Most reliable HDD (Seagate vs WD vs Toshiba)

[dre92]

My 2TB Seagate Barracuda just died, and it was my 2nd Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD that died in the past 4 years. Both were failing after only about 2 years of usage. First one I bought in 2012 and died in early 2014. Second one I bought in late 2014 and it just died yesterday. Based on some articles on some websites, Seagate is actually improving their drives reliability after their 3TB drives high failure rate and the worst is actually from Western Digital (while the best is coming from HGST, which is quite confusing considering that HGST is part of Western Digital). However based on my experience so far, it's quite the contrary. 2 of my Seagate drives are already failing after only about 2 years of usage, while one of my WD drives have been running for about 4 years (it is the WD Caviar Blue 1 TB). I still have another WD Blue, but it's 2TB and it's relatively new, I bought it in January 2016, and I really hope it can last for at least 4 years.

I honestly don't know what HDD to pick up next and my knowledge about hard drives are not that great. I still consider myself as an average consumer who just needs a reliable HDD, and by reliable I mean at least 4-5 years of usage. Unfortunately in my country, I'm stuck with Seagate, WD, or Toshiba. So, out of those 3 which one should I pick? They're all about the same price, and I need 2TB (1.8TB) worth of storage capacity. Should I go with 2x1TB drives or just 1x2TB drive? Does that even matter? One last thing, do I have to consider 5900 RPM drive over 7200 RPM drive for extra reliability? Because I don't mind that, I mean it's only for storage, I've already got all my main softwares and games installed in my SSD.

Thanks.

[Mike Soda]

I'd try a WD Black, with that 10 year warranty can't go wrong.

[manikyath]

Two things: (admittedly i kinda tl:dr'd trough your post)

- dont bother with anything else than 7200 if you care about speed.

- within hard drives there's so much luck of the draw it almost just doesnt matter which brand you buy.

I have a toshiba drive that survived 6 years of pure torture. (We're talking stuff like repeated freefall-like drops while on rough seas here.)

[dre92]

5 minutes ago, Mike Soda said:

I'd try a WD Black, with that 10 year warranty can't go wrong.

I never knew the WD Black came with 10 year warranty. I might try it out. Thanks

[HKZeroFive]

13 minutes ago, Mike Soda said:

I'd try a WD Black, with that 10 year warranty can't go wrong.

*5 year warranty.

[Mike Soda]

2 minutes ago, dre92 said:

I never knew the WD Black came with 10 year warranty. I might try it out. Thanks

Yeah it'd be my first choice but personally I'll be only using SSD's once I build a new PC. You can get SSD's for under $100.00 just like WD Black but of course their size will be much smaller with questionable longevity.

[Mike Soda]

1 minute ago, HKZeroFive said:

*5 year warranty.

Oh wow my bad, could've sworn it was 10 year hmm. Well it's still better than WD Blue which only has a 2 year.

[Enderman]

I've had better experiences with WD, but the barracuda drives are usually faster and cheaper.

 

If you want to, get a WD red because it's quieter/cooler than a black and lasts longer.

It costs about the same and you get slightly slower speeds, but still some of the best HDD speeds.

[SageOfSpice]

Hitachi>Toshiba>WD>Seagate

[Ryujin2003]

I've got a 1.5 TB Seagate Barracuda that I purchased in 2010. Still going strong. I've had it in 2 different builds. Western Digital is also great. Those I've seen last extremely long. As for Toshiba, every laptop I've had that ever had a Toshiba HDD has HD to have a HDD replacement after about 3 years.

WD is supposed to be the standard, so you cannot go wrong with that.

 

I wouldn't consider anything less that 7200 rpm.

[manikyath]

10 hours ago, Mike Soda said:

I'd try a WD Black, with that 10 year warranty can't go wrong.

*sits quietly with his WD black wrapped in neopreen to keep it from sounding like a midget with a hammer*

[Mike Soda]

12 hours ago, SageOfSpice said:

Hitachi>Toshiba>WD>Seagate

That makes me feel better considering mines a 1TB Hitachi HDS721010CLA SCSI.

2 hours ago, manikyath said:

*sits quietly with his WD black wrapped in neopreen to keep it from sounding like a midget with a hammer*

Lol

[gamerking]

17 hours ago, dre92 said:

My 2TB Seagate Barracuda just died, and it was my 2nd Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD that died in the past 4 years. Both were failing after only about 2 years of usage. First one I bought in 2012 and died in early 2014. Second one I bought in late 2014 and it just died yesterday. Based on some articles on some websites, Seagate is actually improving their drives reliability after their 3TB drives high failure rate and the worst is actually from Western Digital (while the best is coming from HGST, which is quite confusing considering that HGST is part of Western Digital). However based on my experience so far, it's quite the contrary. 2 of my Seagate drives are already failing after only about 2 years of usage, while one of my WD drives have been running for about 4 years (it is the WD Caviar Blue 1 TB). I still have another WD Blue, but it's 2TB and it's relatively new, I bought it in January 2016, and I really hope it can last for at least 4 years.

I honestly don't know what HDD to pick up next and my knowledge about hard drives are not that great. I still consider myself as an average consumer who just needs a reliable HDD, and by reliable I mean at least 4-5 years of usage. Unfortunately in my country, I'm stuck with Seagate, WD, or Toshiba. So, out of those 3 which one should I pick? They're all about the same price, and I need 2TB (1.8TB) worth of storage capacity. Should I go with 2x1TB drives or just 1x2TB drive? Does that even matter? One last thing, do I have to consider 5900 RPM drive over 7200 RPM drive for extra reliability? Because I don't mind that, I mean it's only for storage, I've already got all my main softwares and games installed in my SSD.

Thanks.

wd all the way . if you buy large TB HDDs(anything larger then 900gb) you will get screwed over and over . wd blue has i think over a quarter of a mill hours thats its been powered on  and its still happy as can be. seagate not so much either a little under/over 9k and it just imploded over the course of a few days healty to it losing data as fast as i was able to save it . + 4 other seagate drives just slowing dieing various models and sizes .

 

for brands WD, ( HGST cost more but better parts) ,Hitachi, Toshiba/

 

for the speed newer made drives normal work at the same write/read speed 5kish rpm vs 7200 . i think its just improvements/more platers inside able to write to . if you go seagate run a raid 1 . any other brand that seagate doesnt have any word in go for what you want. raid 0 faster no protection or do a raid 1 . im personally buying only nas drives now better warranty, meant to be ran with drives above and below it all spinning  away and they are only 5-10 $ over the same size. wd red vs blue

7 hours ago, manikyath said:

*sits quietly with his WD black wrapped in neopreen to keep it from sounding like a midget with a hammer*

they cant be worse then  80mm server fans at full power 

[dre92]

I am now thinking about getting like a WD Red. I mean it's designed for NAS, so it should (in theory) last longer than typical drives for personal computers such as WD Blue, right? It will only cost me a few extra bucks over the WD Blue, but I get longer warranty. I must ask though, other than not being able to make use of it's server-grade capabilities (which I don't even understand fully tbh), is there any other disadvantages of using a NAS grade HDD in a regular desktop PC?

[nh_]

On 9/27/2016 at 3:18 AM, SageOfSpice said:

Hitachi>Toshiba>WD>Seagate

I completely agree with this. I use Samsung SSDs and Hitachi (HUA723020ALA641) drives. Hitachis are ~$50 USD for 2TB. Never had any issues.

 

Edit: I have never had a Seagate that lasted more than a month. I've received many (4 or 5) unboxed ones for free from a local business that keeps buying them to use for backup.

[System Error Message]

i've never had any issues so far with both seagate and WD but i only get the good drives.

 

I've had an external drive that uses WD green, i modified the firmware and its still going strong. My friend had external drive with exact same WD green and his drive died. With a laptop see what drive you have. If it is a WD green drive or seagate equivalent than replace it immediately. For laptops i suggest WD black as that warranty and speed helps.

 

with seagate i only ever use the barracudas and cheetahs though i once had a seagate external drive which also had issues. After replacing the external case the drive worked fine and is still going strong.

 

So WD blue, red and black work well. WD black shakes my desktop though, i have 2 of them in raid 0 and they really do shake. WD red i have 5 of them currently stuffed into a 2U chassis and their performance is ok and are quiet. They dont vibrate much. Some WD blacks have option in firmware as to whether you want performance mode or quiet mode.

 

seagate barracuda and seagate cheetahs are good drives too and something to consider. They may not be as tough as WD but they are just as reliable. Avoid the equivalent of WD green and you will be fine as both WD and seagate now own all the HDD companies. WD focuses on their platters while seagate focuses on the drive controller. On seagate firmware is stored on the controller/electronic bit while on WD firmware is stored on the platter. seagate has a very good GUI HDD utility that is DOS based so you can boot from it and it can perform various tasks for checking hard drives. Gone are the days when you could modify the options in the firmware for hard drives as that made the difference between performance, longevity and functionality.