Alaric
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- Dec 4, 2011
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- Satan's Colon, US
Not Seagate , apparently. https://www.yahoo.com/tech/seagate-faced-class-action-lawsuit-193453745.html
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WD vs. Seagate And the winner is....
- Thread starter Alaric
- Start date
- Joined
- Mar 18, 2015
Ive had a poor opinion of Seagate based on one cruddy drive for some time. I noticed the bottom of the laptop was warm to the touch -- then traced the problem to the HDD sitting directly ober that hotspot. SMART data was fine but I knew that driveds days were numbered. I was trying to wait for Black Friday to see what the SSD market would do, but missed it by about 3 weeks. Less than 2 months from 1st symptom to drive failure. Nothing I have read since then has shown this to be unusual, looks like you are reading the same kinds of articles I have found.
On a side not I picked up a couple high capacity Seagates from the classies and hope they give me reason to reconsider. Bought a WD Black to put in the laptop though
On a side not I picked up a couple high capacity Seagates from the classies and hope they give me reason to reconsider. Bought a WD Black to put in the laptop though
OP
Alaric
New Member
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2011
- Location
- Satan's Colon, US
- Thread Starter
- #4
I've had bad luck with Seagate drives , as well. There will be folks chiming in with WD horror stories who swear by Seagate but that hasn't been my experience. And it seems I'm not alone. I wonder what the problem is. HDD technology isn't exactly a brand new , hit or miss situation. Cheap parts , cheap manufacturing , or just poor design?
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2012
Just gonna leave this here...
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-for-q2-2015/
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-for-q2-2015/
- Joined
- Mar 18, 2015
Looking at that data makes me wonder if the 3TB drives arent just failed 4TB or largers drives? Is this an acceptable/known practice in HDD as it is in CPU manufacturing? Clearly there was some problem that plagued the 3TB drives in particular, in more than just Seagate.
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2012
Usually that's changed by the number of plates and different firmware.
Sometimes the plates are different densities, but IIRC most 3TB just have a couple fewer plates than a 4TB.
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2013
Yeah Seagate just makes terrible drives. Really don't see any reason to ever buy one over a WD unless you're really broke or something.
- Joined
- May 29, 2005
It's sad really that it has come to that for that company. It wasn't always that way. I stick with HGST (Hitachi) and western digital, personally.
Even if you're broke, you can't put a price on piece of mind that your data is safe. (With proper back ups of course)
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- Feb 1, 2011
- Location
- Republic of Texas
The data set in ATMINSIDE'S link certainly convinced me to avoid Barracudas.
I've been running my Seagate F1 for several years, but then it was designed with RAID in mind so maybe was more robust on the drawing board. Last two drives that went tits up for me were both WDs, one being an external in RAID that didn't survive a two foot drop. Other was just EOL.
I've been running my Seagate F1 for several years, but then it was designed with RAID in mind so maybe was more robust on the drawing board. Last two drives that went tits up for me were both WDs, one being an external in RAID that didn't survive a two foot drop. Other was just EOL.
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2012
WD Red's are designed for RAID as well. Typically it has nothing to do (directly) with robustness, but with TLER, head parking, and other similar features.
HDDs are not like CPUs where they are 'binned' lower. In fact they are not remotely associated how that works. One is a piece of silicon with thresholds, while a HDD, let's say a 4TB, it may have 4 1TB platters in it... the 3 TB would then have, 3 1TB platters, They would not leave the last platter in there if it did not work, and make it a 3 TB drive.
EDIT: Heh, I see ATM answered this too...
As I already said in other thread, we can't tell how reliable drives has any manufacturer based on 1-2 series what in this case has its place looking at WD with only Red series on the list. WD Red had firmware issues which were fixed later last year. The most popular series are not even included in this comparison but if I remember it right, WD Red had the worst results from all WD drives in last year.
It's also hard to say if HGST or Toshiba have really these numbers in global mass production as their % of sales is really low comparing to WD or Seagate. Quality is also changing depends from factory so also country in which hdd are distributed.
Looking at the linked ranking you can't really say anything except the fact that Seagate numbers are really bad as it's the only brand covered with most of their offer.
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- Nov 7, 2008
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- Huntsville, Al
Luckily in my time I have only had two hard drives fail. One was a super old Maxtor 30 Gig drive that came in a HP Desktop from 98-99. That drive lasted 7 years of normal daily usage. The next one was a 160 Gig WD blue drive that I bought a pair of back in 2008 to use as a Raid 0 boot drive. It lasted about 4 years while the other one is still happily chugging along in my current rig to this day storing misc files and such like photos, music, documents. I have a backup of everything that I keep up to date so no worries if it dies unexpectedly. The 1 TB WD Black drive stores the windows TEMP and TMP folders as well as my steam and origin games. It's been going since 2012 at nearly 24-7 365 power on usage. Not too concerned if it dies either, just gives me an excuse to get a much larger drive.
After reading that report I sure am glad I never went with a seagate drive. I hate to feel that way but I am loyal to WD for the foreseeable future.
After reading that report I sure am glad I never went with a seagate drive. I hate to feel that way but I am loyal to WD for the foreseeable future.
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- Joined
- Mar 18, 2015
3TB drive numbers were the upper extreme for pretty much everyone except Hitachi. Except for those Barracudas - those are off my list as well now. Motors all from a common manufacturer? 3TB is somehow 'unbalanced' number of plates and kills to motor? Who knows - all I can say for certain is that I would think twice about 3TB from any brand now except Hitachi
They are balanced.
That link from ATM, while it has some value, is also not a fair reproduction of how we use our HDD's. That link is from a place that stores backups. There exponentially more reads and writes going on those drives (they are using some form of RAID as well) versus what we see as a consumer.
To that end, I have posted some numbers in the past from some French website about their failures. And while the dataset is a lot smaller, its also a much more realistic environment as far as use...
Here is a snippet:
That link from ATM, while it has some value, is also not a fair reproduction of how we use our HDD's. That link is from a place that stores backups. There exponentially more reads and writes going on those drives (they are using some form of RAID as well) versus what we see as a consumer.
To that end, I have posted some numbers in the past from some French website about their failures. And while the dataset is a lot smaller, its also a much more realistic environment as far as use...
Here is a snippet:
OP
Alaric
New Member
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2011
- Location
- Satan's Colon, US
- Thread Starter
- #18
I'm most interested in the larger capacity HDD numbers. My next OS storage drive will probably Intel or Samsung SSD , with a big HDD for storing music , pictures , movies , etc.. So the important stuff will be on HDD , which makes the failure rate an important statistic for me. WD Reds seem to occupy a lot of the best spots.
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- The Empire State
I remember I used to run nothing but Seagate Barracuda drives in my setups. I started noticing a whine/squeal from them. Then of course the squeal of death followed by a slight clang and then nothing.
I replaced them with WD and Hitachi drives. Needless to say my Hitachi drives still run fine, but a few of my WD drives were sent in for RMA. I might just pick up an HGST 3TB for my games as my WD black 1TB is getting a tad cramped, lol.
I replaced them with WD and Hitachi drives. Needless to say my Hitachi drives still run fine, but a few of my WD drives were sent in for RMA. I might just pick up an HGST 3TB for my games as my WD black 1TB is getting a tad cramped, lol.
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- Jun 28, 2012
3TB drive numbers were the upper extreme for pretty much everyone except Hitachi. Except for those Barracudas - those are off my list as well now. Motors all from a common manufacturer? 3TB is somehow 'unbalanced' number of plates and kills to motor? Who knows - all I can say for certain is that I would think twice about 3TB from any brand now except Hitachi
Care to explain how changing the number of plates will unbalance the spindle?
When you put a perfect disk on a spindle and rotate it, no matter the number of disks, it will be balanced.
