WD Black failure rates

[jonnyyyl]

Hi all,

Have heard that higher storage WD Blacks namely 3 or 4GBs have higher failure rates than 1 or 2GB.

Where is the origin of this information and how valid is the statement?

 

 

Many thanks. 

[Vitalius]

Hi all,

Have heard that higher storage WD Blacks namely 3 or 4GBs have higher failure rates than 1 or 2GB.

Where is the origin of this information and how valid is the statement?

 

Many thanks. 

It's valid, but vague. 5% is the highest failure rate of any drive IIRC. [i'm sure you meant 3 or 4TB and 1 or 2TB VS GB.]

Here is a source. Jump down to Hard Drives. 

Hard Drives:

Article posted on May 10th 2013:

Average Failure rates:

- Toshiba 1,15%

- Seagate 1,44% (vs 1,65%)

- Western 1,55% (vs 1,44%)

- Samsung 2,24% (vs 1,30%)

- Hitachi 2,40% (vs 3,45%)

We mixed all formats of hard drives, which means that we were able to add Toshiba to the list despite a rather small amount of 3.5" drives they sold. This Former arrives in 1st position. Of note is the high failure rate jump for Samsung, compared to the lowering in failure for Hitachi.

Here are the 5 discs with the highest failure rates:

- 5,04% WD Caviar Black 1,5 TB (WD1502FAEX)

- 4,94% Hitachi 7K1000.C 1 TB (HDS721010CLA332)

- 4,87% Hitachi 7K3000 2 ToB(HDS723020BLA642)

- 3,57% Seagate Barracuda 320 GB (ST320DM001)

- 3,51% WD Caviar Red 2 TB (WD20EFRX)

If we look specifically at 2 TB drives here are the obtained numbers :

- 4,87% Hitachi 7K3000 (HDS723020BLA642)

- 3,51% WD Caviar Red (WD20EFRX)

- 3,01% Samsung SpinPoint F4 (HD201UI)

- 2,12% WD Caviar RE4 (WD2003FYYS)

- 1,97% WD Caviar Black (WD2002FAEX)

- 1,95% Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 (ST2000DM001)

- 1,30% WD Caviar Green (WD20EARX)

- 1,01% WD AV-GP (WD20EURS)

And the 3 TB drives :

- 2,85% WD Caviar Green (WD30EZRX)

- 2,71% Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 (ST3000DM001)

- 1,89% WD Caviar Red (WD30EFRX)

Article posted on October 30th, 2013:

Average Failure rates:

- Seagate 0,95% (vs 1,44% year before)

- Hitachi 1,16% (vs 2,40% year before)

- Western 1,19% (vs 1,55% year before)

- Toshiba 1,54% (vs 1,15% year before)

Hitachi HGST which was for a long time the definite last place, continues to improves its failure rate ever since it's buyout by Western Digital, but that's in large part due to the the sales of it's high capacity hard drives which significantly lowered (>2TB hard drives). Toshiba sees it's rate decrease, while Seagate improves it's rate which allows it first place.

Warning: Unlike others, Toshiba doesn't allow a direct return to the manufacturers (so it's failure rate might actually be considerably lower if it were to allow them)

Only one disk obtains a failure rate higher than 4% during this time period, it's the Seagate constellation ES 2 with a rate of 9.64%. The failure rate is high, however the sample relatively small.

Here are the rates for 2TB hard drives:

- 9,64% Seagate Constellation ES ST2000NM0011

- 3,38% Western Digital Caviar RE4 WD2003FYYS

- 2,36% Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003

- 1,45% Western Digital Caviar Black 2 WD2002FAEX

- 1,45% Western Digital Red WD20EFRX

- 1,38% Seagate SV35 ST2000VX000

- 1,35% Western Digital Green WD20EZRX

- 1,12% Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 ST2000DM001

- 1,09% Western Digital AV-GP WD20EURS

- 0,96% Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARX

- 0,83% Western Digital RE WD2000FYYZ

And for 3TB hard drives:

- 1,99% Western Digital Red WD30EFRX

- 1,48% Western Digital Green WD30EZRX

- 1,29% Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 ST3000DM001

(I have no idea why the 1TB hard drive statistics were not in the article)

[Guest GRRigger]

Take the info with salt mine of salt.

It could be simply because more density, and more prone to have bad sector because its bigger, naturally.

Some HDDs are used as work horses, and are abused so they die. btw - Do servers use also high capacity wd blacks ?

You see red drives have high failure rate, because they are (ab)used more. But some of them are just crap drives like hitachi.

[Hikaru12]

The higher the capacity of the drive the more likelihood it has to fail because everything is more concentrated but failure rates are usually not a good indication of your HDD failing. You have outliers all over the place in which most people who end up buying a model of HDD that has pretty high failure rates experience no problems at all.

[3VIL_G3NIUS]

My old computer went through about 4 seagate drives in a couple years before getting a WD which has been working fine for the past... ages... 6 years at least. 

Best thing to do is just back important stuff up, and buy whatever drives you want (from good brands of course)

[ofr057]

up untill last week i was running a mirror on 1tb blacks and its was going solid for 3 - 4 years.

they havnt failed i just upgraded to 2tb reds

 

also a note is the blacks are more commercial grade then blues and greens - hence the 5 year warrenty

[3VIL_G3NIUS]

up untill last week i was running a mirror on 1tb blacks and its was going solid for 3 - 4 years.

they havnt failed i just upgraded to 2tb reds

 

also a note is the blacks are more commercial grade then blues and greens - hence the 5 year warrenty

They aren't commercial, just enthusiast/prosumer 

[ofr057]

They aren't commercial, just enthusiast/prosumer 

i didn't say they are

 i just said they tend to be seen more likly a commercial (even though they arnt) compaired to blues and greens

[3VIL_G3NIUS]

i didn't say they are

 i just said they tend to be seen more likly a commercial (even though they arnt) compaired to blues and greens

Yeah fair enough, that's one reason I got some. If they are willing to stand behind it for 5 years then it must be good

[Legend666]

I've just got myself a 4TB WD Black HDD

 

Did i get the wrong one ???!!!

[ross06187]

WD blacks are probably the most reliable out of all the WD consumer drivers.

 

(don't know for sure if there using 1tb platter)

the 1TB WD black has 1 platter

the 2TB WD balck has 2 platter

the 3TB WD balck has 3 platter

the 4TB WD balck has 4 platter

 

So as you get to bigger dive they have more moving parts, so you will get a small increasing in fail rate.  but its not that bad.  it get compounded even more if you start to use raid but that another story.

[ultimatemythbuster]

WD blacks are probably the most reliable out of all the WD consumer drivers.

 

(don't know for sure if there using 1tb platter)

the 1TB WD black has 1 platter

the 2TB WD balck has 2 platter

the 3TB WD balck has 3 platter

the 4TB WD balck has 4 platter

 

So as you get to bigger dive they have more moving parts, so you will get a small increasing in fail rate.  but its not that bad.  it get compounded even more if you start to use raid but that another story.

I've heard that some might actually use 800GB platters.  I've never opened a Black drive so I don't know for sure.  Never opened one because I've never had a WD Black drive fail.

[Faa]

(don't know for sure if there using 1tb platter)

Nope. Only the 5TB and the recently new one WD1003FZEX (not the WD1002FAEX) are using 1TB platters. Use this database to find out: http://rml527.blogspot.be/2010/10/hdd-platter-database-western-digital-35_3899.html

 

 

The higher the capacity of the drive the more likelihood it has to fail because everything is more concentrated but failure rates are usually not a good indication of your HDD failing. You have outliers all over the place in which most people who end up buying a model of HDD that has pretty high failure rates experience no problems at all.

Nope. Has more to do with the amount of platters being used. Using a single 1TB platter drive would live longer than a 1TB drive with 2 500GB platters or a 500GB (with a 500GB platter) hdd