Choosing an HDD

Hi, i was looking for a new hard drive for my rig since im out of space, there is 2 good options, a 2tb or 3tb, both are Seagate barracuda but i dont know which one could be more reliable, going for the 3tb is my best bet because the other one has a version where the platters are divided by 3.what do you think is more convenient? price wise theyre very similar

2tb $98 usd http://www.solotodo.com/products/5944-seagate-barracuda-2-tb-st2000dm001/
3tb $128 usd http://www.solotodo.com/products/5109-seagate-barracuda-3-tb-st3000dm001/

Dont buy a Seagate drive - highest failure rate of all manufacturers (was up at 20%+ between 2012 - 2015)

really? not what i have experienced , i have 2 seagates, 240 gb and 1tb, they havent failed me for at least 3 years. the first one got the sata connection broke but it was a transportation accident. the only WD i can afford is this one at 59 bucks
http://www.solotodo.com/storage_drives/?min_price=19900&max_price=1239900&keywords=&type=203914&brand=204692&family=&line=&capacity=204257&rpm=204380&size=204422&bus=204750&advanced_controls=1&ordering=

If that is based on the backblaze statistics I wouldn't bother. Backblaze uses desktop drives for server loads.

@chileanfox What is your budget? I assume it is for general desktop stuff like music and pictures and videos and games... ?

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Yes exactly that, to store stuff in general, not even using an OS, i intend to buy an SSD for that, would it be safer to go for an external drive? i think those are more fragile and the idea is to have a long term reliable storage. The 3tb Seagate looks like the best option so far , and the budget is 130 dollars

Well, everything that you want to keep save needs to be backed up. Every HDD WILL die. It is just a matter of time/luck.

Having said that the price differences between a WD blue and a barracuda are not that big. (WD blue is now basically what green was before.)

Ummmm

WD Red 2TB

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Wait what. Then it would totally be relevant because he's going to buy consumer drives lol

The important part of the sentence are the last three words.

other independent hard drive failure analysis surveys that are hard to find and far and few between reveal hitachi being better design and reliability and seemingly never failure due to manufacturing defect, seagate and WD kind of on even footing, they're failure rates fluctuate a bit, the dirt cheap WD and dirt cheap seagate drives are like on par, WD seems to be fazing out the WD green range, I hope so at least. I'm not a fan of toshiba hard drives or samsung.
Also any will fail if they have enough vibration or severe enough impact or over heating, you never know if something horrible happened to your hard drive like being dropped on concrete by accident before being boxed up and sent to you.
Just don't rely on a single seagate to be the only store of your data because you've owned two and they didn't fail, especially if they're 3-4 years old, that's old age for a cheap hard drive especially and they can become sick or fail with not much warning, or spontaneously fail one day, I see plenty of seagates spontaneously fail at around 3-4 years of age. And the customer expected the hard drive to last i dunno forever that's why they had no backup.


My real world experiences with the failures i see fall in line with their predictions, 80% of drives live to 4 years, after that failure rates does increase definitely, 50% of drives still living at the 6 year mark is very close to the reality i see.
It is nice to know which brands and drives handle a flogging the best, it's a good indicator of which should last the longest. and keep in mind with the failure rate statistics, the 1.5TB seagate drives were a bit flaky and i think it's the 3TB drives they got a heap of refurbed drives from seagate and i think it was the refurbed drives failing a second time blowing up the failure rates a bit.
Comparing the number of drives they have in service to the failure rates help see the bigger picture too.
They have a fraction of the number of WD drives in service by comparison so the statistics need more than just a quick glance. they still seem to be buying mostly seagate and hitachi

WD black drives have a 5 year warranty with WD, they do perform better and last longer than cheaper drives.
As far as i know all other consumer drives have 3 year warranties, correct me if I'm wrong.

remember when Logan's Nas died it has 3 or 4 seagate 3TB drives in it

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And your personal experience is based on drives that were used in desktops? Let's say 8 hours a day instead of 24?

Sure you can conclude that hgst drives seem to be the better choice when you intend to use them wrong. But if you are not looking for drives to put in a NAS or server, even simple barracudas or greens are fine.

It depends on your use case is.

If this is a personal computer, that you just surf the internet and play games on then it doesn't really matter IMO. If it's a computer that you're doing IO heavy operations then it does.

It sounds like data integrity is important to you. If that's the case, then you should undoubtedly run some kind of RAID setup.

no most are end user laptops or desktops, lets not assume 8 hours a day, I've seen some end users treat their shit pretty bad. cheaper drives do have a greater probability of spontaneous failure, with out needing to be used 24 hours a day with a lot of IO operations, I've seen several cases of people archiving a heap of data to a seagate external, if gets left turned off and disconnected away safely, 6-8 months later when they try it again, the internal mechanics of the hard drive have failed.......I see dead hard drives all the time.

I went for the 2tb Seagate Barracuda, hasnt arrived yet, but as you said, these hard drives should be good enough for home use