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WD or Seagate drives?

gavinstubbs09

gavinstubbs09

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 17, 2013
1,386
256
NorCal boonies ~~~by Reno sorta
Wanted to see what everyones opinion is. For me it seems that WD fails. I have not have 1 drive last longer than 2 years from them (this being laptop Blue drives, green desktop and laptop drives, some blacks) and it's all bad. I just had a 1TB My PassPort bite the dust. Now all my Time Machine backups gone.

However on the flip side, I've had Seagate drives for years on end and have never needed to RMA one of them.
 
WD or Seagate drives?

I like Western Digital's My Passport. I've had two 1TB drives and they're working great. One is over a year and the other I just got a month ago.
 
I've had WD's in my last two Imac's, no problems at all. My current machine has the 3TB fusion unit, and is also fine.

I did have two Hitachi's die on my R4, but they are 1TB enterprise units. Seagate did have issues a while back, but are good now, so I think it comes down to getting the best price you can.
 
Currently both seagate and WD drives are good, but there are certain models more troublesome than others, and they all can fail. If you've had that many drives fail, you may be abusing them.

Personally, the only drives I've had fail over the past 3-4 years were a couple seagates. I have quite a few WD blue, WD enterprise, Seagate and Hitachi drives all working several years without issue.

So as stated above, look for a good deal on something that suits your needs. A few months ago there were several reports of issues with 4TB drives, so you may want to limit size to 3 TB for now.
 
gavinstubbs09 said:
Wanted to see what everyones opinion is. For me it seems that WD fails. I have not have 1 drive last longer than 2 years from them (this being laptop Blue drives, green desktop and laptop drives, some blacks) and it's all bad. I just had a 1TB My PassPort bite the dust. Now all my Time Machine backups gone.

However on the flip side, I've had Seagate drives for years on end and have never needed to RMA one of them.
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Internal drives, either Seagate or WD. For external, Seagate - the WD external enclosures seem to have more than their fair share of issues.
 
Other than the drive in my MBP (still the original drive), all my spinning drives are WDs, with an OCZ SSD in my desktop for the OS.
 
Bear said:
Internal drives, either Seagate or WD. For external, Seagate - the WD external enclosures seem to have more than their fair share of issues.
Click to expand...

I agree with this too.

I have thrown out almost any WD enclosure I have owned and put the drives to use in other computers or enclosures.
 
I don't think that WD drives have proportionally more issues than Seagate ones, there're more of them out there so you just see a relatively greater amount of them having problems.

Let the one star reviews for their respective 1GB portable, external drive be the example here:

WD: 312 out of 3929 - 7.9%
Seagate: 160 out of 1484 - 10.8%

I see roughly a tie.
 
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Six of one, half dozen of another. That is both are about the same and it doesn't really matter if you choose WD or Seagate.

I prefer Western Digital but plenty of my computers already came with Seagate and they've never had any problems.
 
maflynn said:
Six of one, half dozen of another. That is both are about the same and it doesn't really matter if you choose WD or Seagate.

I prefer Western Digital but plenty of my computers already came with Seagate and they've never had any problems.
Click to expand...

I agree - both are pretty reliable etc. It doesnt matter which you go for.
Personally, I'd go for whichever is cheaper.
 
ColdCase said:
A few months ago there were several reports of issues with 4TB drives, so you may want to limit size to 3 TB for now.
Click to expand...

Were there any specific 4TB drives that were problematic? Thought about buying one of them actually and was deciding between WD and Seagate too...
 
Bear said:
Internal drives, either Seagate or WD. For external, Seagate - the WD external enclosures seem to have more than their fair share of issues.
Click to expand...

Internal HDD from Seagate failed on me twice both with 300GB Seagate gave me brand new 750GB anyway. I love Seagate's 5 years warranty! :apple:
 
For portable drives I have one of each... a 500MB SeaGate GoFlex and a 2TB WD MyPassPort. (I find that the SeaGate portable drive gets very hot if it runs for extended periods, so it only gets used for transferring the occasional document from my work computer (a PC) to my MBA, in addition to serving as a secondary backup disk. The WD is my iTunes media's "vacation home" and can remain plugged in for hours without heating up.)

My desktop external drive is a Toshiba Cavio 3TB, and it stays plugged into my TC. (It keeps a clone of my MBA's HDD, and also serves as the primary residence for my iTunes media and iPhoto libraries....)
 
The Seagate drive in my 2011 iMac failed a week or two ago and Apple replaced it with a WD drive. I have had reasonable success with both manufacturers, but Seagate did produce a batch of duds that Apple had to replace in the 2011 iMacs. (Note, my drive was not on the recall list, but failed anyway.)
 
My 1TB My Passport died yesterday, only had it four months.:mad:

Want to return for a refund but not keen on handing over as used it for Time Machine so has backups on it.

Do I just swallow the cost or take it back?
 
WD or Seagate drives?

Same here. My little sister dropped my 1TB WD hard drive on a marble floor yesterday and it stopped working. When I connect it to my laptop, the LED lights up (the light usually flickers but after the fall it's just solid) but the external HDD icon doesn't show up on my desktop, it's like my MacBook doesn't recognize it. Fortunately, I have a backup on my other 1TB My Passport that I got only a month ago.
 
I used to hate WD due to ongoing reliability issues with almost every single WD drive I had. But I haven't had that experience with them in years now. Frankly, I think you'll do fine with both Seagate and WD. Enterprise-class drives from both are pretty bulletproof lately, and their consumer-grade drives are good too. I prefer Seagate for the sheer performance of the current Barracudas, which is fantastic, but I wouldn't feel bad using WD drives either.

The only exception I'd make is WD Greens. After witnessing those failing in NAS setups regularly, I cannot recommend them and would not use them.

Still, for me, advantage to Seagate. Especially for the Constellations; unless you get a lemon they simply will not die. And that I like.
 
takeshi74 said:
Anecdotal evidence really doesn't mean much.
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Yes, totally agree. In my past life I worked as the only IT guy for a company with 200 employees. I took care of hardware purchasing, repair, upgrade. There are some hard drive models that are more prone to failure than others, but things changes all the time and manufacturers make changes all the time to address problems. It's impossible to say that one manufacturer is more reliable than other.

I think all hard drive manufacturer want to make reliable products as there is no cost saving in making less reliable products.

All hard drive will fail. It is just a matter of when. Asking this forum for opinion is like screaming to a crowd: which light bulb should I buy?
 
I have 5 WD Caviar Black drives and I'm pretty happy with them. I just get that and an external enclosure and I'm good. Every 2 years I upgrade the drive to a higher capacity and with faster enclosure for all my important backups and and my old drives get used and abused. So far...no failures, no problems. I'm sure you'll always come across a bad bunch but I think that goes for anything.

Just a thought, I would stay away from those pre-packaged external drives unless you have no tech experience. Plus, for some reason they tend to have lower specs. Plugging in a hard drive into an enclosure is really really easy and you can pick and choose whatever you want. G'luck.
 
meistervu said:
All hard drive will fail. It is just a matter of when. Asking this forum for opinion is like screaming to a crowd: which light bulb should I buy?
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This is EXACTLY what I tell people when I they ask why it failed when I tell them their drive failed.
 
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