[CentOS] Seagate - experience/opinion on vendor?

[Valeri Galtsev]

On 9/26/18 2:51 PM, Mauricio Tavares wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 3:37 PM, lejeczek via CentOS <centos at centos.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 26/09/18 20:19, Mauricio Tavares wrote:
>>>
>>> If ti makes you feel any better, I am not having stellar service from
>>> WD's support. In fact, they act like they never received the HD I sent
>>> for RMA whose tracking number says they did 10 days ago.
>>>
>>> On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 2:16 PM, lejeczek via CentOS <centos at centos.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> hi guys
>>>>
>>>> I have rather a large set of Seagate's SAS ST32000444SS, over a hundred -
>>>> experience I'm having from those in conjunction with their tech support
>>>> is
>>>> abysmal.
>>>>
>>>> I'm trying to update firmware of these drives and nothing works,
>>>> including
>>>> tech support.
>>>>
>>>> ... and I cannot help but wonder - is just me who is so unlucky and
>>>> getting
>>>> very, very poor support(taking naturally only of Linux) or in fact
>>>> Seagate
>>>> are rubbish!
>>>>
>>>> Care to share your say?
>>>>
>>>> thanks, L.
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>> what seems really really bad, is that none of the tools their tech support
>> suggest works, at least for me.
>> You would think that simple thing such as firmware update should be really a
>> piece of cake, but it seems that Seagate too, is rubbish when it come to
>> Linux.
>> One would think Seagate should not that mistake but, yet again, yet another
>> business which does not like Linux customers.
>>
>        I do not think it is malice but just plain ignorance or the
> famous "if it works, don't fix it" principle. Remember that even today
> you can buy cars with without rear disk brakes. With that said, I
> thought Seagate had a .iso to deploy the firmware. I could be wrong
> though.

What I am saying is not intended to advocate for Seagate, they are not 
even my first choice as hard drive manufacturer.

I for one am very conservative about updating/upgrading firmware of 
trivial devices such as hard drive or system board ("motherboard"). What 
specifically are you planning to achieve by doing that? Note that 
firmware is extremely small hence very simple program which can be 
easily debugged and for mass manufactured devices can be virtually clean 
of bugs including ones with security implications.

That said, if firmware upgrade is necessary to fix real potential 
trouble, I'd rather stop using that manufacturer in a future (no matter 
whether their support is outstanding of doesn't exist). Other reasons 
may be: performance improvement (but it's doubtful to achiever 
significant improvement that way), or changing specs, like converting 
500 byre to 4 kilobyte sector, which as far as I know is impossible.


Just a side note about quality of support:

I said once the following about one hardware manufacturer whose hardware 
I recommended when was asked how good their support is: I use their 
devices for over decade and a half, never had to contact their support. 
Their devices keep working, during warranty and after that ends, some of 
them as old as 15 years old...

Valeri

> 
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-- 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
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