Western Digital, or another Seagate?

[kofman13]

Little backstory. My main computer Boot drive is a Samsung evo 850 ssd.
I use a Seagate external 3TB drive for extra storage and also backups of my Boot drive. I was recently using my old internal seagate SSHD which used to be my primary before my SSD, as a second drive in the optical SATA bay. But sadly this secondary seagate laptop drive died the other day so now i am more paranoid about backup....
so now i am shopping for a new, second external drive to essentially back up my other external storage/backup drive. And i am looking at two options.

I can either get another Seagate Expansion desktop 3TB drive, same as the one i use now for $100

OR

a 4TB Western digital external for $119


I am kind of scared of Seagate after my laptop drive died, and i've been reading alot about that BlackBlaze article....


thoughts on seagate vs WD?

 

[ColdCase]

Any drive can give you problems or provide years of service.

I have used Seagate Backup Plus, Barracuda, Momentus, Constelation and WD MyBook, EADs, Blues, Reds for years without issue.. 3.5 inch HGSTs and their enclosures have given me some problems, 2.5s have been solid.

If you are anxious, spend a little more money and buy the drive with longest warranty and then pick the best deal.

I've been buying Seagate Contelations when I need performance, WD REDS when I want lower power and just durability.

 

[steve62388]

Forget the Backblaze stuff, their methodology and reporting has been discredited. The first article was posted all over the place as click bait, the problem is people read it without ever following up and so still assume it to be accurate and to this day continue to quote it everywhere.

Sources:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/17/backblaze_how_not_to_evaluate_disk_reliability/
http://www.enterprisestorageforum.c...ng-a-disk-drive-how-not-to-do-research-1.html

 

[JTToft]

Forget the Backblaze stuff, their methodology and reporting has been discredited. The first article was posted all over the place as click bait, the problem is people read it without ever following up and so still assume it to be accurate and to this day continue to quote it everywhere.

Sources:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/17/backblaze_how_not_to_evaluate_disk_reliability/
http://www.enterprisestorageforum.c...ng-a-disk-drive-how-not-to-do-research-1.html

- Thanks for that. While not entirely without problems itself, Newman's article does point out some problems with BlackBlaze's article. I will disregard their numbers in my hard disk drive related endeavours from now on.

In my years of computing, I have yet to have a hard drive fail completely.
I currently own 4 Western Digital drives (three 3.5" and one 2.5"), 2 Seagate drives (one 3.5" and one 2.5"), 1 Hitachi drive (2.5"), and one of unknown manufacturer (a LaCie external). The oldest (a WD) is 9+ years. None have yet had issues.

(Plus a 2.5 year-old Samsung SSD, which is also perfect.)

 

[matreya]

Quite frankly, I wouldn't buy either WD or Seagate at their entry level products... I would opt for Toshiba or HGST.

At present I have 8 x 3TB & 4 x 4TB HGST Deskstar and Deskstar NAS drives, and 4 x 2TB Toshiba (which are just ex-hitachi drives anyway)

I built a RAID array using an OWC Qx2 and 4 x 2TB Hitachi Deskstars 3 years ago, and gave it to a friend, it's still running perfectly now.

 

[foobarbazqux]

thoughts on seagate vs WD?

All you're going to get is a bunch of anecdotal evidence of why people pick one over the other, which is meaningless. I wouldn't put much stock in that BackBlaze article either. There's only one thing you can count on and that is hard drives fail. Pick one and plan on it failing eventually. That's why I have several backups of important things.

I am kind of scared of Seagate after my laptop drive died

That evidence alone doesn't make Seagate any worse than WD. There are plenty of people out there who have had a WD drive fail but never a Seagate.

 

[ColdCase]

Quite frankly, I wouldn't buy either WD or Seagate at their entry level products... I would opt for Toshiba or HGST.

At present I have 8 x 3TB & 4 x 4TB HGST Deskstar and Deskstar NAS drives, and 4 x 2TB Toshiba (which are just ex-hitachi drives anyway)

I built a RAID array using an OWC Qx2 and 4 x 2TB Hitachi Deskstars 3 years ago, and gave it to a friend, it's still running perfectly now.

Hitachi of today is much different that hitachi of three years ago. I have had nothing but problems with my five one year old 3TB Hitachis..... three failed completely. My 4TB drive is doing well, however. Just saying that one needs to be more specific about drive model/part number and firmware version to be relevant. All manufactures make failure prone models and great models.

I would tend not to buy, or think twice about buying hitachi (which is now part of WD) or toshiba branded drives.. but thats just me.

I would look at the more current B&H, Amazon, and Newegg reviews for trends.

 

[Badrottie]

I trusted Seagate because they have a 5 year warranty and also they gave me a bigger 750GB hard drive than my original 400GB HD.

 

[thedeske]

I trusted Seagate because they have a 5 year warranty and also they gave me a bigger 750GB hard drive than my original 400GB HD.

A warranty doesn't do **** for your lost data when it bombs.
Keep many copies of whatever you have.

There is no perfect drive, so backup on more than one and good luck!

 

[A.Goldberg]

To add to the anecdotal evidence I've purchased 5 WD and 1 seagate drive. One of the WD failed (not the drive but the FW interface stopped working) and the seagate drive failed entirely. I also have 2 LaCie drives (I'm not sure who makes their HDs), both of which have had no problems, though their reliability is generally considered worse than WD or Seagate.

As others have stated it really comes down to luck. Both drives are good. Redundancy is the best way to secure yor data ultimately.

 

[Badrottie]

A warranty doesn't do **** for your lost data when it bombs.
Keep many copies of whatever you have.

There is no perfect drive, so backup on more than one and good luck!

Yeah you got that right but it is better than to buy another BIGGER hard drive.