I thought I could use a bit more free HD space, so I decided to replace the smaller (500GB) HD and put a new 1TB drive to good use. Easy job, of course... but with my rotten luck, it was no wonder the expression of mine was not happy after I booted my rig up. The new HD was alright after quick format... but my full 2TB drive was gone! There had been no SMART warnings or anything suspicious in Windows logs previously, but now Windows did not see the drive. Restart, and quick check in BIOS... and seeing drive showing up as zero sized pretty much ruined my day. The drive is dead, as the result are same when tested on another computer. So, instead of gaining half TB, I lost one. Bigger disaster is nearly 2T lost files. The thing is, there are no backups, as those were for "archival purposes" and I can't afford big enough media for everything. Seems like hard disk failures are much more common nowadays. There was a time when 5-10 years was reasonably expected time for disk to last. Now they seem to be going belly up every now and then, usually sooner than later. RAID is not an option if you have lots and lots of data. It's just too costly. But what other choices there are... Hmm... Warranty Status In Warranty Expiration 24-Aug-2015 Nah, too much trouble to send it to who knows where.
The Barracuda 7200.11s reportedly had a nasty firmware bug causing the size to be reported as "0". But, things seemed to have calmed down after that. If you're using Seagate, better get at least a 7200.12! It's possible that the later ones are better, despite the super short warranties! Not that long ago, a 3-year warranty was a run-of-mill warranty! At least since around 2013, most are down to a 2-year warranty!
I was talking about how the warranties got shortened to 2 years and the self-bricking issues of 7200.11s, especially ones with "SDxxxx" firmware. Blacks and Velociraptors are the only ones with 5 year warranties. Reds have a 3 year warranty, which used to be the regular warranty.
Didnt understand, what exactly happen there? Also, consider buying blu ray burner and burn your files into 500-100GB discs.
I replaced disk with bigger one... and somewhere in the process another (2TB) drive died. I got new one eventually, so I have free disk space, but I would rather have that old data back. When HDD experiences sudden death here, even the people in the neighboring countries can hear me cursing. As far as BD goes, it's not viable option. Too expensive vs. HDD and not too endurable either.