The Hate on Seagate...

[Ophidio]

I don't understand why people hate on Seagate drives so much. Yeah so what, they have a big lawsuit against them. That doesn't make them bad drives. Saying they're prone to failing is also just a useless statement. Every drive is prone to failure one way or another. I've used both Seagate and Western Digital in my builds in which the Seagate I have has lasted longer. I've had to get both Western Digital drives in my system replace at least once.

 

I also have a Seagate external and a WD external. For those though I can't really say anything because I've had them both the same amount of time and they both work great.

 

Also, if Seagate was so bad would Linus have used them in one of their servers at the office? I really think the Seagate hate should end. Every drive has problems, every drive is prone to failure somehow no matter what brand it is. Hating on one brand because you've gotten one bad drive from them or because they have a lawsuit against them that doesn't even pertain to you whatsoever is just immature. I've had a total of 3 bad drives from WD in the 3 years, but I still recommend them to people because a drive is a drive and that's how we all need to see it. 

 

I'm officially starting the HDD Equality movement! Join me in promoting HDD Equality so no HDD gets the amount of disrespect that Seagate has gotten recently. 

[Manage My Cables]

5 minutes ago, Ophidio said:

I don't understand why people hate on Seagate drives so much. Yeah so what, they have a big lawsuit against them. That doesn't make them bad drives. Saying they're prone to failing is also just a useless statement. Every drive is prone to failure one way or another. I've used both Seagate and Western Digital in my builds in which the Seagate I have has lasted longer. I've had to get both Western Digital drives in my system replace at least once.

 

I also have a Seagate external and a WD external. For those though I can't really say anything because I've had them both the same amount of time and they both work great.

 

Also, if Seagate was so bad would Linus have used them in one of their service at the office? I really think the Seagate hate should end. Every drive has problems, every drive is prone to failure somehow no matter what brand it is. Hating on one brand because you've gotten one bad drive from them or because they have a lawsuit against them that doesn't even pertain to you whatsoever is just immature. I've had a total of 3 bad drives from WD in the 3 years, but I still recommend them to people because a drive is a drive and that's how we all need to see it. 

 

I'm officially starting the HDD Equality movement! Join me in promoting HDD Equality so no HDD gets the amount of disrespect that Seagate has gotten recently. 

#HardDriveLifesMatter 

[Shoob]

The hate on Seagate is extremely exaggerated.

In their current lineup they have only one product that has a higher failure rate than their competitors - the 3TB Barracuda.

In the past they had firmware problems with the 7200.11 series and that's mostly what gave them a bad name. There's no reason Seagate drives to be avoided right now, unless you are going for a 3 TB model. They are just as reliable as any other manufacturer on the market.

[thatguyyouknow75]

What about Toshiba and Hitachi? I've personally never used Seagate drives so I dont have a strong opinion. But the drives Linus used were server designed drives, consumer grade drives typically aren't as hardy

[TheGamingBarrel]

1 minute ago, Pandalf said:

The hate on Seagate is extremely exaggerated.

In their current lineup they have only one product that has a higher failure rate than their competitors - the 3TB Barracuda.

In the past they had a firmware problems with the 7200.11 series and that's mostly what gave them a bad name. There's no reason Seagate drives to be avoided right now, unless you are going for a 3 TB model. They are just as reliable as any other manufacturer in the market.

Almost all hard drives are insanely well made (apart from the toshiba deskstar "Deathstar")  To the point where you are looking at performance or price.

[Oshino Shinobu]

A lot of the hate spawns from misinformation by BackBlaze, who put refurbished and external Seagate drives into data centre environments, then claim that Seagate drives are bad because they have 30%+ failure rates. If their statistics were accurate, Seagate would be long out of business. 

Seagate has had some issues with 1.5TB and 3TB Barracuda models, but for the most part their issues are fixed. Their other drives are just as good as other manufacturers and have no reason to be avoided. 

[aisle9]

My HDDs are a motley mix of Seagate and WD, as pulled from old PCs. Some of the Seagates date back to 2009, and I've had zero issues with them. I've had no problems with WD drives either, aside from the 750GB laptop HDD that may or may not be dying. I'll never know--I swapped it out for an SSD recently. I know Seagate caught some crap, but I haven't seen nearly the WD/Seagate division that you get with AMD/Intel or AMD/Nvidia, and thank God for that.

[Oshino Shinobu]

2 minutes ago, thatguyyouknow75 said:

What about Toshiba and Hitachi? I've personally never used Seagate drives so I dont have a strong opinion. But the drives Linus used were server designed drives, consumer grade drives typically aren't as hardy

Toshiba and Hitachi are both excellent, but somewhat less well known to a lot of people (at least on these forums, from what I've seen). 

 

To be honest, there aren't really any drive manufacturers to be avoided, just particular drives. If a company was consistently bad, they wouldn't be in business.

[Ophidio]

1 minute ago, Pandalf said:

The hate on Seagate is extremely exaggerated.

In their current lineup they have only one product that has a higher failure rate than their competitors - the 3TB Barracuda.

In the past they had a firmware problems with the 7200.11 series and that's mostly what gave them a bad name. There's no reason Seagate drives to be avoided right now, unless you are going for a 3 TB model. They are just as reliable as any other manufacturer in the market.

Thank you! In my honest opinion, other than like you said the 3TB B'Cuda, if you also take care of a drive properly and don't give the drive a constant beating it'll last a lot longer. If you need a drive you can give a beating then you need to spend the money on an enterprise drive that is made to handle that. 

 

2 minutes ago, thatguyyouknow75 said:

What about Toshiba and Hitachi? I've personally never used Seagate drives so I dont have a strong opinion. But the drives Linus used were server designed drives, consumer grade drives typically aren't as hardy

Hitachi is great, I've never seen a single complaint about a Hitachi drive and I've only had one myself and it's the one in my laptop which has never given me a problem. Toshiba it really just depends on what drive you choose these days. Some drives from Toshiba it's like they just pick parts out of the reject container and build the drives. 

[Ophidio]

3 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

My HDDs are a motley mix of Seagate and WD, as pulled from old PCs. Some of the Seagates date back to 2009, and I've had zero issues with them. I've had no problems with WD drives either, aside from the 750GB laptop HDD that may or may not be dying. I'll never know--I swapped it out for an SSD recently. I know Seagate caught some crap, but I haven't seen nearly the WD/Seagate division that you get with AMD/Intel or AMD/Nvidia, and thank God for that.

I see Seagate hate nearly everyday on here when looking at post where someone has asked for help on a build they're trying to put together. Like what made me start this was a saw a reply on a post saying "Go with Western Digital, Seagate drives are terrible and prone to failure". 

[Oshino Shinobu]

2 minutes ago, Ophidio said:

 

 

Hitachi is great, I've never seen a single complaint about a Hitachi drive and I've only had one myself and it's the one in my laptop which has never given me a problem. Toshiba it really just depends on what drive you choose these days. Some drives from Toshiba it's like they just pick parts out of the reject container and build the drives. 

Hitachi is owned by WD, but I believe that their development and operation has been left mostly untouched, as there's no real reason to change it. 

I've never had a bad Toshiba drive, but then again, I've not used many. I see quite a few people asking why WD don't just buy out Toshiba as well, but don't realise that Toshiba is a gigantic company that could buy out WD. 

[another random person]

I don't know, I bought Seagate drives and both of them were broken even though I purchased them brand new from an authorised reseller but when I purchased a wd drive it worked perfectly. I don't know, maybe Seagate isn't as good as it used to be (with its 80 GB HDDs lasting for over 7 years)

[Oshino Shinobu]

4 minutes ago, Ophidio said:

I see Seagate hate nearly everyday on here when looking at post where someone has asked for help on a build they're trying to put together. Like what made me start this was a saw a reply on a post saying "Go with Western Digital, Seagate drives are terrible and prone to failure". 

Misinformation, band-wagoning and over exaggeration. There was (it's still around here, but not so much) a similar things with the Corsair CX series PSUs. Basically, some well informed members warned users of the issues with them (low operating temps and lower spec caps), showing that they're not really suitable for high power draw systems and should mainly be used for basic and office builds, but not avoided entirely. Then, everyone started saying they were complete crap and would kill your system, even if the PSU was totally fine for a person's build. There was also that damn video of burnt computers, claiming it's what happens when you use CX PSUs for gaming builds, which an awful lot of people took for truth. 

[NunoLava1998]

I've never had SeaGate drives but for all the time i've been believing in equality for some hard drives. And i can conclude that Barracuda, WD Green and some other of these drives are a little bit worse than SeaGate based on speed and hard-drive lifetime. You can comply with that.

[Ophidio]

1 minute ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

Hitachi is owned by WD, but I believe that their development and operation has been left mostly untouched, as there's no real reason to change it. 

I've never had a bad Toshiba drive, but then again, I've not used many. I see quite a few people asking why WD don't just buy out Toshiba as well, but don't realise that Toshiba is a gigantic company that could buy out WD. 

I've only had one Toshiba drive which was in a really old laptop and it crapped out after a year and I had to get it replaced. That's been my only bad experience with Toshiba other than one of their laptops I used one time sparked and burnt my leg. lol Toshiba bought OCZ though which really improved their drives in both the HDD and SSD area from what I've read. Acquiring OCZ was probably one of the best decisions in that market Toshiba has ever made. 

 

About the Corsair thing, I've never believed that for a second. They aren't great but they're decent units. I used a CX unit in my system for two years and only replaced it because the CX Unit was starting to die after a bad storm, which I think hit my drive. 

[Oshino Shinobu]

4 minutes ago, another random person said:

I don't know, I bought Seagate drives and both of them were broken even though I purchased them brand new from an authorised reseller but when I purchased a wd drive it worked perfectly. I don't know, maybe Seagate isn't as good as it used to be (with its 80 GB HDDs lasting for over 7 years)

A lot of DOA cases are beyond manufacturer's control. It's mostly bad luck to get a DOA component and even worse to get two in a row. A lot of hate can spawn from people claiming that their Seagate drives have failed (outside of warranty, mind you), so they claim they're bad. Without equal and detailed information for large scale testing (in the correct environment), it's hard to claim one brand is better than the other. For example, when I help my dad at work, I've literally only ever seen WD Black drives fail. However, that doesn't mean they're bad, mostly because the company only uses WD Black drives, but a lot of people leave out information like that. 

[Oshino Shinobu]

1 minute ago, Ophidio said:

I've only had one Toshiba drive which was in a really old laptop and it crapped out after a year and I had to get it replaced. That's been my only bad experience with Toshiba other than one of their laptops I used one time sparked and burnt my leg. lol Toshiba bought OCZ though which really improved their drives in both the HDD and SSD area from what I've read. Acquiring OCZ was probably one of the best decisions in that market Toshiba has ever made. 

 

About the Corsair thing, I've never believed that for a second. They aren't great but they're decent units. I used a CX unit in my system for two years and only replaced it because the CX Unit was starting to die after a bad storm, which I think hit my drive. 

They do have some issues (the older ones, the new units are better), but when used in the correct environments, they're fine. I'd see a lot of people recommending much worse PSUs over them, a lot of the time just because they think the other brand is good (EVGA is the main one I'm thinking of, as they've gotten a reputation for being excellent for PSUs, even though they have some awful HEC units in their lineup and some sub-par FSP units.)

[another random person]

3 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

A lot of DOA cases are beyond manufacturer's control. It's mostly bad luck to get a DOA component and even worse to get two in a row. A lot of hate can spawn from people claiming that their Seagate drives have failed (outside of warranty, mind you), so they claim they're bad. Without equal and detailed information for large scale testing (in the correct environment), it's hard to claim one brand is better than the other. For example, when I help my dad at work, I've literally only ever seen WD Black drives fail. However, that doesn't mean they're bad, mostly because the company only uses WD Black drives, but a lot of people leave out information like that. 

 

yeah maybe just bad luck. but if companies are reducing warranty by up to 3 years that leaves a lot of unanswered questions. as an example, wd dropped the 5 year warranty on its blue drives to two. most people would assume that if warranty periods are going down that would mean drive build quality is going down too. there are lots of factors going into hdds and unlike ssds have lots of ways for things to go wrong. but then again you pay for what you get, because wd blacks still hold on to the 5 year warranty but cost a hell of a lot more than blues or greens. 

[Ophidio]

6 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

They do have some issues (the older ones, the new units are better), but when used in the correct environments, they're fine. I'd see a lot of people recommending much worse PSUs over them, a lot of the time just because they think the other brand is good (EVGA is the main one I'm thinking of, as they've gotten a reputation for being excellent for PSUs, even though they have some awful HEC units in their lineup and some sub-par FSP units.)

EVGA is a good brand now. I only trust the B2, G2, and above units though. The EVGA 400B and 500B units are garbage and aren't even worth the metal used in them. Even EVGA B2 units I only trust the 650 and 750 watt versions. Majority of their Gold and above units though are great. I really fancy the Eco mode on the G2 series. It's so nice to turn all fans off in the system when you're not doing much on it at the time. 

[Godlygamer23]

19 minutes ago, another random person said:

I don't know, I bought Seagate drives and both of them were broken even though I purchased them brand new from an authorised reseller but when I purchased a wd drive it worked perfectly. I don't know, maybe Seagate isn't as good as it used to be (with its 80 GB HDDs lasting for over 7 years)

Your sampling is rather low.

 

I'll give my own anecdote: My laptop drive is manufactured by Seagate, and it works just fine.

[Ophidio]

2 minutes ago, another random person said:

yeah maybe just bad luck. but if companies are reducing warranty by up to 3 years that leaves a lot of unanswered questions. as an example, wd dropped the 5 year warranty on its blue drives to two. most people would assume that if warranty periods are going down that would mean drive build quality is going down too. there are lots of factors going into hdds and unlike ssds have lots of ways for things to go wrong. but then again you pay for what you get, because wd blacks still hold on to the 5 year warranty but cost a hell of a lot more than blues or greens. 

tbh though WD Black isn't even worth the money just to get the extra 3 years warranty. Most companies are also reducing warranties for economic reasons. WD Blue 1TB on average cost $45 USD, after 2 years is it really worth shipping that drive to WD and getting a new one in return. After both parties have paid for shipping half a new drive has probably already been paid for. You can just go buy a new one for really cheap and you don't have to wait for them to get yours then you to get their package. You've lost everything on it anyway, just recycle the old for parts. 

[Djole123]

...Then why this chart exists:

[Shoob]

5 minutes ago, Djole123 said:

...Then why this chart exists:

Backblaze's tests should be taken with a grain of salt, because they use desktop drives in data centres (server racks). The older 2 platter, 3 heads models of Seagate are already known to have a slightly higher failure rate and those conditions worsen them.

 

This year's Backblaze report came out recently and everything looks normal: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/

Those charts are irrelevant for desktop drives which operate according to their specification.

[Ophidio]

6 minutes ago, Djole123 said:

...Then why this chart exists:

See, here's the thing. That's for one company only and those numbers also depend on how many of those drives they actually had. Plus a company like that shouldn't be using consumer grade drives. Unless you have actual experience with the brands and real statistics based off a study of at least 100 people then I still don't see why Seagate would get so much hate. Also, that's based off those certain capacities. What about the more common ones and ones people will actually buy like a 1TB, or 2TB drive. Those sizes are what most people are going to buy. 1.5 and 3 are a waste in price per GB as well. 

[Atmos]

8 minutes ago, Pandalf said:

Backblaze's tests should be taken with a grain of salt, because they use desktop drives in data centres (server racks). The older 2 platter, 3 heads models of Seagate are already known to have a slightly higher failure rate and those conditions worsen them.

 

This year's Backblaze report came out recently and everything looks normal: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/

Those charts are irrelevant for desktop drives which operate according to their specification.

Honestly, Western digital deserves ~nearly~ as much hate as seagate. Their failure rates on average are only marginally lower, with the exception of the 3tb seagate barracuda.

 

If people are gonna praise a company though, praise the right company at least. HGST master race. Industry leading lowest failure rates, even in worst case scenarios.

 

 

Also, from a personal experience I no longer buy toshiba, or seagate drives. Both of my 2tb seagate hdd's died within a year of use. And all three of my toshiba 3.5tb drives died within two years of use. (I put those drives through hell though, everything from scratch disks for my workstation, and near 24/7 moderate read/write usage in a series of home servers.)

I to date, have only had a single one of my over a dozen WD and Hitachi/hgst drives fail.