HDD reliability

[joecass]

which brand of desktop hard drive is more reliable..... Seagate or Western Digital ? Opinions, please

[smrpix]

Personally, I've had excellent luck with WD. I'm well aware other folks have had different experiences.

[DB83]

I refuse to chance my incredibly important data on any HDD. I only use 5 1/4 floppy disks

But seriously, I swear by WD drives. I have had one failure but that can happen with any brand.

[lingyi]

which brand of desktop hard drive is more reliable..... Seagate or Western Digital ? Opinions, please

I buy whatever's cheapest based on price and warranty.

I have a mix of 2 dozen drives including WD, Seagate, Hitachi, Samsung and Toshiba and accept that any one or more of them could die anytime. But that's why I have backups!

[Keyser]

Searching Google for "hdd reliability" returns links to studies and tests in which the conclusion is always the same: Hitachi rules.

[PuzZLeR]

To make it simple: If you back up your drives regularly, then the brand you choose becomes less important.

I can preach about WD, LaCie, or even Hitachi, but it will be all moot because I do believe in the following saying:

"Those who backup their data regularly are less likely to have HDD crashes."

[jagabo]

Real data is hard to come by. Google posted some information several years ago but didn't name names.

http://techreport.com/news/11872/google-publishes-hard-drive-failure-study
http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf

The closest one can get are reports from Blackblaze:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-long-do-disk-drives-last/
https://www.backblaze.com/hard-drive.html

Note that they used consumer drives in a datacenter. Their usage is probably much more intensive than yours. But... Hitachi and Western Digital did the best. Seagate did poorly. But all drive manufacturers have had problematic models. And, as far as I know, nobody publishes definitive results for current, or even recent, drives.

[fritzi93]

To make it simple: If you back up your drives regularly, then the brand you choose becomes less important.

This, in a nutshell.

[Krispy Kritter]

Stats will show that it varies by model and size, not brand. Considering the number of drives that I've had over the years, I've had good luck with them all. Simply buy based on price and warranty.

[lingyi]

Real data is hard to come by. Google posted some information several years ago but didn't name names.

http://techreport.com/news/11872/google-publishes-hard-drive-failure-study
http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf

The closest one can get are reports from Blackblaze:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-long-do-disk-drives-last/
https://www.backblaze.com/hard-drive.html

Note that they used consumer drives in a datacenter. Their usage is probably much more intensive than yours. But... Hitachi and Western Digital did the best. Seagate did poorly. But all drive manufacturers have had problematic models. And, as far as I know, nobody publishes definitive results for current, or even recent, drives.

Backblaze updates their Blog quarterly with the latest data about THEIR* hard drive failure rates. Latest is from 6/30/15 here:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-for-q2-2015/

*I emphasized that this is THEIR experence since (as been discussed on this forum many times before) the way they use consumer level HHDs are not in any way typical of home use.

[Arnold_Layne]

Real data is hard to come by. Google posted some information several years ago but didn't name names.

http://techreport.com/news/11872/google-publishes-hard-drive-failure-study
http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf

The closest one can get are reports from Blackblaze:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-long-do-disk-drives-last/
https://www.backblaze.com/hard-drive.html

Note that they used consumer drives in a datacenter. Their usage is probably much more intensive than yours. But... Hitachi and Western Digital did the best. Seagate did poorly. But all drive manufacturers have had problematic models. And, as far as I know, nobody publishes definitive results for current, or even recent, drives.

Backblaze updates their Blog quarterly with the latest data about THEIR* hard drive failure rates. Latest is from 6/30/15 here:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-for-q2-2015/

*I emphasized that this is THEIR experence since (as been discussed on this forum many times before) the way they use consumer level HHDs are not in any way typical of home use.

I'm not sure I'd trust an online back-up company that's using consumer drives. They should be using enterprise grade drives.

[jagabo]

the way they use consumer level HHDs are not in any way typical of home use.

But you could consider it an accelerated aging test. In any case, there isn't any other hard data available.

[lingyi]

Real data is hard to come by. Google posted some information several years ago but didn't name names.

http://techreport.com/news/11872/google-publishes-hard-drive-failure-study
http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf

The closest one can get are reports from Blackblaze:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-long-do-disk-drives-last/
https://www.backblaze.com/hard-drive.html

Note that they used consumer drives in a datacenter. Their usage is probably much more intensive than yours. But... Hitachi and Western Digital did the best. Seagate did poorly. But all drive manufacturers have had problematic models. And, as far as I know, nobody publishes definitive results for current, or even recent, drives.

Backblaze updates their Blog quarterly with the latest data about THEIR* hard drive failure rates. Latest is from 6/30/15 here:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-for-q2-2015/

*I emphasized that this is THEIR experence since (as been discussed on this forum many times before) the way they use consumer level HHDs are not in any way typical of home use.

I'm not sure I'd trust an online back-up company that's using consumer drives. They should be using enterprise grade drives.

This has been addressed several times in the BackBlaze blog (search "enterprise drives" on their site). This post from the FAQ 2/2/15 sums it up:

"Q: Why do you use consumer drives?
A: The redundancy built into our data storage model with RAID 6, along with our own data integrity checking, and our SMART stats monitoring, ensures that the data we store will be safe and available regardless of the drive models used. This allows us to purchase drives that have a lifecycle cost that is the least expensive when considering the initial cost, warranty, failure rate, product availability, etc. In short, Enterprise and Consumer drives both deliver the same reliability in our environment, so we choose to the drives that have the lowest lifecycle cost. "

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-faq/

I figure if the above strategy is good enough for one of the "Big Boys", it's what I'll follow. I buy cheap and frequently (as warranties run out), and don't use two identical drives for primary and backup(s).

the way they use consumer level HHDs are not in any way typical of home use.

But you could consider it an accelerated aging test. In any case, there isn't any other hard data available.

Agreed. I applaud the company for making this data available (as flawed as it is).

[SameSelf]

Spinning rust reliability is the pot at the end of the rainbow. My company uses WD, Seagate, HGST, and others, and our datacenter has a shelf filled with failed drives from all of those manufacturers. These aren't server drives either. These are drives that are pulled from employees' desktops and laptops. The manufacturer does not matter. While I admire the Backblaze guys, their data only applies to a very bespoke use case and does not translate to consumer use. IBM sold their drive division to HGST which is now owned by WD. Spinning rust is going the way of the floppy drive. Although the platters do make very nice mirrors and/or decorations.

[joecass]

I've used mostly Western Digital and Seagate consumer hard drives since 1998. I have WD drives from 2003 and 2004 that still work. Once I tried an IBM (before it was sold to Hitachi) drive, and it failed. Over the last 10 years or so, I see a difference between drives made in Thailand and Malaysia. I think Thailand may have an edge over Malaysia (or it could be the other way around). I'm talking about older drives of course, now everything is made in China. I think both WD and Seagate quality has gone down when they started manufacturing drives 1 TB and larger. Just my opinion, though....

[SameSelf]

Spinning rust is a commodity business. It is cheaper for mfg's to replace your ailing drive under warranty than to build a drive that is meant to survive the zombie apocalypse. They engineer the reliability to stay profitable. WD even provides a free diagnostic tool to tell you when the drive has gone bad. What else should that tell you? Comparing modern drives to circa 2003/2004 drives is a canard when most drives back then were IDE. SATA was introduced in 2003. Don't fall victim to using your personal experience as a metric. That is not statistically meaningful in any way unless you go through drives like candy and very often is merely this or this in disguise. Anyway, maybe it is time to think outside the box and get something different, like a Toshiba.

EDIT: The only reason I mention the history of HGST is because many observers are skeptical if Backblaze's results regarding HGST are valid any longer now that it is part of WD. Or, perhaps more accurately stated, how long will HGST remain unpolluted by WD practices?

[Arnold_Layne]

Still don't buy the reasons unless Backiblaze doesn't mind just tossing out drives. Surely the warranty on consumer drives doesn't cover commercial applications. At least of an Enterprise drive fails, they could get it replaced under warranty.

[joecass]

While all of what you say is true, older IDE drives seem like they were built to survive the "China" apocalypse. The physical mechanisms of IDE and SATA are the same, just a change in the delivery method. Back in the IDE era, I stayed away from Maxtor drives intentionally. Their quality and longevity were suspect. I maintain a slew of desktops and laptops, so drive reliability is an issue for me. And, not to mention the "back-up" subject as noted in previous posts, my method of backing up data is to clone the entire hard drive rather than having to re-install an operating system, software and drivers. I keep other important data on USB thumb drives.
In addition, I have an arsenal of (tv recorder) DVRs which also use IDE/SATA hard drives. Therefore, if I need to repair or replace the hdd in a DVR, I'm not going to drop just any piece of junk into it, if I want it to function properly. Toshiba and Fujitsu 2.5" laptop drives seem to be very sturdy compared to their Seagate & WD counterparts. "Spinning rust" may be going the way of the dinosaur, but some of us need to maintain our rust as best as we can.

[SameSelf]

I maintain a slew of desktops and laptops, so drive reliability is an issue for me.

In that case, I would just go with the brand that offers the best warranty which is all about the least headache. For example, WD Black comes with 5 year warranty, and from my experience, they honor it, no questions asked, and as recently as the spring of 2015 for me. Of course, this is only a review of their customer service and says nothing about how reliable WD is versus other brands or even differences within the WD family. For example, the WD Blue comes with a 2 year warranty. But IMO, the premium price for Black is merely the cost of an additional 3 years of warranty which at this point is ~$6/TB/yr. If a WD Blue fails in year 3 then you are buying a whole new drive while a Black gets replaced for free until year 6. But at the end of the day, I would much prefer if the drive didn't fail at all. But it is probably easier finding a unicorn.

[_Al_]

I cannot see why one would compare longevity of work disks with home discs, at home those disks (or back ups) are mostly not working at all, so am I buying for work or for home etc.

warranty might be some kind of longevity indication , but I'd change drive if:

-when one of two or three back up drives fail
-when back up volume needs to be extended or hardware device as a whole - that happens a lot

so at the end, NOT buying most expensive ones is cheaper at the moment ... ..., if one wants to back up and forget, perhaps most expensive ones make better sense, so what disk to buy depends who we ask ...

I had Seagate drive in external box failed once (the only Seagate I ever had, so pretty miserable statistic here), but there were warnings before, also one WD drive in PC, also with dying symptoms so there was a time to replace them ...

[lingyi]

Still don't buy the reasons unless Backiblaze doesn't mind just tossing out drives. Surely the warranty on consumer drives doesn't cover commercial applications. At least of an Enterprise drive fails, they could get it replaced under warranty.

Highly recommend reading the BackBlaze blog as their reasons for using consumer drives is explained in detail in the various posts.

A post from December 2013 states:

"In the Beginning
As many of you know, when Backblaze first started the unlimited online backup service, our founders bootstrapped the company without funding. In this environment one of our first and most critical design decisions was to build our backup software on the premise of data redundancy. That design decision allowed us to use consumer drives instead of enterprise drives in our early Storage Pods as we used the software, not the hardware, to manage redundancy. Given that enterprise drives were often twice the cost of consumer drives, the choice of consumer drives was also a relief for our founders’ thin wallets."

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/enterprise-drive-reliability/

Another factor that was mentioned in a post (can't find it right now) is that storage pods cost money to build and it's cheaper to replace older drives with larger capacity ones than build more pods.

On my miniscule scale, I understand and follow BackBlaze's logic. I currently have 9 HDDs (one SSD and 8 mechanical) in my main PC case, a mix of 4, 6 & 8TB totaling 44TB. I'm maxed out on physical space in the case and PSU capability. For my needs, it's more cost effective to upgrade to larger capacity drives (maintaining the total number of drives at nine) than to have to get a larger case and PSU or NAS.

Edit:

From the FAQ posted above:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-faq/

"Q: Why don’t you use enterprise or NAS drives?
A: We’ve done a bit of analysis and in our environment there really is not much of a difference between enterprise and consumer hard drives. You can read our findings on our “Enterprise Drives: Fact or Fiction” blog post, but the TLR version is that their higher cost does not make up for their performance.

•Q: What do you do with failed drives?
A: When a hard drive fails we securely wipe the drive and then recycle it.
•Q: What affects hard drive purchasing? Only price? Fail percentage? What’s the ratio?
A: When purchasing hard drives, the most important thing for us to consider is a density to price ratio, but really close to that ratio is the performance of that drive in our ecosystem, depending on which, the density to price ratio can be superseded. If a hard drive is inexpensive and has a lot of density for the price, but fails often, then it is not a viable hard drive for us to purchase in bulk. We often buy small batches of hard drives to test in our pods, and if they work then we will buy them in bulk."

Bottom line as with all their info and choices, it's what works for them. YMMV

[cornemuse]

I've had the best luck with WD drives, never had any drive die while under warranty. Also, it seems that WD drives draw less power than some others, laptop drives, anyways.

Like joecass above, I have a drawer-full of ooold drives, mostly WD, 20 30 40 gigs. hate to toss 'em.

Just looked, a 6 gig maxtor dated 2-24-98 & a 2.54 gig samsung no date! Somewhere out in the garage I have a 12 meg <- yes, 12, yes meg) huge (working) hdd actually made in Longmont Colorado.

-c-

[SameSelf]

I think it is well known that modern drives are not as reliable as drives from 10 or 20 years ago. Check my first post again. Seagate, WD, HGST, it doesn't matter, they all fail. Of course you won't know this if you confine your sample to the small universe of drives in your own computers. Do yourself a favor, find an IT guy/gal at a reasonably large company in your town. Ask them if they see a pattern in the drives they pull from user computers. I would be shocked if they point to one brand being worse than the others.

[joecass]

I maintain a slew of desktops and laptops, so drive reliability is an issue for me.

In that case, I would just go with the brand that offers the best warranty which is all about the least headache. For example, WD Black comes with 5 year warranty, and from my experience, they honor it, no questions asked, and as recently as the spring of 2015 for me. Of course, this is only a review of their customer service and says nothing about how reliable WD is versus other brands or even differences within the WD family. For example, the WD Blue comes with a 2 year warranty. But IMO, the premium price for Black is merely the cost of an additional 3 years of warranty which at this point is ~$6/TB/yr. If a WD Blue fails in year 3 then you are buying a whole new drive while a Black gets replaced for free until year 6. But at the end of the day, I would much prefer if the drive didn't fail at all. But it is probably easier finding a unicorn.

I agree wholeheartedly. I did just that this year in installing two WD Scorpio Black 2.5" laptop drives. Also had a case where a friend dropped her laptop that contained a WD Blue 500gb drive, the hdd actually popped out, hit the floor, and became unuseable. I put that drive aside and it took me well over a year of occasionally tinkering with various software programs to get it back to life. I basically don't like the Blue drives, but they're ok for simple desktop builds and DVRs. Two of my DVRs bought in 2010 still work well, that have WD Blue drives. And these drives run 24/7 as long as the units are plugged in. When they eventually fail, I already have two WD Blue drives to replace them. Lately I've been using Seagate Barracudas for desktop replacements, they seem pretty sturdy. Not all that concerned with mfr warranties, I also prefer if the drives didn't fail at all. But I came up with a new method this year, I installed hard drive 'coolers' on the most frequently used desktop computers. With the cases open, I could really feel a difference in the temperature of the hdd as opposed to not using a cooler at all. My theory being (among other things), that heat can contribute to hard drive failure and mechanical wear.

[Groucho2004]

"Those who backup their data regularly are less likely to have HDD crashes."

That statement makes no sense.
You are basically saying that the drive being backed up has a conscience and is aware that a backup exists and therefore decides not to crash.

[SameSelf]

Not all that concerned with mfr warranties, I also prefer if the drives didn't fail at all. But I came up with a new method this year, I installed hard drive 'coolers' on the most frequently used desktop computers. With the cases open, I could really feel a difference in the temperature of the hdd as opposed to not using a cooler at all. My theory being (among other things), that heat can contribute to hard drive failure and mechanical wear.

That is the problem with spinning rust: they are mechanical devices, and the second law of thermodynamics is immutable. Whether the gain you derive from the coolers is statistically significant at a p-value of 0.05 or better, who knows. But if I knew that my Scorpion Blacks were going to fail, I don't think I would want to prolong the life beyond the warranty period

[PuzZLeR]

"Those who backup their data regularly are less likely to have HDD crashes."

That statement makes no sense.
You are basically saying that the drive being backed up has a conscience and is aware that a backup exists and therefore decides not to crash.

At face value you have a point. But it's something that makes you think.

I'm talking about confidence. You can't see it, or hear it, or smell it, or touch it, or even "feel" it in a conventional way. But you can feel it in spirit, and sense it in faith. You know it's there, and creates positive results. And I know you believe in the power it emits.

Confidence has a conscience.

That's the confidence you get when you back up your drives. And it extends to further benefits. It's the opposite of "Murphy's Law", of which I call "Churchill's Law".

As well, that is a saying among the people in the industry, not mine. I got it from an employee at LaCie, here in the Toronto office. His name is Sebastien. I'm sure he can convince you of this too.

Ok. For the hard-facts, or tangibles-only, crowd out there: When you back up your drives you put less strain overall per unit on your overall GBs. This alone is enough to extend life and minimize HDD crashes. :-p

Moral of the story: Back up your drives. Little can go wrong with your data when you do.

[PuzZLeR]

Just looked, a 6 gig maxtor dated 2-24-98 & a 2.54 gig samsung no date!

The 2.54 was probably from, like, 1997. My old Acer has that size OEM.

Wow. In those days, I bought a CD burner to extend storage. I used to call a CD (which had a "whopping" 650-700 MB storage) a "mini hard drive" back then.

[SameSelf]

Moral of the story: Back up your drives. Little can go wrong with your data when you do.

That is incorrect. Lots can go wrong when you are dealing with TB+ amounts of data. Read this.

The real moral of the story is move your data to WORM technology if you really care about it. The other alternative is FreeNAS + ZFS but that is not for the non-tech savvy. Other than that, there aren't many other options. But it is wise to understand that propagating data across numerous non-ZFS (e.g. NTFS, HFS, ext3/4, and so on) volumes is not backup. It is a form of storage only, and not a very good one at that.

[PuzZLeR]

Moral of the story: Back up your drives. Little can go wrong with your data when you do.

That is incorrect. Lots can go wrong when you are dealing with TB+ amounts of data. Read this.

This implies that it is wrong to back up your drives, period.

Even if using a USB hub, with two slots for two drives, one with your data and the other with a backup of that data, it is still better than only using one drive to store your data. Even that link supports backups.

Sure there are problems, and still lots can go wrong. But your chances are still better when you have your data in more than one place. That was my point.