Is seagate reliable enough?

ManinderU334 · July 14, 2019

I do a lot of 3D modelling and graphics work so I need to expand my storage although i'm hesitant to commit 12tb to seagate as a few of my friends have told me seagate isn't reliable enough. The files I will store on these drives are for work and school and I need to be confident that the drives I buy will last 4 years at the minimum. So far my options are to buy 2 6tb seagate barracuda drives by RAID (still need to learn how) or 2 WD black 6tb drives in the same fashion.

The WD black's are considerably more expensive as the seagates are going to run me about 450 after taxes while WD is gonna be closer to 650 so is the 200 more i'm spending contributing to the reliability or am I just paying for a longer warranty.

19_blackie_73 · July 14, 2019

No storage is 100% reliable, so always have a backup so you don't lose data in unexpected circumstances

I never had issues with seagate drives so... Ask 100 people, get 110 different opinions

Mira Yurizaki · July 14, 2019

Everyone will tell you all of the HDD manufacturer's suck.

Yes Seagate had a bad batch of 1TB drives many moons ago, but everything else after that seems as reliable as anyone else. I've had a mix of WD and Seagate and from my experience I've had no problems with either.

Edited July 14, 2019 by Mira Yurizaki

SenKa · July 14, 2019

I have personally probably used ~20 different HDDs in various workstations/servers/gaming rigs I have built in the past 5 years or so. Exactly 2 have died, and both were Toshiba drives. Every WD and Seagate drive I have used has been rock solid, and really you only have price/performance to worry about.

One thing that may be worth your time is exploring the process of shucking hard drives from external enclosures. I use a shucked 8TB WD White (Red) on the daily. It runs cool, quiet, and performs as it should. There was a lot of Q/A going on in this thread between me and the OP about shucking, so if you would entertain the idea then it may be a good read.

KarathKasun · July 14, 2019

Seagate made some bad 1tb drives, WD made some bad 3tb drives... the only known bad model/brand would be deskstars(deathstars). So many dead drives in that series, even though the manufacturer has changed hands multiple times.

seagate_surfer · July 29, 2019

There are some who consider it a matter of luck, others simply fight with one specific brand but that's just the consequence of being part of this business. One piece of information that can help you find a good HDD with good endurance is to look at the "Power-on hours". If it says 8760 (That's 1 year in hours) it is because the HDD can be turned on working 24/7, that feature does not ensure that the HDD is against nuclear bombs but assures you that the quality is superior because not all HDDs are made for that, the vast majority are designed to work a normal workday of 8-10 hours and if they stay "on" all the time their lifespan is consumed faster. A model that meets that characteristic is the Pro version of BarraCuda 3.5, below I'll leave the specifications in case you have any interest in giving it a look (also the IronWolf is another model with a high endurance):