to bad. I have never had any issues with any other drives I have had. That said, it could have been a bad batch.

The packaging requirements though are a bit excessive. The Advanced Replacement Order is only a US thing, its not available to me. I have to pay the full cost of postage back to Seagate including packaging cost.

Interestingly though, my favourite local store where I would have bought them from doesn't stock them... maybe there's a reason!

Yeah, I refuse to spend half of a product's value to send back a defective one, that's just absurd.

thatguy91 · 04-23-2012, 17:25 | posts: 2,754 | Location: Australia

I looked back at the date I installed Windows on the faulty drive - 30 March. That means the Windows drive, and the drive which had hardly been used, went from being fine to faulty in less that 3 weeks (as I started noticing issues the other day).

Maybe these drives are 'great value' for a reason! :S

WildStyle · 04-25-2012, 21:27 | posts: 15,235 | Location: UK

Hi there

I see you're asking about Australia but would imagine they have the same procedures worldwide.

I'm often sending drives back to Seagate from work and agree their packaging requirements can seem over the top. If you can pack it the way they suggest then do, however they have always accepted drives which I've just put loads of bubble wrap around and then chucked in a strong box. No problems at all. Just make sure the box is well labelled to avoid any confusion.

Incidentally I have had to RMA quite a few ST2000DM001s myself, not impressed!

thatguy91 · *Last edited by thatguy91; 04-25-2012 at 22:44.*

Quote:

Originally Posted by WildStyle

Hi there

I see you're asking about Australia but would imagine they have the same procedures worldwide.

I'm often sending drives back to Seagate from work and agree their packaging requirements can seem over the top. If you can pack it the way they suggest then do, however they have always accepted drives which I've just put loads of bubble wrap around and then chucked in a strong box. No problems at all. Just make sure the box is well labelled to avoid any confusion.

Incidentally I have had to RMA quite a few ST2000DM001s myself, not impressed!

Thanks! it sounds like I can pretty much package it how I was going to initially

I'll be very careful with the box they send back, since I will have 5 of them once these are returned I might need the packaging again in the future :S - definitely sounds like the ST2000DM001 is a dud model.

What issues did you have with them? catastrophic failures or 'just' bad sectors?

WildStyle · 04-26-2012, 18:44 | posts: 15,235 | Location: UK

Bad sectors and not being recognised in BIOS/Windows.

Still, least the RMA procedure is painless.

Lane · *Last edited by Lane; 04-27-2012 at 11:59.*

I own one.

No problem so far, and the performance are really good when transferring, copying from my SSD..

The only thing, is the little sound it can do when it wake up the moving part, (or maybe change platter? ) . it seems the disk have a big power saving feature,...

Other than that, the disk is really silencious. not even a sound when i defrag or copy large amount of file on it... instead my WD Caviar Black 1To and an old Seagate 1To i own. was doing a lot of sound.

As i have install it on an hotswap slot, and it is fixed on a metal plate, i will see if it dont come just from this.

The seagate 2To is the version: ST2000DM001-9YN64 ( SATA 6gb/s )

thatguy91 · *Last edited by thatguy91; 04-27-2012 at 13:03.*

have you run seatools on it, doing the long read test? I highly recommend it! better safe than sorry

. I knew of only one drive being faulty, and that was due to the fault being right where a windows file was (causing windows issues). Really no excuse to have bad sectors with only a couple of weeks of use.

Funnily enough I used one as a 'scratch' drive - that is, it had the most heavy use as a temporary drive transferring files etc, and its the only one of the three that DIDN'T fail the test! maybe these drives need a bit of a workout in the data error to work properly, and if so, maybe using diskpart with the 'clean all' (zero's absolutely every sector), and doing a full 'low level' format, also through diskpart, may actually help with the drive due to the density of the 1TB platters etc. Okay, thats a long shot, but I guess it will at least test the writeability of the whole drive, and you can follow it with a seatools test.

thatguy91 · *Last edited by thatguy91; 04-28-2012 at 12:40.*

Okay, it seems my suspicions may actually be correct... that it may be advisable to do a pass or two over the drive before setting up and using it. Use diskpart, type list disk, select the disk by typing select disk x (where x is the drive number). Type list partition, none should show since its a new drive, then type clean all

After that has done (several hours, and there is no progress indicator), type clean all and run it again. The drive should now be ready for use, and potentially more reliable. Something to do with magnetics and the 1TB platters...

You can't do this on existing drives though, because you literally destroy all data, and it becomes unrecoverable! also it should be done before use, not after bad sectors appear. As soon as bad sectors appear don't mess around with recovery programs, get the warranty!