Newegg - Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS 2TB 5900 RPM @ 69.99


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I saw that this morning. I'm glad I didn't place my order yesterday when they were $79.99. So this morning I ordered five of them as well as another external enclosure and a PCIe x4 SATA card with port multiplier capability. I plan on using three of the Seagates for data in the array, one as parity drive and one as a cache drive. And the other seventeen drives in the unRAID setup will be my old WD 1.5TB green drives that I replaced in my WHS.

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My personal experience with the Seagate LP drives has been bad. I bought 2 - one already RMAed after an awful and difficult several month long battle which turned out to be faulty SMART subsystem that kept taking the drive offline.  The other drive is reporting no SMART errors, but is showing signs of seek errors and other error correction and very poor performance.  I just re-built parity on my backup array (after removing most of my larger drives), and for the last 500G it was just 2 drives - parity and this drive (both Seagate LP 2T).  I was getting build speeds fluctuating between 15 and 25 MB/sec.  Should have been 2-3x faster with any other brand drives.  I can see another RMA coming soon.

 

My experience has been with just these three (two bought together and the third an RMA refurb).  But I believe others have also had problems with these drives. 

 

I wholeheartedly recommend the Hitachi 5K3000.  I started an RMA thread recently and asked for people to describe RMA experiences.  People spoke of WD, Samsung, and Seagate.  No one spoke of Hitachi, even after I asked specifically.  I know Hitachi has RMAs too, but the fact that no one on the unRAID forums had a recent experience, at a time that Hitachi's have become increasingly popular hear, speaks volumes to me.  My new array is almost all Hitachi - except for 2 2T WD EADS.  I did not bring over the Seagates from the old array, even though I would have liked the space. They were just too slow and not reliable enough for me.

 

I would suggest you look at the Hitachi 5K3000 drives.  They are at about the same price point and specs.  Although often available for $70, right now best price is from Amazom at $75 FS (see below).

 

Newegg $90 / $80 after rebate

 

or

 

Amazon $75

 

Its a shame.  3 years ago I bought nothing but Seagate.  And still have several 750G, 1T, and 1.5T drives that work great.  But these LP drives suck (IMO) and I just can't let a post like this go by without warning others.  I hope others with stellar experiences with these drives speak up in their defense to prove that mine was the exception but not the rule.  Maybe then I would stop this type of warning.  But so far, I have not heard anyone raving.

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I've also had problems with these drives, three in total (4, if you included one of the replacement drives that was also faulty)  :-[  

Two were in my Unraid server and 1 in a windows desktop build, consequently I've stopped using them in client builds.

 

Hopefully the newer 6Gb/s version (ST2000DL003) may have improved.

 

Like 'bjp999' I have used Seagate for years and have several of their drives dotted here and there and they're working perfectly - but these LP drives have been problematic for sure.

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I'm not using any in my unRAID yet, only the WD green drives. But I have 23 Seagate Barracuda 2TB LP drives in my WHS and they have been working fine the last few months. They run cooler than my WD green drives and are a liitle faster as well.

I do upgrade the firmware to CC35 if it's on the CC34 firmware before using them. Hopefully I don't have any issues since two of them will be used as the parity as cache drive in my unRAID box.

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I've also had problems with these drives, three in total (4, if you included one of the replacement drives that was also faulty)  :-[  

Two were in my Unraid server and 1 in a windows desktop build, consequently I've stopped using them in client builds.

 

Hopefully the newer 6Gb/s version (ST2000DL003) may have improved.

 

Like 'bjp999' I have used Seagate for years and have several of their drives dotted here and there and they're working perfectly - but these LP drives have been problematic for sure.

Reading post here I gather the problem is more prevalent with drives which have the old (c32) firmware. The latest firmware (C35) is available for download on the Seagate site. The LP ST3200054AS is now an End of Line item and no longer manufactured -replaced by the ST2000DL003.

They are selling in the UK for less than their predecessor (GBP 60 ~ $90 including 20% sales tax). I have been using 7200rpm Hitachi's with no issues at all, but I wanted to try some low power drives and given these are cheaper than the WD EURS (replacement for EARS) I bought 2 to try.

I am preclearing 2 of these now. The first cycle should be done soon and I can post the results (here or the preclear results thread) if anyone is interested.

 

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FWIW, I decided to roll the dice and try the Seagate LP drive.  I just found that four of my ten 1 TB Western Digital Green Drives (which are various models from 9 months to 2.5 years old) come up with problems under Western Digital's diagnostic program and had to be RMA'd with the oldest two not being eligible for advanced replacement.  So I'm thinking it's time to try Seagate again.

 

 

 

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FWIW, I decided to roll the dice and try the Seagate LP drive.  I just found that four of my ten 1 TB Western Digital Green Drives (which are various models from 9 months to 2.5 years old) come up with problems under Western Digital's diagnostic program and had to be RMA'd with the oldest two not being eligible for advanced replacement.  So I'm thinking it's time to try Seagate again.

 

Try Hitachi!  They are the best right now IMO.

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I am preclearing 2 of these now. The first cycle should be done soon and I can post the results (here or the preclear results thread) if anyone is interested.

 

I'm also finishing up a pre-clear now on one of these drives so I'd be interested to compare results.  91% complete on the post-read and I'm 26:15:46 in.  My last one took 27 hours but I'm preclearing off an AOC-SASLP-MV8.  I think the same drive cleared in about 24-25 hours on my MB SATA ports.

 

Try Hitachi!  They are the best right now IMO.

I'm sure this is probably a stupid question but it's one that has prevented me from trying a Hitachi.  I've got all LP ST32000542AS 2TB drives in my array.  Will the Hitachi format to a size less than or equal to these drives as long as there's no HPA present?  I'd hate to buy one only to have to make it my parity drive.  Is there a standard that prevents these "2 TB" drives from varying in size once they're formatted?

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Is there a standard that prevents these "2 TB" drives from varying in size once they're formatted?

 

Yes.  At some point around the 250G drive size, the manufacturers standardized on precise drive sizes.  So any modern drive, certainly from 500G and up, will be EXACTLY the same size as any other manufacturers drive of the same advertised size.

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I've also had problems with these drives, three in total (4, if you included one of the replacement drives that was also faulty)  :-[  

Two were in my Unraid server and 1 in a windows desktop build, consequently I've stopped using them in client builds.

 

Hopefully the newer 6Gb/s version (ST2000DL003) may have improved.

 

Like 'bjp999' I have used Seagate for years and have several of their drives dotted here and there and they're working perfectly - but these LP drives have been problematic for sure.

Reading post here I gather the problem is more prevalent with drives which have the old (c32) firmware. The latest firmware (C35) is available for download on the Seagate site. The LP ST3200054AS is now an End of Line item and no longer manufactured -replaced by the ST2000DL003.

They are selling in the UK for less than their predecessor (GBP 60 ~ $90 including 20% sales tax). I have been using 7200rpm Hitachi's with no issues at all, but I wanted to try some low power drives and given these are cheaper than the WD EURS (replacement for EARS) I bought 2 to try.

I am preclearing 2 of these now. The first cycle should be done soon and I can post the results (here or the preclear results thread) if anyone is interested.

 

 

The drives were all firmware CC34 and the one I have here that I received from Seagate (RMA) had two bad sectors, I upgraded it to CC35 and run the long seatools test and it replaced the sectors, though I'm not entirely happy with it. I have it sat in my own (desktop) system at the moment using it as a scratch disc. i certainly won't be putting this one in my main Unraid server. I'm going to get a ST2000DL003 this week and try it.

 

I would be interested in seeing your preclear reults please :)

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I would be interested in seeing your preclear reults please :)

I normally run 3 cycles (each cycle is run once, power-down, run next cycle). Here are the results from the cycle 1 & 2:

========================================================================1.7
== invoked as: ./preclear_disk.sh -A /dev/sdb
==  ST2000DL003-9VT166    5YD1BNYS
== Disk /dev/sdb has been successfully precleared
== with a starting sector of 64 
== Ran 1 cycle
==
== Using :Read block size = 8225280 Bytes
== Last Cycle's Pre Read Time  : 6:04:38 (91 MB/s)
== Last Cycle's Zeroing time   : 5:21:52 (103 MB/s)
== Last Cycle's Post Read Time : 13:06:10 (42 MB/s)
== Last Cycle's Total Time     : 24:33:47
==
== Total Elapsed Time 24:33:47
==
== Disk Start Temperature: 30C
==
== Current Disk Temperature: 27C, 
==
============================================================================
** Changed attributes in files: /tmp/smart_start_sdb  /tmp/smart_finish_sdb
                ATTRIBUTE   NEW_VAL OLD_VAL FAILURE_THRESHOLD STATUS      RAW_VALUE
      Raw_Read_Error_Rate =   114     100            6        ok          76458848
         Spin_Retry_Count =   100     100           97        near_thresh 0
         End-to-End_Error =   100     100           99        near_thresh 0
  Airflow_Temperature_Cel =    73      70           45        ok          27
      Temperature_Celsius =    27      30            0        ok          27
   Hardware_ECC_Recovered =    37     100            0        ok          76458848
No SMART attributes are FAILING_NOW

0 sectors were pending re-allocation before the start of the preclear.
0 sectors were pending re-allocation after pre-read in cycle 1 of 1.
0 sectors were pending re-allocation after zero of disk in cycle 1 of 1.
0 sectors are pending re-allocation at the end of the preclear,
    the number of sectors pending re-allocation did not change.
0 sectors had been re-allocated before the start of the preclear.
0 sectors are re-allocated at the end of the preclear,
    the number of sectors re-allocated did not change. 
============================================================================

========================================================================1.7
== invoked as: ./preclear_disk.sh -A /dev/sdi
==  ST2000DL003-9VT166    5YD1BNYS
== Disk /dev/sdi has been successfully precleared
== with a starting sector of 64 
== Ran 1 cycle
==
== Using :Read block size = 8225280 Bytes
== Last Cycle's Pre Read Time  : 6:04:25 (91 MB/s)
== Last Cycle's Zeroing time   : 5:23:45 (102 MB/s)
== Last Cycle's Post Read Time : 13:17:49 (41 MB/s)
== Last Cycle's Total Time     : 24:47:05
==
== Total Elapsed Time 24:47:05
==
== Disk Start Temperature: 28C
==
== Current Disk Temperature: 29C, 
==
============================================================================
** Changed attributes in files: /tmp/smart_start_sdi  /tmp/smart_finish_sdi
                ATTRIBUTE   NEW_VAL OLD_VAL FAILURE_THRESHOLD STATUS      RAW_VALUE
      Raw_Read_Error_Rate =   117     114            6        ok          165117904
         Spin_Retry_Count =   100     100           97        near_thresh 0
         End-to-End_Error =   100     100           99        near_thresh 0
  Airflow_Temperature_Cel =    71      72           45        ok          29
      Temperature_Celsius =    29      28            0        ok          29
   Hardware_ECC_Recovered =    36      27            0        ok          165117904
No SMART attributes are FAILING_NOW

0 sectors were pending re-allocation before the start of the preclear.
0 sectors were pending re-allocation after pre-read in cycle 1 of 1.
0 sectors were pending re-allocation after zero of disk in cycle 1 of 1.
0 sectors are pending re-allocation at the end of the preclear,
    the number of sectors pending re-allocation did not change.
0 sectors had been re-allocated before the start of the preclear.
0 sectors are re-allocated at the end of the preclear,
    the number of sectors re-allocated did not change. 
============================================================================

 

 

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Try Hitachi!  They are the best right now IMO.

 

I most certainly do buy Hitachi.  Whenever they go on sale.  :D  Well beyond the bad old IBM Deathstar days.  But, it's nice to have at least a couple of brands you can trust at any given time.

 

 

Hmmm...  Just read that Western Digital is buying Hitachi Global Storage Technologies for $4.3 billion in cash and stock.  I wonder what strategy Western Digital is going to do post acquisition?

 

Will it be like Seagate buying Maxtor where Maxtor brand was the budget brand until the brand was phased out?

 

 

 

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