New HDD HGST vs WD vs Seagate

[liilMatt]

http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Deskstar-3-5-Inch-Internal-0S03660/dp/B00HHAJU7K/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1429127766&sr=1-1&keywords=hgst+3tb

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Performance-Desktop-Hard-Drive/dp/B00FJRS5OW/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1429127700&sr=1-4&keywords=WD+Black

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005T3GRLY//ref=cm_sw_su_dp?tag=storagerealm-20

 

These are my options. I was considering a WD Green, but if this is going to be my only alternative to my ssd, I wants a bit of performance (in case I have to use it for gaming).

 

I'm upgrading from a 120 gb ssd to a 250 gb, but it is also time to upgrade hdds. I have 3 different hdds right now, but they are getting sloppy and unorganized. I want a 3 tb to suite my needs for a few years, without worrying about not having enough space.

 

There's Seagate - fast, cheap, but not particularly reliable

Hgst - just as fast, cheaper than the black, and supposedly the most reliable

Black WD - fastest, $25 more expensive than the hgst, but may be most suitable to desktop uses over hgst.

 

My goal is to have something I will be happy with, but given that I have other upgrades that I need to attend to budget is a concern. I will have everything backed up that is important to me, but I still would prefer not having to replace my hdd after 2 years (coughcoughseagate). So pay twice as much for similar performance on the Black Series?

 

I want some opinions guys!

[-iSynthesis]

Im very satisfied with my Seagate. With that price difference i would defnetly go for it, its not worth 50+$ for the black since its not that much faster, if at all.

Also, why isnt Seagate reliable??? 

Edit: I actually believe Barracudas outperform Blacks, if someone could post a HDTune Benchmark of his black maybe?

 

 

[terrytek]

http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Deskstar-3-5-Inch-Internal-0S03660/dp/B00HHAJU7K/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1429127766&sr=1-1&keywords=hgst+3tb

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Performance-Desktop-Hard-Drive/dp/B00FJRS5OW/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1429127700&sr=1-4&keywords=WD+Black

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005T3GRLY//ref=cm_sw_su_dp?tag=storagerealm-20

 

These are my options. I was considering a WD Green, but if this is going to be my only alternative to my ssd, I wants a bit of performance (in case I have to use it for gaming).

 

I'm upgrading from a 120 gb ssd to a 250 gb, but it is also time to upgrade hdds. I have 3 different hdds right now, but they are getting sloppy and unorganized. I want a 3 tb to suite my needs for a few years, without worrying about not having enough space.

 

There's Seagate - fast, cheap, but not particularly reliable

Hgst - just as fast, cheaper than the black, and supposedly the most reliable

Black WD - fastest, $25 more expensive than the hgst, but may be most suitable to desktop uses over hgst.

 

My goal is to have something I will be happy with, but given that I have other upgrades that I need to attend to budget is a concern. I will have everything backed up that is important to me, but I still would prefer not having to replace my hdd after 2 years (coughcoughseagate). So pay twice as much for similar performance on the Black Series?

 

I want some opinions guys!

Well, if you list all those pros with HGST, then you've already answered your question.

[Akolyte]

I'd just get Seagate because I don't know the Hgst brand.  

 

Either way, Black WD is probably my choice just because I've had better experience with them, saying that I've only had one ever Seagate drive fail and could have been my fault.  

[liilMatt]

 

This is the chart that I have found all around the web. HGST is supposed to be the most reliable around the internet, but it may be optimized for Nas only, and not for desktop uses. Or so I have heard.

[cox1000]

Segate has been proven to be unreliable as shown above, I have 2 hitachi in raid 1 and can confirm, after 5 years neither has died. Seagate barracudas seem to die quickly, and randomly, without the standard symptoms. Although I only bought one set of senate drives so I may have just received a bad batch.

[-iSynthesis]

 

This is the chart that I have found all around the web. HGST is supposed to be the most reliable around the internet, but it may be optimized for Nas only, and not for desktop uses. Or so I have heard.

The problem with this chart is that it was made by backblaze, they are testing drives 24/7 in an industrial enviroment. As tomshardware said, this is not ideal at all for Barracudas aswell as wd greens because they spin down when not used, they spin up when used, this leads to sometimes the drives spinning up and down in the time of a few minutes, greatly increasing their wear.

I want to see a test where the drivers are not used 24/7, just in a normal PC. The difference wont be significant and for a private user, not worth 50+$ more.

My old WD Green 750gb failed after about 5 years of use, it was trusty and slow on its way but ended up dieing. So far no problem with the Barracuda, it's surpassed it's average living time from that statistic already.

[cox1000]

The problem with this chart is that it was made by backblaze, they are testing drives 24/7 in an industrial enviroment. As tomshardware said, this is not ideal at all for Barracudas aswell as wd greens because they spin down when not used, they spin up when used, this leads to sometimes the drives spinning up and down in the time of a few minutes, greatly increasing their wear.

I want to see a test where the drivers are not used 24/7, just in a normal PC. The difference wont be significant and for a private user, not worth 50+$ more.

 

Therefore showing WD drives are more reliable? Or have I missed something?

[liilMatt]

I believe I did read something on that, like turning on a car many times a day, the ignition switch will die? So do all of you think then that the seagate will be fine for desktop use?

[-iSynthesis]

Therefore showing WD drives are more reliable? Or have I missed something?

Thats what the statistic shows, correct... 

We should probably make a poll thread under hard drives with Failure rates of LTT. 

[cox1000]

Looking at the prices, the HGST looks like a good choice. Seagate seems a bit hit and miss from my own experiences but I may have just been unlucky, although looking at the stats, that seems to be true.

[liilMatt]

Thats what the statistic shows, correct... 

We should probably make a poll thread under hard drives with Failure rates of LTT. 

LTT?

[Captain_WD]

http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Deskstar-3-5-Inch-Internal-0S03660/dp/B00HHAJU7K/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1429127766&sr=1-1&keywords=hgst+3tb

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Performance-Desktop-Hard-Drive/dp/B00FJRS5OW/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1429127700&sr=1-4&keywords=WD+Black

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005T3GRLY//ref=cm_sw_su_dp?tag=storagerealm-20

 

These are my options. I was considering a WD Green, but if this is going to be my only alternative to my ssd, I wants a bit of performance (in case I have to use it for gaming).

 

I'm upgrading from a 120 gb ssd to a 250 gb, but it is also time to upgrade hdds. I have 3 different hdds right now, but they are getting sloppy and unorganized. I want a 3 tb to suite my needs for a few years, without worrying about not having enough space.

 

There's Seagate - fast, cheap, but not particularly reliable

Hgst - just as fast, cheaper than the black, and supposedly the most reliable

Black WD - fastest, $25 more expensive than the hgst, but may be most suitable to desktop uses over hgst.

 

My goal is to have something I will be happy with, but given that I have other upgrades that I need to attend to budget is a concern. I will have everything backed up that is important to me, but I still would prefer not having to replace my hdd after 2 years (coughcoughseagate). So pay twice as much for similar performance on the Black Series?

 

I want some opinions guys!

 

 

Hey liilMatt,

 

Since you are looking for a storage drive, pretty much any would do the job. 3TB drives have higher density of data and thus have higher speed rates. WD Green is a great drive to consider as it runs cool, quiet and saves energy and still fast enough to stream and run some games and programs. Gaming relies on storage only for loading times and FPS and graphics stay unaffected. 

I can say about WD Black that it has a number of features that make it a good and reliable performance drive. Besides the longer warranty and the higher transfer speeds, it is build to sustain harsher environments and longer and heavier workloads. It also performs better than normal drives during multitasking due to the built-in dual-core CPU and the optimized caching. 

 

Captain_WD.

[TheMcSame]

Here's my rule: If you can get HGST then get HGST. Their drives are very reliable, Logan seems to like them a lot as well.

 

While Blackblaze's results are flawed, it does show which drives are built to take more punishment.

[Caeradwyn]

Not only are Blackblaze's results flawed, but their way of sourcing drives is.

 

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

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/198154-2014-hard-drive-failure-rates-point-to-clear-winners-and-losers-but-is-the-data-good

 

I would personally take their test results with a very large grain of salt. They are basically testing cheap external storage SATA drives in an enterprise type environment. Basically a stupid way of testing drives. Swap out all those drives for Enterprise SAS drives and the results would most likely be completely different.

 

I have owned a large number for mechanical drives over the years of many different brands, and the ones I have had most problems with have been models by Quantum (purchased by Maxtor, which again was purchased by Seagate) and some of the older IBM Deskstar models.

HGST was a merger of IBM's and Hitachi's drive divisions, but is now owned by WD.

 

My current mechanical drives are Seagate Barracuda Green, and despite being low rpm (5900) drives, I find them to be very good. They are quiet, cool and they can achieve transfer rates of about 120MB/s, which is very good for a sub 10.000rpm mechanical drive. The access time is a bit slower than on a higher rpm drive though, but not so much that it's a problem running games off of them.

As a system drive however, I'm using a Samsung 840EVO, and I wouldn't recommend ANY mechanical drive for this purpose anymore.

[Caeradwyn]

I should have summed up what I was trying to say really.

If you buy ANY brand new mechanical HDD today, it will most likely last until you'd want to replace it due to needing more space or replacing it with a cheap large SSD sometime in the future.

And if it for some strange reason should fail, that is something that can happen regardless of which brand you buy.

[ManWithBeard1990]

I had one Seagate drive fail on me and two Toshibas. The Seagate did take a lot of punishment, spinning up every sixty seconds. I had configured the power management to spin down the drives when not in use after a few seconds but a filesystem sync prevented the drive from sleeping too long. I knew it was said to be bad for the drive but thought I'd get away with it. I did, for two and a half years, which is not bad. Hard drives typically have fluid dynamic bearings which are very good once they're spinning, but frequent spinups will wear them down. It failed gracefully though, only getting a couple of bad sectors.

[-iSynthesis]

LTT?

LinusTechTips

[-iSynthesis]

Here's my rule: If you can get HGST then get HGST. Their drives are very reliable, Logan seems to like them a lot as well.

 

While Blackblaze's results are flawed, it does show which drives are built to take more punishment.

Thats the point, read the articles that Caeradwyn posted, their drives are tested in very different enviroments.

First of all, they are tested in different chassis, the older backblazor chassis 

 

 

Hey liilMatt,

 

Since you are looking for a storage drive, pretty much any would do the job. 3TB drives have higher density of data and thus have higher speed rates. WD Green is a great drive to consider as it runs cool, quiet and saves energy and still fast enough to stream and run some games and programs. Gaming relies on storage only for loading times and FPS and graphics stay unaffected. 

I can say about WD Black that it has a number of features that make it a good and reliable performance drive. Besides the longer warranty and the higher transfer speeds, it is build to sustain harsher environments and longer and heavier workloads. It also performs better than normal drives during multitasking due to the built-in dual-core CPU and the optimized caching. 

 

Captain_WD.

 

WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

Summs up everything...

[Captain_WD]

WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

Summs up everything...

 

I am neither hiding this, nor claiming the opposite. As an official WD rep I can provide more detailed info on our products and give users some alternatives to consider. I cannot comment on other companies' products (neither in a good, nor in a bad way). It is up to each and everyone to make their decision on their own.  

 

Captain_WD.

[-iSynthesis]

I am neither hiding this, nor claiming the opposite. As an official WD rep I can provide more detailed info on our products and give users some alternatives to consider. I cannot comment on other companies' products (neither in a good, nor in a bad way). It is up to each and everyone to make their decision on their own.

 

Captain_WD.

Im sorry, but you are basicly like JJ. I dont like him, hes also one that doesnt criticize other companys too much, but just says their company is better.

If you can provide actual proof of the blacks beeing faster than barracudas, then show me a HDTune benchmark of one. All i've seen on the internet are worse than seagates.

[Captain_WD]

Im sorry, but you are basicly like JJ. I dont like him, hes also one that doesnt criticize other companys too much, but just says their company is better.

If you can provide actual proof of the blacks beeing faster than barracudas, then show me a HDTune benchmark of one. All i've seen on the internet are worse than seagates.

I never mentioned anything about WD Black drives being faster or slower than any other drives or that WD is a better or worse company compared to any other. My sole purpose is to give more details about the WD drives so users have the most clear idea of what they are, what they are good for and what features do they have.

 

Captain_WD.

[-iSynthesis]

I never mentioned anything about WD Black drives being faster or slower than any other drives or that WD is a better or worse company compared to any other. My sole purpose is to give more details about the WD drives so users have the most clear idea of what they are, what they are good for and what features do they have.

 

Captain_WD.

I can say about WD Black that it has a number of features that make it a good and reliable performance drive. Besides the longer warranty and the higher transfer speeds, it is build to sustain harsher environments and longer and heavier workloads.

Unless you meant this compared to the greens, you did. Also as i said, you are like JJ, you dont consider other companies, just reccomend your own products. It really help the op to say something good about a company as representator, this is why JJ isnt really much help in videos because he doesnt say the bad things about their products, just mentions the good things.

[Griffscavern]

Snip

[liilMatt]

Thank you everyone for you input into my questions, I can tell you all actually gave some thought to it and I am grateful.

 

I decided to get the seagate, despite the fact is clearly the least reliable. I have nearly 1.5 tbs of data storage between 3 other hdds, and my case has an external hdd bay. So I decided that I will back up my most important files on these extra harddrives (movies, music, home pictures, so on so forth). I figure that in 2-3 years (the "expected" lifespan of the seagate), I can use the nearly $70 that I saved to buy a new one. HDDs are on the decline, as the ssd market gets more affordable. So why get a hdd that is meant to last for the future, when it is not "future proof" or going to remain the go-to for mass storage. I just couldn't rationalize spending between 150% to 200% just to get an equal performance drive. Might as well go cheap and back everything up.

 

Yes, I take a larger risk of losing data and time, but nothing that I am not willing to say goodbye to.

 

What do all you think? Good decision, bad decision? Is my logic sound?