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Seagate HDD Now With Disaster Recovery Services

By - Source: Seagate | B 24 comments
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Seagate is bundling two years of data recovery services with is new GoFlex Turbo Performance Drive models.

The new GoFlex is available in two flavors, with 500 GB capacity for $120 and with 750 GB capacity for $140. The "Performance" part of the name stems from the fact that these USB 3.0 drives rotate their platters with 7200 RPM, and not with 5400 RPM as their USB 2.0 siblings do.

However, the big news in those drives is Seagate's decision to bundle them with SafetyNet, which is a 2-year subscription to a data recovery service. Seagate considers the service as a bonus that provides "peace of mind" as far as the data security is concerned. I am not sure how much of a buying incentive the recovery service really is, but could be bringing in fence sitters who are storing valuable data on those drives - even if the SafetyNet program may not be exactly what you would want to have access to in the case of sudden data loss. According to the terms of the program, customers have to call Seagate, talk to a tech rep, who then determines if the case is eligible for data recovery service and whether any data is likely to be recovered. The drive may have to be shipped to Seagate and you may have to wait two weeks until you get your drive and data, if it is recoverable, back.

A hard drive can fail at any time, but the industry tells us that the risk of a failure dramatically increases after about five years of operation, at which a data recovery service may really be something you would want to invest in (or buy a new hard drive). Personally, I always found hard drive failures (I had plenty of them over the past 15 years) a pain in the neck to deal with and the more recent ones ended up at a local data recovery service, which was able to recover my data (not always in its entirety) within a few hours and less than $100 per case.

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Top Comments
  • 10 Hide
    Pyree , August 9, 2011 1:11 PM
    Nice feature but IMO still not as good as having redundancy.
Other Comments
  • 10 Hide
    Pyree , August 9, 2011 1:11 PM
    Nice feature but IMO still not as good as having redundancy.
  • -3 Hide
    thebigt42 , August 9, 2011 1:12 PM
    It a seagate...It needs it
  • Display all 24 comments.
  • 6 Hide
    warmon6 , August 9, 2011 1:52 PM
    thebigt42It a HDD...I needs it


    There fixed :p 

    PyreeNice feature but IMO still not as good as having redundancy.


    Agree. nothing like a good old redundancy and Backup's to keep everything you want.
  • 6 Hide
    custodian-1 , August 9, 2011 2:04 PM
    back up back up and off site backup. Data recovery who needs it.
  • 6 Hide
    jgutz2006 , August 9, 2011 2:29 PM
    So this reminded me of a quote from Tommyboy:
    "they know all they sold ya was a guaranteed piece of $h!t. That's all it is, isn't it? Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I've got spare time. But for now, for your customer's sake, for your daughter's sake, ya might wanna think about buying a quality product from Western Digital."
    Actually i probably buy 50/50 - WD/Seagate, just think its funny to offer this service. Just goes to show you that so many clueless people back up a MECHANICAL hard drive on another MECHANICAL hard drive and thats all. i made that mistake many years ago and now i wouldnt keep anything of importance on a single backup when Flash/DVD/BD or Interet storage is so cheap as extra redundancy! Now if they want to package this service on their drives at identical prices to their competition, i take back my criticisms!
  • 5 Hide
    ginnai , August 9, 2011 2:38 PM
    I have had PCs for almost two decades with no HDD failures. It seems I should be playing the lotto more often... I always forget how often this happens to people.
  • -2 Hide
    Benihana , August 9, 2011 2:45 PM
    ginnaiI have had PCs for almost two decades with no HDD failures. It seems I should be playing the lotto more often... I always forget how often this happens to people.

    Ah, I used to be like you. Then I lost 5 years worth of data (only 232 GB back then) and came to realize the importance of backups. At which point I proceeded to zip up my entire website as a "backup" and kept the backups on the same HDD as my website itself. :p  Of course, that too crashed. I like to think that I now do proper backups. :D 
  • 4 Hide
    farleytron , August 9, 2011 3:20 PM
    I'd rather have the 5 year Seagate warranty back! (they're trying to save some money by reducing it to 2 years)
  • 0 Hide
    figgus , August 9, 2011 4:22 PM
    farleytronI'd rather have the 5 year Seagate warranty back! (they're trying to save some money by reducing it to 2 years)


    Well, a 5 year Seagate warranty equals a 100% claim rate.
  • 1 Hide
    jimmysmitty , August 9, 2011 4:30 PM
    custodian-1back up back up and off site backup. Data recovery who needs it.


    Most people are not that smart. And some can't afford it. But for those if the HDD dies, and by that I mean wont spin up or recognize on a PC at all, and this provides a way to retrieve that data its not that bad.
  • 0 Hide
    ajcroteau , August 9, 2011 4:46 PM
    If you're not backing up critical data to a ... you deserve to lose it... IMO... besides... waiting 2 weeks for your data is just as bad as losing it... it only take a few seconds to destroy your business...
  • 2 Hide
    warmon6 , August 9, 2011 5:39 PM
    figgusWell, a 5 year Seagate warranty equals a 100% claim rate.


    thats funny, i've seen plenty of seagate drives that last more than 5 years.
  • 0 Hide
    Emerald , August 9, 2011 6:15 PM
    maybe not a bad idea for people who take their drive on the GO.

    $100 per case for Data Recovery is cheap. Where do I go? Last time I checked into Data Recovery it was about $100 per 100GB about a year ago.
  • 0 Hide
    balister , August 9, 2011 7:01 PM
    figgusWell, a 5 year Seagate warranty equals a 100% claim rate.


    Funny, considering I've got several seagate drives from various years still functioning without issue and never had any of them crash and a couple of them are 7 to 8 years old.
  • 1 Hide
    bat21win , August 9, 2011 10:00 PM
    balisterFunny, considering I've got several seagate drives from various years still functioning without issue and never had any of them crash and a couple of them are 7 to 8 years old.

    Seagate quality has really gone down the toilet in recent years. Even their enterprise Sata drives have high DOA and failure rates compared to other manufacturers.
  • 0 Hide
    amigafan , August 10, 2011 12:14 AM
    Since Seagate bought Maxtor no wonder their reliability went bad. Almost all HDD failures in past that happened around me were Maxtor drives.
  • 0 Hide
    Anonymous , August 10, 2011 12:52 AM
    I mirror everything. Hard disks are cheap. 2x cheap is still affordable and provides extra peace of mind. It also means 'recovering' from a failure only takes a few minutes of my time, not hours. Of course, you still need a backup strategy on top of that.
  • 0 Hide
    Anonymous , August 10, 2011 12:53 AM
    As a IT tech that deals with failed hard drives all the time I can tell you that all brands fail. Years ago Western Digital was famous for their "click of death" which caused an instant death with no ability to recover data, many other brands develop bad sectors which still usually allows you to recover some if not most data from the drive. Either way I've had AS, NS, and Enterprise class SCSI drives die all the time. Windows 7 has a built in full image backup program, and you can get Acronis backup for XP for like 30 bucks. With external USB drives being so cheap there is no excuse not to have a backup anymore.
  • 0 Hide
    Anonymous , August 10, 2011 12:58 AM
    Get a bluray read/write drive....50GB per disc is nice for backing up everything, imaging the OS partition etc
  • 0 Hide
    animehair , August 10, 2011 4:44 AM
    Personally I believe everyone living in this modern day should have a good data backup routine...and MOST importantly it should be redundant. Keep your data on a computer with at least a Mirrored RAID configuration. THEN backup frequently...I do weekly fulls, and incs every other day. And this is still not enough...diversify and spread your data out...take advantage of cheap optical media or free cloud services as alternative paths for your data. Make copies of your backups! Its ridiculous how little time people take to do this but they spend so much time on the computer or other media devices.
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