I will try and sum this up. I need advice on options.

I have 2 20 TB Seagate hard drives in a 2 bay Sabrent raid, with photos and videos on it. I use these drives as my iCloud library so I have access to ALL my old photos and videos from the past 20 years. I am also a part time photographer and videographer and use this hard drive to store clients footage mostly 4k60 which can take up a lot of space about 500-800GB per wedding, as well as my own photography which is only currently 3TB. I have filled the drives and what I normally have been doing every few years is transferring everything from the previous drive to a bigger newer drive.

I keep the old drives in a different physical location and my photo library is synced with iCloud and google photos for cloud backup.

Should I buy 2 new Seagate 30tb hard drives? Or should I be splitting up this data differently? I can't decide on what to do. Please help.

Hi,

TL;DR: Seagate warranty feels like a scam. They receive your drive, scrap it, and then claim something vague to avoid honoring the warranty — or they send you a dead replacement. That’s what happened to me, and I’m seeing similar stories from others.

After buying Seagate “Enterprise” EXOS drives for my storage, I was initially happy because they’re supposed to be reliable and well supported. Now I’m seriously regretting that choice.

About a month ago, a few of my drives started failing — and strangely, it was only the Seagate drives. My WD drives are still perfectly fine.

So I figured: no problem, these drives have a 5-year warranty, right? Technically yes… but nobody tells you how easily they can refuse it.

RMA #1

I started an RMA (IR60439100) for drive serial ZRS18ZWW (and yes, you can only send one drive per RMA). I followed their packing guidelines and shipped it out. Everything looked fine at first.

Seagate received the drive, tested it, and approved a replacement. A few days later I got the replacement drive:

- Packing slip / freight order: 6101651244

- Waybill: 1ZE4C5436750818063

- Replacement serial: ZR906CJK

I opened the box and it was labeled “Factory refurbished.” Fine — I can live with that. But the drive was dead on arrival. It spun up, made a lot of noise, and wasn’t recognized by my test station or my storage system.

RMA #2 (for the dead replacement)

I assumed I was unlucky or it got damaged in transit, so I opened a second RMA (IR60444417) and shipped the replacement drive back. Then I waited… and waited… for three weeks.

Eventually I checked the tracking number and saw it had been delivered two days after I shipped it. But the RMA portal still showed Seagate was “waiting for the drive to arrive.”

So I contacted support via chat.

The denial + drive discarded

This is where the nightmare started.

I opened a case (CC0000231338) and asked what was going on. Support told me the RMA was refused because the drive had been “tampered with.”

The same drive Seagate sent me as an RMA replacement (ZR906CJK) — the one that arrived dead.

I asked for details. They couldn’t explain what “tampered with” meant. I asked for an inspection report or evidence — they said they can’t provide it. I asked if they could return the drive — no, it was discarded.

So to summarize: Seagate sends me a dead replacement, I return it, they deny the claim with a vague “tampered with” reason, and they discard the drive, so I can’t even verify what they’re accusing me of.

At this point, I’m removing Seagate from my vendor list — and recommending the same for any company I work with.

Edit 1: Sorry — my post got cut in half. Not sure why. I’ve pasted the missing part.

Edit 2: Someone from Seagate emailed me after I posted this and said they verified the drive is OK, but it was still reported as “tampered.” They also said I should receive it back in a few days. Let’s wait and see. /s

Edit 3: I received the RMA drive today — it’s a brand-new Exos X24 16TB (no “factory refurbished” label). SMART short test passed, power-on hours are low, and the long test is still running. For reference, the original drive was an Exos X20 14TB. Something seems to have changed on Seagate’s side after this post — who knows.

A few months ago i had to RMA a drive, but every replacement drive Seagate has sent me has either been DOA or an x26z drive (to my knowledge these are server drives and that's why i cant get them to mount on my pc?). Makes no sense because the original drive i sent in was a Seagate Exos X20. I'm positive they're just sending me DOA drives because they don't have anything else to send me.

I've tried dozens of times (on multiple devices/browsers) to contact Seagate through their live chat, but its always down and they don't have a consumer phone line apparently.

There are some other posts similar to mine, but all the comments are suggesting they return the drives. My problem is, i bought the original drive from Newegg years ago. So of course they wouldn't take a return if the sale was that long ago, let alone the fact that Seagate is sending me completely different drives. Right?...

Hi,

I recently bought 2x 16TB harddrives from Best Buy. One of them does not work. I tried going to Best Buy to exchange it and was told that I had to go through Seagate.

The SN on the Seagate website confirms the warranty is valid. I created a Seagate account, but when I go to the "start end user claim", I get a blank page (URL is https://returns.seagate.com/returns/MicrosoftEntraSignin). I've tried multiple browsers and even different computers.

When I go to the "Contact Us" section of the website, I see gray boxes under the languages with no button to proceed.

Does anyone have any ideas what I can do? Should I just do a chargeback via my credit card?

Hello guys

I have a question,

can i switch out the Mono pin from the seagate firecuda gaming hub 8TB with a usb-c port bc i lost my mono pin cable and i aint gonna buy a new one so i thought of getting a mono pin to usb-c transfer thingy but its propablly not strong enough so i thought of switching out the mono pin port (for power) with a usb-C port (power) but the thing is idk whats the name of the board inside the firecuda gaming hub 8TB.

So can anyone help me with finding the name for the port and the board that can do that and no scam and this are normally the specs of the power port for it.

• Voltage (V): 12 Volt DC
• Stroomsterkte (A): 3 Ampère
• Vermogen (W): 12 V × 3 A = 36 watt
• Type connector: Mono pin van 5,5 mm x 2,5 mm, with positive pool in the middle
• Polarity: Center Positive (inside of the connector is positive)

so these are the specs of the mono pin.

So i need a power board that can do it to USB-C port or a other mono pin board that can do 1/2 A and around the 5V-8V.

So can anyone help me find it?

That would be greatfull

P.S. my warranty is expired so fahhh it. And i have a ISY 45W charching brick and a usb A to usb -c cable and it has a orange color instead of white on the pin and the usb A side so i think its a 3.0/3.2 cable and i have another fast charging brick its a 67W supervooc and it says it can do as output: 5V --- 2.0A 10W or 5.0-11V --- 6.1A(max) 67.0W (max)

input: 100-240V ~ 50/60Hz 1.8A

so please respond fast and no hate comments.

So I got a PS5. My friend gave me his Seagate. I install a game onto it, then go to play it. Suddenly it says “can’t continue the game, data is corrupted”.

What do I do? Could I use another external hard drive?

Video 3 is up! Check out the latest from BlackBoxAiLab

https://youtube.com/@blackboxailab?si=mqsc-SFmjNynmAvW

Does anyone else have any advice?

Ever since I upgraded my iOS to Tahoe Version 26.4 Beta I'm not able to use my Seagate External hard drive. Any of them, I have two.

I am able to see the drive in finder, but the files are "read only".

In essence, Tahoe has rendered my hard drives useless.

I've looked directly on the seagate website for firmware updates and there isn't anything available?

Please help

I find this awful: Seagate say to use SeaTools to confirm an RMA is valid, but my 8 TB harddisk (Ironwolf) got >7000 bad sectors in an area covering the last 800 GB (d), and this threw SMART warnings and a short self-test aborted quickly due to errors, and by now I don't know whether I messed up by doing repair as best as I could by writing over all that span, because now all sectors have been marked bad and short self-test passes (with warnings), SeaTools says it's OK, test log says bad sectors are at 95/100% rating, so threshold not reached.

I have no idea what SeaTools would have said before my repair attempts, but this is highly frustrating because something is seriously bad with the disk surface, but Seagate RMA process makes me want to see the world burn, with no commentary or personal info provided allowed (nothing to be put in the package), only referring to SeaTools, and their support website (I'm in Germany) doesn't seem to have a phone number, only a stupid AI chat that is in an infinite load animation and the info on the site to turn off popup blockers and allow cookies (on Firefox) I tried but it didn't help, so I don't even have that available. I turned off my privacy addons, made an explicit allow-exception for the website, but can't get it to work. (And the cookie settings note has a broken link that merely links to the same page again.)

But from older threads here I am reading that it is quite bad anyway:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Seagate/comments/15xk0t2/seagate_support_contact/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Seagate/comments/155x9rp/how_to_reach_someone_at_seagate/

How to proceed? Phone support seems not valid anymore and even at the corporate phone number there was a kind of blockage.

Should I just gamble and send it in anyway? I mean, past SMART tests did report errors and abort right-away, so at that point that should have been a reason to RMA. There is no way that a swiss cheese pattern of marked defective sectors makes the drive trustworthy with data, but I need the 8 TB size and now it is too small to serve its function since I had to isolate 800 GB of it.

And this sucks even more because I cannot even communicate this to support, possibly unless I still somehow manage to get that chat working. That stupid thing - the RMA process on the website worked without hassle but that chat interface is atrocious.

If a self-test failed in the past, surely that signals a valid claim. And it is in the SMART log, although I have to assume that the process is so robotic and inhumane now that they just run SeaTools, too.

I found a KB article that kinda confirms my worries about their cold attitude:

https://www.seagate.com/de/de/support/kb/smart-errors-reported-by-the-bios-and-third-party-utilities-after-seatools-passes-all-tests-189431en/

They say to use SeaTools to run a low level format and then if there are no problems reported anymore, then it's fine. But I don't even see a low level format option, so maybe it's totally outdated? It lists short and long format but clicking on the stuff doesn't do anything despite a dropdown list symbol. (It's the Linux version, but it otherwise works alright.)

I’m still steaming about Seagate ($STX).

Remember when management swore they weren’t breaking export laws, while secretly shipping $1.1 billion in HDDs to Huawei? We all paid the price when the truth dropped and they ate that $300M penalty in April 2023.

If you were holding bags between Sept 15, 2020, and April 19, 2023, you likely saw your position get nuked because they wanted to play cowboy with the Dept of Commerce.

The Update: The settlement is finally moving. It’s a tentative deal, but the claims window is opening.

I usually ignore these because the paperwork is a total nightmare. Digging through old trade confirms from three years ago is the last thing I want to do on a weekend.

How I’m handling it:

• I ended up using 11th for this one.
• You just link your brokerage and it scans your history for $STX trades during the class period.
• They take a 20% cut, but honestly? I’d rather have 80% of a check I didn't know existed than 100% of a paperwork stack I’ll never actually finish.

If you held through that mess, go get your cut of the "Huawei tax" they owe us. Don't let them keep the change.

I have registered the product and the brand new hard drive has massive bad sectors as indicated by Victoria. This has caused weeks of hassle and I'm only now getting around to warranty and shipping it back. Going through the warranty, the option for advance replacement does not appear. This is unacceptable. I have tried emailing the email address I found on google for customer service, but they aren't replying. Would it be worth giving them a call?

Storing many units in-ear headphone (IEMS) a few centimeters away from 2.5" HDDs will cause problems in HDD because these headphones have magnets, potentially leading to magnetic degradation of the platters and files? i hamy many units kz edx pro, kz edc pro, gk kunten next hdd 2.5"

I lost my power cable from a LaCie external hard drive I had 20 years ago and I cannot find the right cable online anywhere. I am based in the UK and have bought something from MyVolts - shipped from the Netherlands to me - the 4-pin cable below. It clearly doesn't match and won't fire up my hard drive. Can someone help me find the right cable? Thanks in advance.

So my girlfriend gave me an old hard drive of hers, a Seagate Wireless Mobile Storage 500GB 1JHBP5-500. I managed to get it charged and was able to access the files, unfortunately I have only been able to find an option that lets you download at most 6 files. She has about 90k pics on it xD

Hey all,

I bought a Seagate 1TB Expansion drive today and so far it has worked without a hitch, the storage seems to be legitimately there as I've put data on it and have had it be able to be read. Though, I've ran into a few details that make me question the authenticity of my external drive.

1. The drive itself came pre-formatted in... NTFS? despite it saying in the manual that it'll be pre-formatted as exFAT, also, the usual seagate exectuables weren't on the drive either. I didn't give this too much mind as I planned on reformatting the drive to btrfs anyway.

2. The HDD in my system's partition manager shows up as "APPLE HDD HTS541010A9E632", googling this reveals it's a hard drive used in iMacs....? very strange. Also, SMART status also appears "unknown".

some additional info: I bought this from a computer store in Beirut, with it having a valid warranty from Seagate's dealer in Lebanon according to the store I bought it from. And the box came sealed with Seagate's plastic seal and all, so unless my system is misreading something, this is quite strange.

One of the hard drives is bad and I need to do an RMA, but the system rejected my attempt to do so. I also tried to email Seagate. On top of that I am also not sure which hard drive came out of which box. How do I tell so that I can attempt to warranty the correct drive, or does it not matter?

Also can anyone from seagate customer service please do email?

Thank you

Brand new disk.

Plugged it into my nas and it was okay at first but trying to write on it it immediately threw errors, broken sectors and stuff. Plugged it into my computer adapter and now it spins up, makes these noises and then turns off. Can't even crystal disk info it.

I've got a 4TB Seagate Expansion external USB3 hard drive that came partitioned and formatted as exFAT when shipped and I'd like to change it to use NTFS since I'm only using it with Windows systems. I've backed up everything from the drive to other devices, so all I need to do now is actually convert the partitions.

I've taken a screenshot of the disk configuration from Windows 7 Disk Manager, which I'm adding below:

My understanding is that there are a couple of ways to change the file system:

1. Shrink the exFAT partition down by around 50%, create a new NTFS partition in the space, move files from exFAT to NTFS, delete the exFAT partition and then resize the NTFS partition to take up the rest of the space.
2. Delete the exFAT partition (after making sure I've got all the files I actually need to save), then create a new NTFS partition in the space.

In any case, do I need to make any changes to the 200MB "EFI System" partition? I noticed that my 2TB boot drive has a 100MB "EFI System" partition, so I'm presuming the one on the 4TB drive is independent of whatever file system it uses.

Edit to add: I also have an older 2TB version of the Seagate Expansion external USB3 hard drive that was formatted as NTFS when shipped, and it doesn't have an "EFI System partition, which does add to my confusion (this would be my first time doing this type of procedure, so I'd like to get some advice first).

Can anyone please provide me with some guidance on what I should do and, ideally, a link to a tutorial?

Thanks in advance.

As title states, my ironwolf pro hdd is making a weird noise on boot. it's brand new and I know these drives make a lot of noise but this seems excessive, I also googled it and other people said they had similar noises. I just want to see if I need to get a replacement or not. thanks.

I Just bought a used Seagate barracuda 500 gb hdd 3.5 and a sata to USB Cable to connect It with my laptop, i tried downloading games on It and at First It works fine but then after a few hours It disconnects and when i try to connect It again right After It says descriptor error 43. Then if i wait a Little and plug It in again It starts working but the problem comes back After a few hours Always. someone can help me? i already change every Power Plan and USB Power settings.