seagate Opinions on seagate drives?

[Its N8 M8]

I’ve heard mixed things about seagate drives. They are much cheaper than WD ones, but I’ve heard some horror stories about them.  I was curious what other people thought about them. Are they trustworthy?

[Oshino Shinobu]

Yes, they're trustworthy. The horror stories all seem to stem from BackBlaze's significantly flawed "reliability" reports. 

[lamphouse99]

7 minutes ago, Its N8 M8 said:

I’ve heard mixed things about seagate drives. They are much cheaper than WD ones, but I’ve heard some horror stories about them.  I was curious what other people thought about them. Are they trustworthy?

in my system i have a seagate drive and ive had no issues with it and ive had it for the past 4 years

[The_russian]

Many people will use either WD or Seagate and won't even think about using the other one. Iirc Seagate had a model will an insanely high failure rate, high enough that there was a class action lawsuit over it. I think that was only one model though, in general either one should be fine. 

[kirashi]

1 hour ago, Its N8 M8 said:

I’ve heard mixed things about seagate drives. They are much cheaper than WD ones, but I’ve heard some horror stories about them.  I was curious what other people thought about them. Are they trustworthy?

All drives begin to fail the moment they're powered on, regardless of manufacturer. I've had the following drive brands fail on me: HGST, WD, Samsung, IBM SAS, Seagate, and any / all sub-brands owned or manufactured by these companies. They will all fail eventually, so it really boils down to being prepared for when they do eventually fail.

 

I believe @seagate_surfer is an official Seagate industry partner of sorts, so they can maybe chime in here to expand on my points if needed, but what you should be looking for is a drive with a warranty period and/or included data recovery service that best suits your needs, in addition to a good customer service department.

[divito]

While there are some reports and stats other than Backblaze that goes over some returns and failure rates, ultimately all hard drives are subject to lemons and premature failure.

 

Personally, I've only owned one Seagate drive; the vast majority of my drives have been WD, and I've also had some Samsung and Hitachi drives. The RMA process is fairly simple, and some retailers I've used simply replace the drive for you and deal with the RMA themselves. 

 

The only real things you can control are selecting a reputable retailer for return purposes, and paying attention to warranty length and details or support that are offered either by the retailer or the manufacturer. As long as you choose a proper size and speed for your drive at your relevant price point, statistically, you'll likely be fine.

[trooper_ish]

BackBlaze regularly buy whole shed loads of Seagate drives, because they do well for their price.

They might cost 15-20% less than WD drives in similar classes, but only perform 10% less well.

So BackBlaze are more than happy to order them by the thousands, because they are for sure worth the money.

 

All drives die (eventually)

 

Seagate has a particularly bad time around 2009-2013 with bad production runs, even before the Great Thai Floods that affected all maufacturers, but since then have managed to QA up to a level comesurate to their price point.

[Doobeedoo]

They're fine, better priced. The only one I had died was a 3TB one, old model, which it seems it was a model notorious for highest failure rates last time I checked. 

[NineEyeRon]

I always choose seagate, too many bad experiences with WD drives by friends and family.

[Oathkeeperspath]

I use them for my long term storage and have not had any issues, but I use them less than once a month.