Backbase, a provider from a cloud-service, posted some research on reliability of HDDs from the consumer market. It seems that HDDs from Hitachi are the most reliable, while Seagate has the worst rea... HDDs from Hitachi are most reliable
You could probably put the latest Toshiba desktop drives (like the DT010ACA100/DT010ACA200/DT010ACA300) in with Hitachi drives there, seeing as they are essentially Hitachi drives anyway.
I can attest that Seagate drives are the worst. I had 3 consecutive Barracudas that failed in less than a month of use and they were all from different batches. uke2: And apparently I've not experienced the worst because the survival rate chart shows piles of Seagate drives failing after many months of usage. Meaning many months worth of data suddenly gone from what seems to be a good unit. I consider myself lucky to have mine all fail up front. On the other hand their external drives seem ok. HDD reliability is VERY important!! You don't want to lose precious data and have your work/play interrupted by drive failures.
Strange. My GF has a 3TB barracuda and it works just fine for around a year now. Usually i buy Samsung.
I would have thought that the sale of Samsung's HDD division to Seagate would have seen them improve. Obviously not. I think I'll be going with WD in future as I have had personal negative experiences with Hitachi. Damn I miss Samsung's HDD's, they really knew what they were doing and it shows at the success of their SSD's now.
I've heard Toshiba's are the worst, Seagate I've heard mixed views about, I love my barracuda drives.
I personally haven't had much bad luck with Seagate, but I think what separates them from WD is their more in-depth SMART diagnostics and they're pretty good about replacing defective drives. On the other hand, by adding more diagnostics, Seagate drives are more likely to "fail" even if there isn't really a problem.
There's something not right with these stats, they are completely skewed. Yes Seagate had problems with the 1.5TB drives...that is no secret, however doesn't anyone think it's pretty strange there are no 1TB or 2TB Seagate drives in this graph?
Yeah, not all drive models are created equal, they should have the same playing field. 1TB 1 platter? 2 platters? 3 platters?
They also did not mention the size of the lots they buy in. For example, if they bought 1000 Seagate HDDs in one shot and that lot had a problem, it would severely skew their results. When drives have no problem, lot purchase info is not so important since the default expected state is no problems. But when there are problems, lot info is important.
This is my experience as well. Seagate replaces the drive under warranty without you having to prove it is failing.
I like Western Digital, mainly due to the advanced replacement RMA drives you can get I've got a few RED drives now, not sure how good they are yet but i've RMA's a few greens over the last three years and they seem to be starting to fail now in my raid array
Some Seagate models carry only a single year warranty over here. Maybe it differs from country to country, but honestly an HD with such a short warranty tells the manufacturer itself doesn't expect much from it. Fortunately that's only some of their models, so I can still keep them in mind in addition to WD, whichever happens to have better prices at the moment.