I have had the exact opposite experience with Seagate as you have had. My first Seagate was used on my TI-994A. Belonged to a TI computer club and a lot of people used the Seagate drives and had problems. Since you go back 20+ years, did you ever experience, what was called 'stickon', or some other term? The R/W head would weld itself to the platter. Everyone, including the computer mags of the time, knew about this problem. Seagate's answer was "What problem?"
It was then that I said screw Seagate! Went to WD drives and have had one computer drive failure, out of dozens in use, during the last 20 years.
FF to Dish. They introduced the EHD feature and touted Seagate. I figured that Seagate had their crap together, finally, so I bought a Freeagent drive. Had it about 30% full of stuff I did not want to lose, but after about 3 months, it died completely. I tried all of the solutions I found on this and other sites, to get my stuff back. NO LUCK.
The Seagate was only plugged in and active when I wanted to transfer a program, otherwise it was unplugged/powered down. It was not powered up all the time, and still only lasted 3 months.
I got so angry upon losing my movies/programs, I threw the drive against the wall. 5 year warranty BFD. So they will send you a new/rebuilt drive that will fail before its time and wipe out all of your data. I almost sent for a replacement Freeagent, but what would I do with it? Don't trust it to back up Dish stuff, would I trust it to back up my computer data???
BTW, my Seagate drive said Made in China, my WD was made in Thailand, if it matters.
