Seagate vs Toshiba Portable Hard Drive Experience

January 02, 2017

 

I enjoy sharing tools and products I use, trust, and that make photography easier. I dislike Seagate hard drives and after my experience with Seagate products, it deserves a blog post of it's own. Buyer beware!

As a professional photographer, having reliable hard drives is vital. Nothing is worse than losing images.  In preparation for my Alaska 2014 photography tour to Redoubt Mountain Lodge I jumped on Amazon and ordered two Seagate external hard drives. Redoubt Mountain Lodge is extremely remote, as in only accessible by float plane. The first day was a photographer's dream; lots of Bald Eagles and 21 Bears. On day one I had taken over 2300 images. I hooked up the Seagate external hard drive and it wouldn't drive #1.
Having a second hard drive, I wasn't too worried. I downloaded to images on the second drive for the next few days. Mind you, I had not secondary backup of over 11,000 images during this time. Upon leaving remote Redoubt Mountain Lodge and returning to civilization in Anchorage, I bought another hard drive. The new (third) Seagate hard drive was hooked up so there were two copies of the 11,000+ images taken at Redoubt Mountain.

Or so I thought.

A few days later I was back home in Salt Lake City. I met a buddy for coffee and as I was showing him a movie (on hard drive 2) the movie stopped and Seagate hard drive #2 vaporized. In a blink of an eye all 11,000+ images.... gone! Discouraged but still optimistic the hard drive I picked up in Anchorage would be there for me, I plugged in the third Seagate hard drive.

Nada. Nothing. Zilch. The Anchorage hard drive did NOT backup everything ;-(
Mind you, I had been a photographer for several years and this was not the first time Seagate drives failed me but I was able to recover the images. This time, not so much; they do not spin up. I suppose I could spend several hundred or thousand dollars to try to attempt to recover the lost images, and someday I may, but I can say one things with certainty; I will NEVER buy another Seagate product.

Since this incident, I have purchased a couple 512gb flash drives. When traveling I use the flash drives to backup images, and when i return, I backup in a couple other locations.

I do understand hard drives are electronic and crazy things happen but two brand new drives fail on the same trip? Completely unacceptable Seagate!
Since this mishap, I only use Toshiba hard drives. I'm sure you can buy them at Best Buy or another big box retailer but I prefer Amazon since I can get them delivered in 2 business days with Prime.

#EpicFailure #Seagate #Seagateharddrive #SeagateFailure

 

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