Seagate 8GB CompactFlash Photo Hard Drive - It sucks, and it sucks hard

The product in question is the Seagate 8 GB CompactFlash Photo Storage Hard Drive (ST68022C-RK).

I have been itching to write about this for weeks, but I wanted to finalize the RMA-return-replacement process before I did it.  I finally have a working replacement...so let the bitching begin.

This is a terribly fragile product to which no one should trust their images.  I bought one during a big sale...$150, no rebate required.  WOW!  8 gigabytes of storage for just $150!  Sure, it’s a microdrive (literally a miniature hard drive) so read/write speeds won’t be as fast as a solid-state CF card, but 8GB!  What-a-bahgain.

I used it for about a week.  The night before we put Balboa to sleep, I took some pictures on it.  I took the card out of the camera and put it in the card reader like I always do, whereupon it started to click.  Just that, the clicking.  No reading, no mounting as a drive, no retrival of the last pictures of my now-dead pet that I literally hand-fed as a newborn and raised up to be the biggest, most lovable animal you could hope to know.

Just the clicking.

I tried everything.  Different reader.  Different computer.  Combinations thereof.  I put it back in the Nikon D70 hoping the camera could read it.  It gave me a CHA error, which means the drive is either incompatible or not working.  I went online looking for answers.  I tried freezing it.  I tried letting it get warm on top of my home theater amp.  I went to the Seagate website and looked up how to get a replacement.  After literally a half-hour of filling out forms, having the site freeze bith Firefox and IE and not being able to even register for an account, I gave up and filled in a customer complain form.

48 hours later I was contacted by a rep.  48 hours later, that rep had created an account for me and issued an RMA.  So far so good, except for the defective drive and the badly-programmed website.

I packaged up the drive and shipped it USPS Express with tracking.  The day I saw it was delivered, I checked my RMA status.  “RMA ISSUED, ITEM NOT RECEIVED.” OK, I figure a day or two for the package to be acknowledged.

4 days later, it was still “NOT RECEIVED.” I emailed the rep, including the tracking data (number and the URL for tracking), the time and date of delivery and the name of the person who signed for the package.

I got this back:

With regards to your query, we are sorry to inform you that we are unable to track the USPS tracking # EO00 84xx xxxx x. Kindly re-verify the number and e-mail us back with the correct number, so that we may ship the replacement drive to you as soon as possible.

Err...uhh...I gave them the URL and the number.  I checked the number they returned and yep...same tracking data.  I was kind of floored by this, so I sent this back:

Try this:  Go to http://www.usps.com/shipping/trackandconfirm.htm

In the box labeled “Enter label/receipt number” enter this: EO00 84xx xxxx x

Then click the “Go” button.

You will get this:

Label/Receipt Number: EO00 84xx xxxx x
Status: Delivered

Your item was delivered at 8:44 am on March 29, 2006 in MCALLEN, TX
78503 to SEAGATE . The item was signed for by D XXXXXX.

Kind of self-explanatory.  24 hours later I got an apology email and a tracking number for the replacement.  Yay!

The replacement shows up.  I was quite excited.  I put it in the D70.

CHA.

Uhh...whaahhhh?  I put it in the card reader.  Click.  Click.  Click.

You mother fu...it’s dead.  I pulled it out of the reader.  The label was scratched and pushed into the grooves at the edge of the card.  What that means is this card has been handled.  A lot.  It wasn’t new, regardless of the new packaging.  They passed someone else’s defective drive to me.

I.  was.  pissed.

I skipped the online RMA process and emailed the rep who had been handling my case directly.  48 hours later I received an apology and a new RMA, with a promise that they would cover shipping of the second defective drive and ship a replacement before they received my drive.  Today I shipped the old drive and I received the replacement, which for the time being is actually working.  Also, the latest replacement looks new and unused.

Let me be clear: I treated the original drive like it was made of eggshells.  I NEVER applied pressure to the drive surface, I held it gingerly and carefully, I eased it in and out of devices...I NEVER, EVER dropped it or even placed it down firmly.  I literally treated it as though it were the most fragile thing in existence, and yet...it broke.  Meanwhile, my iPod mini, which contains a 1” Toshiba hard drive with not a whole lot of shock protection, has been thrown, dropped, tossed across a room, dropped onto the desk, taken into the pool during excercise, and it;s still going strong.

Seagate ain’t building these Photo Hard Drives to last.  Interesting little tidbit: I received an email from tech support before the returns rep contacted me.  The tech support email included this question:

Do you remember pushing on the sides of the photo drive since this is where the motor resides?

Let me ask you, dear reader: HOW THE HELL ELSE CAN YOU INSERT AND REMOVE A CF CARD?  Of course I held the sides.  I certainly did not push on them, but for the love of Mike, how else do they expect the vast majority of users to handle this thing?  How delicate is this drive motor?  How hard must the pressure be before you break it?  Could they not have forseen that the sides, where people hold the damn thing, is a bad location for the second most sensitive part of a hard drive?

My review of this product is simply this: The price per gigabyte is amazing, especially if you catch a sale.  The read and write times are slower than flash-based CF, but that is a tradeoff for the massive space at the lower price.  Not a lot of cameras wrote faster than the drive can handle.  I happen to have one that does, and it prevents you from fully utilizing the fact that the D70 can take pictures almost as fast as you can push the button.  This is not a negative, because like I said, you trade speed for cost per GB.

What is a huge, screaming, flashing-red-lights warning-danger-will-robinson negative is the fact that these drives are fragile with a capital FRAGILE.  You cannot trust important images to this device.  The Seagate CompactFlash Photo Hard Drive in 8GB, or the smaller 4GB size, is fragile and not to be trusted.  I’m sorry I bought it and I wish I had simply saved the $150 and put it toward a 4GB Sandisk Extreme III flash-based CF card.

Posted by JimK at 05:55 PM on April 12, 2006
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Categories: Technobabble (Technology),  Photography
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