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NEVER SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED:
I've watched the issue with these drives carefully for about 2 months. It looks like Seagate solved the problem and that a vocal few were ever really affected. By few I mean relative to the thousands sold. And I am not defending Seagate. This whole fiasco was unacceptable.
MY SYSTEM:
I picked up 8 of these drives. I'm running them in 4 separate DLink DNS-321 RAID boxes. I've copied about 4TB of data back and forth across them for days. My only firmware update needed was for the DLink so that it could properly handle the new 1.5TB drives.
In the end I believe all is well with both the drives and the DLink DNS-321. I will of course update this review immediately if I see any problems.
PERFORMANCE:
We are able to watch movies from this drive arrangement on 3 computers simultaneously across a 100mb network from the same drive while adding new files to the drive from a 4th computer.
This means I can be adding movies unattended to the system while watching an Epic Man movie on the plasma in the living room... while the kids are watching Monsters Inc in the bedroom... and the wife is off watching some chic flick in the Den. :)
The combination of DLink and these 1.5TB drives is fantastic and seems as stable as the WD 1TBs I was using previously.
PROPER DIAGNOSIS:
Don't confuse your drive DIEING after a week with the previous firmware problems of this particular drive. Blame the vendor that shipped the drive like it could bounce !
ON A SIDE NOTE:
I will say I am sick of Amazon, Tiger and other vendors shipping hard drives like they are indestructible ROCKS. Even if they arrive working, this inadequate packaging is certainly taking years off the life of our drives. One of my 8 arrived DEAD as a brick thanks to this nonsense. I am furious about this issue !
Will it take a class action to stop this behavior of guaranteeing future drive sales by damaging todays drives through deliberate mishandling of our purchases ?! Wake up AMAZON ! Wake up TIGER !
UPDATE: Dec 14 2009
One year later, I own 22 of these drives now. 12 are running daily in DNS-321 Raid boxes. The other 10 are used as back up drives in a drop in SATA adapter. No failures since 2 in the first few weeks, I believe due to poor packaging. About 6 of my drives came with the BAD firmware. I never had issues with that either. Call me blessed. I just think the DNS-321 and these drives work very well together.
UPDATE: Jan 8 2011
Another year passes and most of my 1.5TBs have all been pulled from DNS-321 RAID boxes and used as loose backup drives in a drop in SATA adapter. I've replaced them with the larger Seagate 2TB drives for larger capacity. NO FAILURES OF EITHER DRIVE 1.5TB or 2TB ! I have a couple Hitachi's and WD 2TBs. The Seagate drives are quieter and come off sleep in my RAID boxes faster than the other brands. All are used for video streaming over a network and do a fantastic job.
TIGER has been shipping drives MUCH BETTER. Amazon packagers have sent me drives packed poorly just 2 months ago. I requested replacements and Amazon handled the no charge exchange well. But they should NOT have been shipped that way.
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