What is your go-to HDD manufacturer?

[BVD]

I'd guess hes talking about the warranty check - nothing to do with the drive manufacturer, everything to do with the seller though, so not really relevant to the discussion imo 🤷‍♂️

[SLNetworks]

I have four 4TB Ironwolfs, three 16TB Exos and a fourth as a cold spare, five 10TB Exos, and an 8TB Exos. They're all doing quite well, most of them are used. The only drive I've had show signs of bad health is a 4TB WD Black. Blacky though, is a consumer grade drive.. so unfair comparison I guess. That is what has kept me away from WD as a whole. Different luck for everyone. If we wanna see where some of these drives have better results, maybe we can do by country.

 

Canada here.

[SLNetworks]

Just now, BVD said:

I'd guess hes talking about the warranty check - nothing to do with the drive manufacturer, everything to do with the seller though, so not really relevant to the discussion imo 🤷‍♂️

Ah alright.. fair enough.

[gentux]

13 hours ago, SLNetworks said:

WD Black. Blacky though, is a consumer grade drive.. so unfair comparison I guess.

 

Well considering this, comparing just brands as a whole is not very accurate anymore, Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba have merged in almost any other company like Fujitsu, HGST, Samsung, Maxtor, Conner etc. and i.e. WD Ultrastar are totally different to the WD <color> products and more like some Toshiba drives. I'd think the WD Ultrastar drives are made by the same processes and with some of the same people that did it under HGST while WD black/blue drives are made like the Caviar drives.

[SLNetworks]

I was always a Maxtor junkie before Seagate bought 'em. I wasn't sure what brand to get after, so I tried WD, and after I had my WD Black fail on me, I went off to Seagate and have been quite happy.. aside from the prices remaining seemingly high. I'll have to maybe give WD's enterprise grade drives a try.

[Evenimous]

Seagate. I'm aware of their supposedly higher failure rate than other models when viewed in large numbers, but every seagate drive i've used has been a dream, where as most of my western digital drives have failed, including in other NAS. Hopefully my Unraid box lasts well with the Seagate drives I have in it.

[MrGrey]

When my WD RAID (the actual box) failed (not the individual drives), I decided to give WD the absolute (not) support that everyone deserves.

 

My first HD was a Seagate 250Mb, 5.25". It sucked.

 

For me, WD is dead -- too many colors, not enough focus.

 

Why do people complain about the drives they own?... 1... 2... 3... Answer... Because they own them?...

 

Backup!... (with the drives you hate)... Oddly enough, that's what I'm doing.

 

MrGrey.

 

Still pro Seagate, but the WD drives (and replacement) are still going (for now).

 

 

Edited November 29, 2022 by MrGrey

[ConnerVT]

On 8/29/2022 at 7:52 AM, gentux said:

I'd think the WD Ultrastar drives are made by the same processes and with some of the same people that did it under HGST while WD black/blue drives are made like the Caviar drives.

 

As I work in electronics manufacturing, what @gentux wrote is very true,  When one company buys out another, they are also buying the process, many of the suppliers, and definitely the people who worked for the original owner.  Yes, there will be, over time, changes to homogenize the operation to align it with the new owner.  Trust me, it doesn't happen overnight.  This was one of the reasons I populated my server with Ultrastar as well.

[gentux]

14 hours ago, ConnerVT said:

Yes, there will be, over time, changes to homogenize the operation to align it with the new owner.

Exactly, the dream of management called "synergy effects", but sometimes reality kicks in early enough and they see in time that they'll lose too many valuable customers if not homogenized properly like allowing higher tolerances to use same parts on multiple products or reducing QA in order to save on costs. Those high profile customers will notice and then move away to Toshiba and Seagate which hurts the bottom way line more than keeping them happy.

[Lolight]

On 9/2/2022 at 7:42 PM, ConnerVT said:

When one company buys out another, they are also buying the process, many of the suppliers, and definitely the people who worked for the original owner.

Changes don't happen overnight.

But they can happen over a year or two.

Every acquisition is different in scope and can not be treated as a uniformed process.

Processes can be partially kept so is the personnel. Or be completely disregarded for a new tech and people.

Some companies are being acquired strictly for the value of brand recognition or patent portfolio or customer base.

Everything else being secondary and expandable.

Suppliers could be kept, partially changed, or switched to new ones.

The workforce might get let go too, at least in part.

There's no template whatsoever, especially in the current fully automated environment where even car factories can be fully (completely) retooled with brand new equipment in a year or so.

 

Edited February 15, 2023 by Lolight

[Lolight]

On 5/12/2022 at 2:46 PM, HardwareHarry said:

I take the last reports from Backblaze and use the most reliable HDDs in that list when combining age, amount of drives and failures.

My conclusion from following this list since years is that in most cases you can not trust a manufacturer you have to have a look at specific drives.

I find BackBlaze's reports to be interesting, at most.

Though not particular useful for anything.

They provide absolutely no grounds for drawing any conclusions and should not influence your purchasing decisions.

Some of their blog posts are absolutely ridiculous, like the one where they come to a conclusion that there's no correlation between HDD operating temperatures and failure rates. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-temperature-does-it-matter/

 

Dispelling Backblaze's HDD Reliability Myth - The Real Story Covered

"We chronicle Backblaze's failed attempt to provide credible HDD reliability data. Read on to find out why you should pay no attention at all."

 

https://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6028/dispelling-backblaze-s-hdd-reliability-myth-the-real-story-covered/index.html

Edited February 15, 2023 by Lolight

[Lolight]

On 8/30/2022 at 5:14 PM, Evenimous said:

Seagate. I'm aware of their supposedly higher failure rate than other models when viewed in large numbers

According to who?

Can you share studies?

If you refer to Backblaze and their blog, then it's not a study - mostly speculation designed to promote their services.

In other words - a hugely successful marketing campaign that doesn't cost them a penny.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Lolight

[GRRRRRRR]

Recently I like WD dual actuators and optinand and the metadata on the logic board. I would also like to see the metadata backed up on the HBA and on the host as well.

 

I am also perfectly fine with fully saturating the available rack space with different disks, configured in a way that reduces stress, vibrations, and so on creates a good environment where the cheapest drives are not really expected to fail or cause problems during replacing.

 

I can also create partitions that skip the beginning of a drive if I am not sure how it was used previously so there is a less chance of defects near metadata area or overused area.

 

Sometimes I can repair PCB I don't really count that as drive failure if I can repair it cheaply by swapping burned resistor capacitor or diode.

[caplam]

When buying hdd i'm driven by the price/capacity ratio.

When capacity was around 160G-500G it was samsung.

With the 1,5TB-2TB generation it was seagate. (ST1500DM001 and ST2000DM001)

With 3 and 4 TB generation i started with WD red then seagate ironwolf.

With 6TB i mainly used shucked seagate expansion disks.

I then stopped upgrading capacity as i found for my needs drive capacity was enough and going bigger was a huge step in term of money.

Now i plan a significant upgrade. For now best price/capacity ratio is for 16TB drives (exos x16 or toshiba MG08 sitting around 16€/TB). Here in europe storage prices are higher. In U.S you can have huge deals on entreprise grade hdd or ssd.

I already lost hours rebuilding data so unraid or raid i always go for 2 parity drives and array limited to 6 or 8 drives. 

 

[Evenimous]

On 2/15/2023 at 1:14 AM, Lolight said:

According to who?

Can you share studies?

If you refer to Backblaze and their blog, then it's not a study - mostly speculation designed to promote their services.

In other words - a hugely successful marketing campaign that doesn't cost them a penny.

Sorry for the super late reply, I never got an email notification for this lol.

 

Before I continue, my reasoning for picking Seagate was that for their higher capacity drives, you can get $/GB that rivals shucking or beats it for some of their Exos line and for some of their NAS specific drives. 

 

Regarding the "studies", it was this one by Backblaze, as you had assumed. Say what you want, but regardless of them trying to promote their services, they are reporting based on their use of those drives, so they can't be too far from the truth. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-2022/ If you are aware of any other hard drive / ssd failure rate and doa rate articles or studies, I would be happy to read them.

[Lolight]

On 4/20/2023 at 5:04 PM, Evenimous said:

If you are aware of any other hard drive / ssd failure rate and doa rate articles or studies, I would be happy to read them.

But that's the thing, isn't it?

 

I'm not aware of any statistical HDD longevity study based on a scientific methodology as related to differences between models and manufacturers.

Which is understandable considering enormous costs required to conduct such a project.

 

Backblaze's conclusions are not studies - they're off the wall interpretations of particular data sets.

They're not even remotely good (to put it mildly) at interpretation tasks.

But it doesn't matter (to them).

They have quickly recognized an opportunity to market their services to the millions worldwide at a super low cost.

 

Here's their own admission: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/10-stories-from-10-years-of-drive-stats-data/

 

"Little did we know at the time that we’d be collecting the data for the next 10 years or writing various Drive Stats reports that are read by millions, but here we are."

"...search engines were falling all over themselves referring new readers to the site based on searches for variants of the title and the post became first page search material for multiple years."

 

Just consider their another very popular "study" based on a bogus criteria which resulted in the outright ridiculous conclusion that there's no correlation between HDD's operating temperatures and failure rates: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-temperature-does-it-matter/

 

You say they can't be too far from the truth.

I'd say that their findings have nothing to do with the truth.

 

Since finding the truth is not what motivates them in conducting their "studies".

They don't have any competency for the task.

Their competence is in providing backup services, accompanied by the goal of growing their customer base.

Their Drive Stats blog is used as a vehicle to efficiently market their services to the main target market.

 

Which really does not do any good to anyone who's looking for any kind of an objective HDD long term quality related data in order to make an informed purchasing decision.

The tech media plays its part in spreading around Backblaze's bogus conclusions, often using catchy headlines, as if Backblaze is considered to be some kind of an authority on statistical analysis.

And then that garbage gets copy/pasted all over the net.

 

Dispelling Backblaze's HDD Reliability Myth - The Real Story Covered:

https://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6028/dispelling-backblaze-s-hdd-reliability-myth-the-real-story-covered/index.html

Edited April 21, 2023 by Lolight

[aaronwt]

Fifteen years ago I strictly used WD drives for my LAN storage.

But over the years I gradually switched to Seagate. First Seagate Barracuda drives. Then Seagate Iron Wolf. Then Seagate Terascale.

Most recently I started using the Seagate EXOS drives. I recently purchased seventeen of the 14TB Exos X14 drives, renewed.

And six of the 12TB EXOS X18 drives, renewed. 

 

Although I still use WD drives, for my external USB drives, that are attached to my Plex PCs. And also in my old unRAIDs. For my new unRAIDs, I have gone all in with Seagate. Except for the cache drive. Which are 1TB Samsung 870 EVO SSDs. And once I transfer all my content from my oldest unRAID setups, which still use the ReiserFS file system. I will purge the forty or so, old 2TB and 3TB, WD drives. And will be left with only Seagate Terascale and Exos drives, in all my unRAID setups.

Edited May 31, 2023 by aaronwt

[Oakfig]

On 8/28/2022 at 5:15 PM, SLNetworks said:

What's that suppose to mean?

I guess none of them was certified Seagate drives.? 

[PackRatt]

WD. Every Seagate drive I have ever bought has died after just over a year. My WD drives are pushing 5 years and are just trucking along with no issues. 

 

That being said, if the old drive warning issue is real I will be looking into a different vendor for drives. 

[itimpi]

1 hour ago, PackRatt said:

WD. Every Seagate drive I have ever bought has died after just over a year. My WD drives are pushing 5 years and are just trucking along with no issues. 

Just shows how hard it is to generalise.    My WD drives are the ones that die while the Seagates as the ones that seem to go on forever.

[HardwareHarry]

3 hours ago, PackRatt said:

WD. Every Seagate drive I have ever bought has died after just over a year. My WD drives are pushing 5 years and are just trucking along with no issues. 

 

1 hour ago, itimpi said:

Just shows how hard it is to generalise.    My WD drives are the ones that die while the Seagates as the ones that seem to go on forever.

 

 

In my experience WD in general gets much hotter than Seagate or Toshiba without propper cooling. Perhaps it's a cooling issue?

I have 5x 3TB WD RED (working since 9 years now) 6x 8TB WD White label shucked from WD Mybooks(working since perhaps 5 years now) and 6x 16TB Toshibe (working since 3 years now), a 10Tb WD white label shucked from WD MyBook also working since perhaps 5 years now. None of them failed (knock on wood). I stil reccomend my method mentioned above and I think the critisism is pretty construed for what the data is actually providing. 

 

Quote

"My conclusion from following this list since years is that in most cases you can not trust a manufacturer you have to have a look at specific drives."

 

 

 

 

Edited February 21 by HardwareHarry

[FlyingTexan]

Ultrastars are the only drive I'll buy.  They are so much quieter. 

[Rysz]

I've been using Seagate forever but going to switch to Toshibas going forward.

[tylerf]

Western Digital Reds have done well for me over the years.