Who makes the best disk drives?

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  1. Posts : 297
    Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601)
       #11

    I've always thought that Seagate drives are very reliable; but when I read this and my old Seagate drive got broken, I'm now baffled. My old drive (check my system specs) lasted about 2½ years. One day last December, I was just modding a game until when I saved the files and opened it again, it's telling me that the file's corrupted and after a couple of days, BSOD's are now appearing. I SMART tested it, but it's not telling me anything. I had to get it fixed so I brought it to a local shop. The technician tested it with HD Tune and it's telling us that there's a problem with the drive. The technician then replaced the old one with the Western Digital WD Blue WD5000AAKX 500GB hard drive plus he upgraded my OS to Ultimate. Heck, even my 2½ year old WD external drive (both drives are bought in the same date, May '11) is still good. The old drive is still here, I might still be able to salvage some files, but the problem is that my PC has no extra power connectors even if it has an extra SATA cable.
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 20,583
    Win-7-Pro64bit 7-H-Prem-64bit
       #12

    Hitachi seems to rule and thankfully that's what I have,
    One on an external which is 7-8 y.o.
    They seem bullet proof especially older models,
    No telling what's going to happen in the future with the merge,
    Cheers.
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 312
    Windows 7 Professional SP1 x64 (OEM)
       #13

    I have had 1TB Maxtor and 1TB Seagate. Both suffered the dreaded click-of-death. The external drives lasted no more than 2 years. Personally, I'm not buying Seagate or its subsidiaries.

    I have 2TB WD My Book Essential (x2) and pretty much content with their performance.
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 174
    w7 ult 64 and w7 hp 64 X 2 mint 64 8.1 64 10wtp 64
       #14

    I was mildly annoyed when I found that my Samsung M3 external drive is actually made by Seagate
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 1,326
    Windows 10 Professional 64-bit
       #15

    tinmar49 said:
    I was mildly annoyed when I found that my Samsung M3 external drive is actually made by Seagate
    Of course, Samsung's HDD branch was bought by Seagate.

    Personally, I have 1 Hitachi HDD (500GB) and 2 WD (both the same, 1TB) and one Seagate/Samsung (1TB) HDD. One of the WD ran for ~3½ (it's a Green one) without any signs of weariness until recently the Reallocated sector count went up and the fitness in SMART dropped to 0. I swapped it with the copy which never really ran beside the times I decided to copy the other I heavily used. Note that the WD Green drive isn't the one that suffers from the head-parking problem; although the Stop/Start count was sky high on the first 1TB. My Samsung is running for a year now. No problems. The Hitachi is running perfect for 24/7 for 3½ years now.

    I'm actually looking to buy a 4TB HDD sometime this year. My WD 1TB is my music collection and there's only ~70GB left on it... So that page had good data. Thanks!
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 1,045
    Win8/8.1,Win7-U64, Vista U64, uncounted Linux distor's
       #16

    Backblaze - the cloud backup company - continues to share their drive experience with us onesy-twosy buyers.
    Baclblaze buys the cheapest drives it can find, including refurbs. They install them in large racks with inadequate cooling. There blog report "What Hard Drive should I buy?" is worthless IMHO.

    I agree with tweaktowns article by Paul Alcorn.

      My Computer


  7. Posts : 9,600
    Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit
       #17

    madcratebuilder said:
    Backblaze - the cloud backup company - continues to share their drive experience with us onesy-twosy buyers.
    Baclblaze buys the cheapest drives it can find, including refurbs. They install them in large racks with inadequate cooling. There blog report "What Hard Drive should I buy?" is worthless IMHO.

    I agree with tweaktowns article by Paul Alcorn.
    Alcorn's article is no better than Backblaze's study. Backblaze's results may be based on extreme operating conditions and are most likely skewed in various ways but the huge percentage of failures for Seagates compared to other brands is still very significant since all the drives involved were operated in the same or very similar conditions. Even if a large number of refurbs were included for one brand only, as Alcorn postulated, why were so many refurbs available in the first place? A high availability of refurbs for predominantly one brand would be damning in itself.
      My Computer


  8. mjf
    Posts : 5,969
    Windows 7x64 Home Premium SP1
       #18

    There is a clear implication about Seagate drives in general but there appear to be too many variables to draw broadbrush conclusions IMO. I wonder if they got a statistician involved.
      My Computer


  9. Posts : 1,045
    Win8/8.1,Win7-U64, Vista U64, uncounted Linux distor's
       #19

    Lady Fitzgerald said:
    madcratebuilder said:
    Backblaze - the cloud backup company - continues to share their drive experience with us onesy-twosy buyers.
    Baclblaze buys the cheapest drives it can find, including refurbs. They install them in large racks with inadequate cooling. There blog report "What Hard Drive should I buy?" is worthless IMHO.

    I agree with tweaktowns article by Paul Alcorn.
    Alcorn's article is no better than Backblaze's study. Backblaze's results may be based on extreme operating conditions and are most likely skewed in various ways but the huge percentage of failures for Seagates compared to other brands is still very significant since all the drives involved were operated in the same or very similar conditions. Even if a large number of refurbs were included for one brand only, as Alcorn postulated, why were so many refurbs available in the first place? A high availability of refurbs for predominantly one brand would be damning in itself.
    Looking at retail outlets I see more refurbs from WD and OZC than Seagate, does that mean WD and OCZ have higher failure rates? I don't think that statistic is a good measure of failure rates.

    It seems to me that some users have a much higher rate of HDD failures than others. Could this be from the operating practices some users have vs others?

    I've replaced a lot of hdd's for peeps over the years and the vast majority of these failures were caused by a outside event. Sudden power disconnect and heat exposure are the two main issues I have seen.
      My Computer


  10. Posts : 24,479
    Windows 7 Ultimate X64 SP1
       #20

    Very interesting article. While BackBlaze's experience may correlate to consumer use, I doubt that many of us have a drive fully loaded with writes 100% of the time. Perhaps if there were more data on drives used as 99% of the public uses them, the brand failure rates would be different.

    Personally I've always thought WD vs. Seagate vs. Hitachi et al, is like the Ford vs. Chevy vs. Dodge debate which started at the introduction of the 2nd brand of auto was sold. We all have bad experience with one brand or other it seems, which I find odd. If WD is always good, we'd all have one, if Seagate is all bad, no one would own one.

    My experience is, all the WD drives I've had failed, so that's 100% failure in my case for a brand and very atypical. It may be noteworthy all were in pre-built machines I bought, 2 hp's and one Sony VAIO, all desktops. As stated before, your mileage may [and likely will] vary, and by a lot.

    I have had Hitachi, Fujitsu, Maxtor, and Samsung HDDs in the past with no failures among them. Currently I have all Seagate HDDs, one an enterprise class, which don't seem to fare any better than a consumer grade drive, that's disappointing.

    I gleaned some more interesting info from the links in the article Shawn posted too. Both are 7 years old so some data may not be relevant now.

    NetApp Weighs In On Disks

    This one I think in relevant about SMART.

    How smart is SMART?
    Not very, as Google found, and many in the industry already knew. SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) captures drive error data to predict failure far enough in advance so you can back up. Yet SMART focuses on mechanical failures, while a good deal of a disk drive is electronic, so SMART misses many sudden drive failure modes, like power component failure. The Google team found that 36% of the failed drives did not exhibit a single SMART-monitored failure. They concluded that SMART data is almost useless for predicting the failure of a single drive.
    Source
      My Computer


 
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