Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!pasteur!ames!elroy!gryphon!richard
From: richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Comatose Seagate hard disk
Message-ID: <14751@gryphon.COM>
Date: 15 Apr 89 17:04:19 GMT
References: <5283@cs.Buffalo.EDU>
Reply-To: richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton)
Distribution: na
Organization: Trailing Edge Technology, Redondo Beach, CA
Lines: 51

In article <5283@cs.Buffalo.EDU> jmpiazza@cs.Buffalo.EDU (Joseph M. Piazza) writes:
>
>	My Seagate 138N (3.5" 30 Meg) doesn't seem to spin-up -- no

It's dead Jim.

>1.	I've seen posting talking about this spin-up problem as well as a
>solution (aside from buying another hard drive).
>
>2.	What's the warranty on this sucker?  Two labels on the drive warn
>about voiding the warranty but nothing about this, nor virtually all other
>information, comes with the drive.
>
>	Any information welcome.  As always, send e-mail and I'll summarize
>and post.  I'll e-mail everything I receive upon request (my last summary is
>about two months late).  :-O

By some unfortunate set of circumstances, I am forced to use an IBM-PC
clone at work. I *tried* to hold out for an Apollo, but....

At any rate, having a PC entitles you to read PC Week without
embarassment. There was an article in the last issue (or one back)
that stated that Seagate was having terrible quality control problems
and was having up to 25 - 30% failure rates on a product that typically
has only 0.5% failure rates.

I thuoght perhaps at first the article was just slanderous with somebody
haveing an axe to grinf but quaoted several distributors who stated
thar they'd had MAJOR problems with Seagate drives. The drives most
often listed were the 3" ones and the ST-4096 80MB. drive.

Seagate drive are CHEAP. One distributor mentioned that you get what you
pay for, and that Seagate drives were ``consumer grade'', while, other
drives, such as CDC were ``professional grade''.

So perhaps a degee of caution should be exercised with Seagate
drives until their quality comes back up. And it probably
will happen. Miniscribe took a big dump when the IBM PC AT
first came out because there were MAJOR problems with the hard
disk subsystem - since then, they've done a lot of work
and now have one of the most reliable drives in the industry.

In conclusion: I would avoid buying a Seagate drive for the time
being. And as to the question of warrenty, it depends how and from who
you bought your drive from. But  I suspect that if you said the right
things to a Seagate rep, you may get some action. They've got to have
notice their sales slumping a bit.

-- 
       ``Parents who have children, have children who have children''
richard@gryphon.COM  decwrl!gryphon!richard   gryphon!richard@elroy.jpl.NASA.GOV