Settling The Seagate vs WD Longevity debate once and for all!

[SuperNerd Kid]

Hi there, havent posted in forever because i havent really had anything to post about. But recently ive noticed that alot of pc enthuiasts shy away from seagate hard drives, particularly on the desktop (DM) series drives because of a disaster that happens almost a decade ago with 7200.14. Today, im seeing if the failures of those older drives have been fixed with the newer models. I have 2 consumer grade drives, a Seagate 2TB Barracuda (ST2000DM008) and a WD 4TB Blue 5400 (WD40EZRZ, 3 platter/6 head variant) I have not disabled the intellipark feature on the WD Blue drive which was carried over from the WD Greens when they got discontinued. These drives experience similar workloads as they both store videos and i divide the storage workload between them. Both are operation in fideco usb enclosures with their fans turned on. Another thing i'd like to note is that alot of people didnt like the greens because of their failure rate and performance, and i counter that by saying that they last forever if you use them for their intended purpose which is a secondary drive for storing videos and a backup drive for your os etc. I still have a WD Green that was given to me by my dad and it died a few weeks ago after holding videos and acting as a destination for download nearly 24/7 since it was made in 2009. When it died, it had the equivelant of 10 years 226 days of power on time. This one also did have intellipark left at a factory setting. 

[flibberdipper]

Honestly HDD failures are luck based, and nobody can change my mind. My luck tends to prefer Seagate/Hitachi, yet some of my friends have much better luck with WD.

[ProjectBox153]

A test of 2 drives is not very useful for comparing 2 different manufacturers. 

[SuperNerd Kid]

1 minute ago, flibberdipper said:

Honestly HDD failures are luck based, and nobody can change my mind. My luck tends to prefer Seagate/Hitachi, yet some of my friends have much better luck with WD.

Ive had about even luck with both. i have way more old wd drives than seagate. i had the 1tb green which i mentioned in my post. a hitach 160gb laptop drive, a fujistu 120gb laptop drive, a hitachi 750gb laptop drive, a WD 5001AALS desktop drive (from 2008) 

[SuperNerd Kid]

1 minute ago, ProjectBox153 said:

A test of 2 drives is not very useful for comparing 2 different manufacturers. 

Explain?

[WhitetailAni]

30 minutes ago, SuperNerd Kid said:

Explain?

You have 2 data points.

2 data points isn't enough for a conclusion with 2 groups.

To do an accurate and thorough test you'd need maybe 10 from each, of varying sizes and makes, and then compile the data of how long they lasted, when they started having bad sectors, their read/write speeds over time, etc.

[ProjectBox153]

41 minutes ago, SuperNerd Kid said:

Explain?

Ideally you'd have a sample set of hundreds or even thousands of drives. Comparing the reliability of 2 drives is essentially useless if you're judging the manufacturer. 

[Radium_Angel]

If you have proper backups, it doesn't matter what drive you choose.

[Blue4130]

On 2/21/2021 at 6:50 AM, ProjectBox153 said:

Ideally you'd have a sample set of hundreds or even thousands of drives. Comparing the reliability of 2 drives is essentially useless if you're judging the manufacturer. 

Good thing someone did all the hard work for us....

 

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-q1-2020/

 

https://www.backblaze.com/b2/hard-drive-test-data.html

[ProjectBox153]

1 hour ago, Radium_Angel said:

If you have proper backups, it doesn't matter what drive you choose.

What are proper backups? I've never heard of such madness. 

[Archer42]

2 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

If you have proper backups, it doesn't matter what drive you choose.

Yep, backups + warranty. Everything else is unneeded and pointless guesswork.

 

1 hour ago, Blue4130 said:

Good thing someone did all the hard work for us....

Have to be careful with stats like this too, since it can be affected by stuff unrelated to hdd-s too. From how shipping was done, to environmental conditions, vibrations and whatnot. And purchasing hdd-s in bulk this may cause issues too...

I'd say to a degree it is still a sample size of 1... "user". Need still more than that for conclusive results.

[Radium_Angel]

For the record,

 

I did data recovery for a living for many many years.

Now granted this was in the days where 2TB drives were the maximum size (i.e some years ago) but I can count on one hand the number of Seagate drives that failed under their original 5 year warranty.

 

WD drives and (gulp) IBM DeathStar drives? I had a closet full of them...

[Chiyawa]

Depending on your luck, usage, and luck. Yeah, I say luck twice, because like everything else, if your luck is good, you will end up with a product that last a life time.

 

I pretty much don't have luck with Samsung products, such as their LCD TV, Hi-Fi sets, and even their DVD Writers. However, many people seems to have good luck on those product. So when it comes to buying Samsung products, I'll be a little weary.