If someone purchased a Seagate ST3000DM001 3TB hard drive and it failed sooner than expected, will Seagate replace the drive?

Question

One of Seagate’s recently popular hard drive models—at the consumer and enterprise level—is the ST3000DM001 3TB hard drive. It seems that many users in different usage realms—desktop environments as well as server environments—have reported problems with the drives failing faster than expected causing data loss and overall servicing headaches.

FWIW, this does not seem to be a simple case of a few proverbial “bad eggs” in the batch; unexpected failures of ST3000DM001 model drives seem to be the rule rather than the exception.

For example—to better understand the scope/depth of this issue—cloud backup storage site Backblaze posted a very detailed analysis on their experiences dealing with Seagate ST3000DM001 3TB hard drives in their storage facilities and the results are far from pretty; bold emphasis is mine:

Beginning in January 2012, Backblaze deployed 4,829 Seagate 3TB hard drives, model ST3000DM001, into Backblaze Storage Pods. In our experience, 80% of the hard drives we deploy will function at least 4 years. As of March 31, 2015, just 10% of the Seagate 3TB drives deployed in 2012 are still in service. This is the story of the 4,345 Seagate 3TB drives that are no longer in service.

So what can be done by someone who purchased a Seagate ST3000DM001 3TB to replace—or be compensated—for the failed hard drive and perhaps pursue deeper data loss damages if they are applicable?

Answer 1

It seems that the high failure rate of the Seagate ST3000DM001 model 3TB hard drives is fairly well known in the tech world. While Seagate seems to be willing to accept returns of defective drives in exchange for a replacement drive, some of those replacements are also failing as well.

If you have purchased a Seagate ST3000DM001 3TB hard drive that you believe might have failed sooner than expected you might be entitled to damages including data loss and recovery damages according to the law firm of Hagens Berman and Sheller P.C. who is filing a class action lawsuit against Seagate with regards to these failures:

According to the firms' investigation, Seagate promised purchasers that it would replace the failed hard drives, but replacements were also defective, and failed at extremely high rates, leaving Seagate’s warranty promise unfulfilled, and consumers without working hard drives.

Consumers have reportedly lost tons of data unexpectedly, as Seagate’s hard drives failed to live up to the advertised promises, violating consumer laws.

If you purchased Seagate’s Barracuda 3TB Hard Disk Drive, Desktop HDD 3TB, Backup Plus 3TB External Hard Disk Drive, GoFlex 3TB External Hard Disk Drive, or another Seagate hard drive with model number ST3000DM001, you may be entitled to damages including replacement costs and damages from loss of data and data recovery expenses. Note: the internal model is called Seagate Barracuda or Seagate 3TB Desktop HDD, but it still has the same model number as the Barracuda.

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Update (February 5, 2024): Note that this lawsuit was filed on February 5, 2016, so as far as damages/resolution/restitution go I do not believe the case is still active as of February 5, 2024. In fact, the link from 2016 to https://www.hbsslaw.com/cases/seagate is now effectively dead. I just replaced the link with an Internet Archive: Wayback Machine link for reference.