Who makes the best disk drives?

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  1. Posts : 71,959
    64-bit Windows 11 Pro for Workstations
       #1

    Who makes the best disk drives?


    Finally, someone with enough volume to test significant numbers of drives comes clean. There are drives to buy and drives to avoid.

    Backblaze - the cloud backup company - continues to share their drive experience with us onesy-twosy buyers. It's informative.

    Methodology
    Backblaze, which open sourced their Storage Pod a few years ago, is now giving drive failure rates. They currently have over 27,000 consumer grade drives spinning in Backblaze storage pods.

    Almost 13,000 each are Seagate and Hitachi drives, almost 3000 Western Digital drives and a too small for statistical reporting smattering of Toshiba and Samsung drives.

    One cool thing: Backblaze buys drives the way you and I do: they get the cheapest drives that will work. Their workload is almost hundred percent write. Because they spread the incoming writes over several drives their workload isn't very performance intensive either.

    Also, like you and me, they are willing to spend a little more for a more reliable drive but not a lot more. And unlike you and me they track every single drive that they install.

    They measure the annual failure rate (AFR) rather than MTBF because that's an easier number to understand. They count as a failure anytime they have to replace a drive. Of course, vendors report that about half of all returned drives have no trouble found – but I like Backblaze's definition better.
    Read more at: Who makes the best disk drives? | ZDNet
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  2. Posts : 9,600
    Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit
       #2

    Pity they didn't use any WD Blacks. They also didn't report on how good warranty support was between various brands.
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  3. Posts : 20,583
    Win-7-Pro64bit 7-H-Prem-64bit
       #3

    Probably the worst things about large drives is they fail harder,
    I'll stick with 250 gig's so it doesn't hurt as badly
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  4. Posts : 9,600
    Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit
       #4

    ThrashZone said:
    Probably the worst things about large drives is they fail harder,
    I'll stick with 250 gig's so it doesn't hurt as badly
    Coward! Actually, that's a good idea if you have room for enough of them to hold all your data. However, I would need five to hold all the data I have now and the amount of data I have is increasing every day. My poor little machine can hold only six HDDs (five if I have to get a longer GPU card). Larger HDDs are OK as long as you have them properly backed up (and I'm anal when it comes to backups).
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  5. Posts : 3,724
    Windows 10x64 Build 1709
       #5

    That was interesting and actually in line with MY experience, albeit only with WD and Seagate. But as I'm currently (and slowly lol) switching out all my drives for SSD's it is more an academic exercise than practical knowledge for me.

    http://www.thessdreview.com/our-revi...reat-security/
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  6. mjf
    Posts : 5,969
    Windows 7x64 Home Premium SP1
       #6

    Not good news.
    I've got a number of internal Seagate Barracuda 1TB drives (2-4 years old) with no problem but I don't run them 24/7. The minimum size in the test set for Seagates was 1.5TB.
    Hitachi seems the winner. I've got one 5 years old.
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  7. Posts : 9,600
    Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit
       #7

    The best HDD I ever had was an IDE 60GB Maxtor that lasted seven years. I retired it when I replaced the machine it was in with another one that only had SATA connections.

    The brand I've had the best luck with is Western Digital. Of the fourteen I've had, only one failed (one of the early Greens that had head parking issues); I still have the other thirteen.

    Seagate, on the other hand... Out of the four I've owned, two failed (the infamous 7200.11s), one was a disappointment (a SSHD that didn't work out for my usage), and one that works fine but is unspectacular.
    Last edited by Lady Fitzgerald; 21 Jan 2014 at 15:50. Reason: Old Timer's Disease. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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  8. Posts : 20,583
    Win-7-Pro64bit 7-H-Prem-64bit
       #8

    Fortunately I'm not a packrat of data
    The best data is on cd/ dvd but not perfect,
    Cheers.
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  9. Posts : 2,497
    Windows 7 Pro 64 bit
       #9

    I have a Fujitsu 6 GB hard drive purchased in 1998 that is still in service. It isn't used much anymore but still works well and SMART reports no issues. But I think that is too much to expect from modern drives. I expect the pressure for ever higher capacity and performance without raising the price has taken it's toll in reliability.
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  10. Posts : 7,466
    Windows 10 Home Premium 64bit sp1
       #10

    Wow i use Seagate and WD just so happen i got a Hitachi from my Dad lol
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