I've heard that as far as HDD's go the only brand to go with if you want your hard drive to last a long time is WD... I'm not sure if this is true... I have no experience... If anyone has any great experience with a cheaper HDD brand that would be great as it is right now I can only afford the 1 terabyte Caviar Blue... But I'd like more storage then that...
The only people that will say WD is much more reliable than Seagate are WD fanboys, or old people stuck in the 90's.
I don't have much experience with WD drives, but nearly all my drives have been Seagate. Not a single issue. The warranties between the two are identical (there might be a difference in customer service, but I've never needed it), and Seagate seems to slightly cheaper. Some synthetic benchmarks also indicate Seagate drives are also slightly faster.
If you order a drive online, avoid the Newegg's Eggsaver shipping. I've notice a lot of negative reviews on both WD and Seagate drives about DOA, but identical models on Amazon get much better reviews. I've concluded it's inadequate packaging/handling.
I do have one Toshiba drive, but it's as slow as molasses. It's a 4200RPM laptop drive, Parallel ATA connection, from a Dell Laptop that is ~10 years old. Outside of speed, no issues.
I would avoid the ongoing Seagate HDD's as they are focusing on gaining market share thus the quality will be suffering.
WD digital, get the black caviar ones - they are most reliable over the blues/greens/reds.
Don't pick higher capacity drive than 1TB as the fail rate probability almost doubles with bigger drives.
I would say wd black wd blue and seagate barracuda is the way to go
Blacks will be the fastest and also very reliable, but reds will be the most reliable overall, they are designed for NAS and Home server use, Lower power & heat compsuntion ect...
Also just because segate may be going for market share, doesnt mean there drives will be DOA, having a high failure rate is a great way to lose customer support and thus marketshare.
Both WD and Segate drives will probably be equally as good, just go for whatever is the better bang for your buck.
There is a a reason seagate barracuda drives are cheap and that is because of the poor failure rate that has been plaguing seagate for sometime now.
DOA HD FAIL dosent mean nothing 99% of the time its down too bad shiping.
Old seagate drives of old are boom proof i have decade old SATA(1) seagates that still run
new seagates i whont touch ive had too meny die or delivered with bad platters ive had to send back
Definetely western digital. Every single seagate i've had has had issues of some kind. Be it freezing up or overheating. That said, most of mine are 7200.11 with a single 7200.12.
Get caviar blacks if you can.
Atleast seagate's warranty service is somewhat alright. although their communication is dreadful.
caviar blacks are totally not worth it, usually the seagate barracuda's will be 2/3rds of the price and from my experience of over 30 new HDDs over the last 5 years (WD blacks, SG's and hitachi's) the caviar blacks are my least preferred due to the fact that they are more expensive and generally are louder (especially when starting). Seagate and hitachi are on par, the hitachi's may be slightly ahead considering they were generally cheaper.
TL:DR - Any new HDD has very similar failure rates. If you're really that worried, find the cheapest HDD in the size you want and buy two for a Raid1 setup
I'm running a WD Black 1TB, I have only had it a while so I can't comment on reliability. It is however a little loud, if you do get one then make sure it's well vibration isolated. I have a Define R3 and drive mounts are isolated with rubber so the sound isn't too loud but I can hear it. Given all of the sound insulation on the R3 my guess is that it would be noticeable on other less well insulated cases. Doesn’t answer the OP's question but it might be relevant to any purchase decision...
caviar blacks are totally not worth it, usually the seagate barracuda's will be 2/3rds of the price and from my experience of over 30 new HDDs over the last 5 years (WD blacks, SG's and hitachi's) the caviar blacks are my least preferred due to the fact that they are more expensive and generally are louder (especially when starting). Seagate and hitachi are on par, the hitachi's may be slightly ahead considering they were generally cheaper.TL:DR - Any new HDD has very similar failure rates. If you're really that worried, find the cheapest HDD in the size you want and buy two for a Raid1 setup
+1
The best way to assure reliability is redundancy. Two or more mechanical drives mirrored (RAID 1) will give you better reliability than even the best single drive. Not to mention you get a little boost in read speeds.
I've got a old western digital caviar IDE Hard drive in my server. I bought it back in 2000. No signs of failing anytime soon
when I was working as a pc tech i saw plenty of dead drives, I only ever saw one WD and I never saw a seagate, that said I have never personally had a WD drive fail. It seemed toshiba's were the worst offenders for failures, both WD and Seagate should be fine for most situations
i have 2X 10GB Ancient WD black drives that are still going strong
where as none of my old seagate.maxtor drives still work
that said, by todays standards i doubt theres too much difference, the computer shop up the road has been using seagate for ages now with little troubles
Still using WD myself though, Ill go with whatever is the best deal at the time.
I like them both just get whatever one that is on sale.
WD make terrible 2.5" drives, however i havent been able to kill my seagate 2.5". This leads me to believe that seagate are so much better than WD when it comes to making drives.
I've also had my mates tell me that they've had trouvle with WD green and Blue drives in the past. I dont know how this happened but one of his WD drives managed to shatter itself while it was installed in a system; and after that they wouldnt give him a refund.
The Golden Rules for Consumer-Grade Storage
- 2 cheap drives are better than 1 top-quality drive.
- Use a program for making backups, don't use RAID-1.
Basically, buy whatever is on sale, buy 2, backup, be happy.
I love Acronis TrueImage, but free tools like Windows SyncToy will do just fine.
Seagate drives are great, they used to have bad rep back in the day, but today I can tell you they are great HDDs.
However WD black hard drives are better than ther regular Barracudas. they have less failure chance and more warranty (they are more expensive too).
I've been using Barracudas for years, I started using computers since the age of about 4, only really understanding them till the age of about 15 but they've always had barracudas in them and not a single one has died on me or fucked me about.
If you want your hard drive to be guaranteed a very long life then I'd recommend going to the store and picking on up manually, you'll save shipping charges and you'll be able to ensure it won't get damaged, (as long as you don't strap it to your tire on the way back home from the store...).
Save your money and go with something you won't regret in my opinion.
The only people who have a somewhat objective experience are those that run 1000+ drives. Just follow TagUrToast's advice and run 2 cheap drives in a raid.
around 5 months ago I bought a wd blue for my desktop and a Seagate momentus for my laptop, the wd gets daily use and has been running flawlessly (as things should that new), Seagate barely got used and the heads decided to destroy the entire platter(s)
just one mans experiences