How long are the FreeAgent Pro Drives Lasting as an eSATA drive?

ckelly33 · 06-09-2007, 10:27 AM

I've read lots of post about Seagate's FreeAgent Pro drives failing when used as an external drive to the S3. Some are posting that it was a cabling issue, for others it was the drive itself. For those proven to not be a cabling issue but a drive failure, how long did it last?

Ilene · 06-09-2007, 01:15 PM

I am deperately hoping that all the people who bought from Best Buy when they ran the FAP 750 for $199/$176 for those that saw the coupon that was posted (it was too late for me) will report. I was just about to post a poll when I saw this post.
I am struggling with keeping the FAP I bought or paying double for the Apricorn DVR Xpander. Not sure if piece of mind is worth the $183 difference. I am also trying to figure out the "spin" down. Is that setting the sleep feature to never?

The Antec MX-1 just seems like a lot of work to save a few bucks over the Apricorn complete set up.

ckelly33 · 06-09-2007, 01:20 PM

I guess I should post my ownexperience:

2 weeks running strong. No freezes, lockups, or problems of any kind. I did not make ANY changes to the drive (as far as spin down, lights, etc) other than to hook it up to my XP PC and remove the files that came with it to make as much room as possible.

eDbolson · 06-09-2007, 02:04 PM

I also ran out and bought my FAP 750 at Best Buy (and a coupon). They had no cables, so bought a claimed eSATA cabel at Fry's. Looked at all of the connectors and they "seemed" long enough. Weren't. I did the trim thing - wasn't too hard - and they snapped in pretty securely. The drive has been running with suggestions on since then. It is quite warm/hot, and there is no ventilation assist in the cabinet I have it in, but it has been running reliably since I installed it. Went away for about a week, and there were 150 suggestions recorded when I returned (yikes).

I am so far extremely satisfied, but we'll see whether this drive can last years. The 5 year warranty (very unusual for a "consumer" item nowadays) was what convinced me to get this. Of course, when/if it fails, I'll have lost 100's of hours of programming. But until Tivo To Go and Tivo To Come Back is implemented, I'm pretty much stuck with my crossed fingers.

jeffsinsfo · 06-09-2007, 03:32 PM

Given that the news regarding being able to enable eSata for the S3 just came out a little over a month ago, I don't see how you can get a reliable service life estimate at this point. Either people have quickly failing drives (presumably defective from the outset if they fail after a month's use) or the drives are still working.

ckelly33 · 06-09-2007, 05:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeffsinsfo

Given that the news regarding being able to enable eSata for the S3 just came out a little over a month ago, I don't see how you can get a reliable service life estimate at this point. Either people have quickly failing drives (presumably defective from the outset if they fail after a month's use) or the drives are still working.

Obviously I'm not looking long term since the "cheat" was first reported on the first week of May. However, the FAP has already proven questionable in reliability for this chore. My idea was to try and get a rough idea of the incidence of failure (10%? 50%? 80%) up to this point....preferably before Best Buy's 30 days is up on this purchase!

AbMagFab · 06-09-2007, 07:06 PM

Where have you seen it "proven questionable"? Both of mine have been up for over a couple weeks now, no issues at all.

Had an issue with a cable, that's it. And everything is on UPS.

ckelly33 · 06-09-2007, 08:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AbMagFab

Where have you seen it "proven questionable"? Both of mine have been up for over a couple weeks now, no issues at all.

Had an issue with a cable, that's it. And everything is on UPS.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...0&page=1&pp=30

See #34 on FAQ. Several others have posted throughout the pages of that thread as well. Do a search on "freeAgent" and "FAP" and you'll see several incidences.

TexasGrillChef · 06-09-2007, 11:15 PM

The AVERAGE MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) for 99% of all SATA Hard drives made today, including eSATA drives have a MTBF of at least 60,000 Hours.

In math terms..

60,000 hours = 2500 days = 6.849 years.

So any SATA drive hooked up to your Series 3 Unit should last on AVERAGE at least that long!

I don't know about you. But I am pretty sure that in the next 6.849 years. I will want to REPLACE my TIVO S3 with maybe a Tivo S4, or S5, or mayb S6 even.

So 6.849 years should be enough "LIFE" for any eSATA drive you add to your TIVO S3

TexasGrillChef

P.S.
When I looked at seagate.com for their hard drives. I didn't see a single drive they currently produce that had less than 50,000 hours of MTBF.

The FAP has a MTBF of 50,000 hours or 2083.3 days 0r 5.707 years!

ckelly33 · 06-10-2007, 12:49 AM

Several people on this forum have reported that their FAP's lasted less than 2 weeks when running continuously via the S3 (that's 2 weeks/14days/560 hours...or, if you prefer, 2 weeks/0.467 months/0.0357 years). That means that, due to the law of averages, at least as many drives will last 11.3783 years! Long enough for you to attach it to your new holograph system...although 750GB will likely only hold about 6.247 seconds of your favorite show.

Math terms are great and all but that doesn't hold up well for those whose drives have already failed.

gteague · 06-10-2007, 01:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ckelly33

Several people on this forum have reported that their FAP's lasted less than 2 weeks when running continuously via the S3 (that's 2 weeks/14days/560 hours...or, if you prefer, 2 weeks/0.467 months/0.0357 years). That means that, due to the law of averages, at least as many drives will last 11.3783 years! Long enough for you to attach it to your new holograph system...although 750GB will likely only hold about 6.247 seconds of your favorite show.

Math terms are great and all but that doesn't hold up well for those whose drives have already failed.

if my fap750 is going to fail, i'd reallyreallyreally prefer it do so in 2 weeks rather than 2 months or 2 years.

/guy

genefid · 06-10-2007, 02:02 AM

I've had my 750gb freeagent pro running for the past week.

no problems to report.

AbMagFab · 06-10-2007, 07:36 AM

Most likely, if they failed in 2 weeks, they were:
a) Dropped
b) Using a bad cable

Seagate makes great drives, one of the best drive manufacturers out there. Only ones with 5 year warrantees on them.

hdhdliving · 06-10-2007, 08:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TexasGrillChef

The AVERAGE MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) for 99% of all SATA Hard drives made today, including eSATA drives have a MTBF of at least 60,000 Hours.

In math terms..

60,000 hours = 2500 days = 6.849 years.

So any SATA drive hooked up to your Series 3 Unit should last on AVERAGE at least that long!

I don't know about you. But I am pretty sure that in the next 6.849 years. I will want to REPLACE my TIVO S3 with maybe a Tivo S4, or S5, or mayb S6 even.

So 6.849 years should be enough "LIFE" for any eSATA drive you add to your TIVO S3

TexasGrillChef

P.S.
When I looked at seagate.com for their hard drives. I didn't see a single drive they currently produce that had less than 50,000 hours of MTBF.

The FAP has a MTBF of 50,000 hours or 2083.3 days 0r 5.707 years!

Isn't that interesting and the fact that Seagate offers a 5 year warranty on it's eSata drives!

dtphonehome · 06-10-2007, 03:46 PM

I've been using mine for 10 days now without any problems (Tripp-Lite cable). Love the fact that it has a 5 year warranty. That says a lot to me.

infinitespecter · 06-11-2007, 01:31 AM

I've been using my FAP 500 for three weeks with no issues. I had some issues getting it connected because of the crap SATA cable I picked up at Fry's, but once connected it was fine. It was lying on it's side directly on top of the S3 until last night, but I moved it into my cabinet because the light is really annoying. The heat it put off is REALLY disturbing. It was so far beyond the point of being able to comfortably hold that I thought something was wrong. Since standing it up in my cabinet, it has cooled off a LOT, but is still very warm. No issues to speak of other than that.

MichaelK · 06-11-2007, 02:05 PM

since the only reason the FAP would be significantly worse then any others is the fact that it has no fan built in. I presume they thought about that and that's why it has a metal case (to transfer heat) and is set in it's stand to be vertical and not horizontal (to get some air currents from the rising heat to move across the thing.)

But assuming that they run much hotter then a drive in an enclosure with a fan or a server- it appears that perhaps heat is NOT the issue that everyone things it is->

Someone posted a link to a Google study a while back (searched sorry can't find it)- but in a nut shell Google has been tracking drive failure in their servers over time and has found in their experience that heat is not a significant factor (if I recall the best predictor was how low in the rack the thing was and the theory was the lower drives get kicked more often)

here's a pc world article that mentions it (Google has piles of hits if you want to see more):

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,12...s/article.html

Quote:

The Google study examined replacement rates of more than 100,000 serial and parallel ATA drives deployed in Googly's own data centers. Similar to the CMU methodology, a drive was considered to have failed if it was replaced as part of a repair procedure (rather than as being upgraded to a larger drive).

Perhaps the most surprising finding was no strong correlation between higher operating temperatures and higher failure rates. "That doesn't mean there isn't one," said Luiz Barroso, an engineer at Google and co-author of the paper, but it does suggest "that temperature is only one of many factors affecting the disk lifetime."

Garrett said that rapid changes in temperature--such as when a malfunctioning air conditioner is fixed after a hot weekend and rapidly cools the data center--can also cause drive failures.