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Does HDD brand really matter?

I'm building a rig right now and I have an ssd for the OS, but I need more storage for other things like games.  It would be nice if I could save a little bit more cash; does the brand/performance of the HDD matter?  I'll put all the important stuff in the ssd for fast loading, but will the HDD matter, as it will only be for storage.

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3 minutes ago, freezingfire879 said:

I'm building a rig right now and I have an ssd for the OS, but I need more storage for other things like games.  It would be nice if I could save a little bit more cash; does the brand/performance of the HHD matter?  I'll put all the important stuff in the ssd for fast loading, but will the HHD matter, as it will only be for storage.

HDD not HHD. I would try to get a 2TB from bigger brands, 7200RPM is good. Just amazon search it and get the first one.

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What's important is the quality of the components the manufacturer used to build it. I like Western Digital. A lot of people like Seagate. Of the people I've seen talking about it everybody seems to hate Toshiba.

 

Just read the reviews for what fits your budget. 

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11 minutes ago, freezingfire879 said:

I'm building a rig right now and I have an ssd for the OS, but I need more storage for other things like games.  It would be nice if I could save a little bit more cash; does the brand/performance of the HHD matter?  I'll put all the important stuff in the ssd for fast loading, but will the HHD matter, as it will only be for storage.

It doesn't. Obviously cheaper HDDs may not be tested or verified to last as long as more expensive models, but that doesn't mean they'll fall apart the moment you look at them funny.

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15 minutes ago, freezingfire879 said:

I'm building a rig right now and I have an ssd for the OS, but I need more storage for other things like games.  It would be nice if I could save a little bit more cash; does the brand/performance of the HHD matter?  I'll put all the important stuff in the ssd for fast loading, but will the HHD matter, as it will only be for storage.

It most certainly DOES matter.

Look at hard drives with a longer warranty. This alone will tell you volumes (they stand behind their product) 

Toshiba bought their entire hard drive division from IBM, who were sued into selling it over covering up glaring defects in their deskstar and travelstar drives.

Toshiba didn't bother fixing these errors, just started cranking them out with a new label.

I've replaced more toshibas than any other drive.

 

I swear by Seagate, but they've put out some duds.

There is a company that does reliability tests and puts out the findings.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-rates-q3-2017/

 

A good read.

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10 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

but that doesn't mean they'll fall apart the moment you look at them funny.

I don’t know, but my Gold tends to be louder when I look in its direction.

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21 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Of the people I've seen talking about it everybody seems to hate Toshiba.

which makes no sense as their HDDs are easily the best ones.

 

there aren't that many HDD brands left anymore either, only WD/Seagate/Toshiba/Hitachi

6 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

It most certainly DOES matter.

Look at hard drives with a longer warranty. This alone will tell you volumes (they stand behind their product) 

Toshiba bought their entire hard drive division from IBM, who were sued into selling it over covering up glaring defects in their deskstar and travelstar drives.

Toshiba didn't bother fixing these errors, just started cranking them out with a new label.

I've replaced more toshibas than any other drive.

and I only replaced 1 toshiba out of 10 in the past 3-4 years.

6 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

I swear by Seagate, but they've put out some duds.

There is a company that does reliability tests and puts out the findings.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-rates-q3-2017/

 

A good read.

seagate are the dudes who released that HDD few years ago that systematically failed. So no buy from me. 

 

Backblaze reports have been debunked, as they do not treat the HDDs the way they are supposed to be treated. They'll take consumer versions, which aren't made to resist the temps/read-writes, as the consumer version is cheaper, put them in their own "server" racks filled with design flaws such as vibration or poor airflow and then make these so called "reports".

 

edit: actually, let's use your source. To prove my point. You say toshiba is bad and you are better off with seagate? But your own source says they are the ones with the least failures. Actually, NO failures. AT ALL. So shouldn't you buy Toshiba then?:) Look, Seagate has a 31% failure rate on their 4TB model!

drives.png.2e958f89b4cb56d729c1906f7aa5660f.png

 

 

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3 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Terrible source. They put drives that aren’t meant to be used in such environments (we don’t even know what temps and workloads they’re subjected to) and expect those findings to be conclusive.

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WD or Seagate are fine choices in general so, find the cheapest drive in your needed capasity with them 

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8 minutes ago, The Viking said:

which makes no sense as their HDDs are easily the best ones.

If you're a fan of Toshiba drives that's fine but don't hype them up like you have proof they're the best. Acting like that lowers the value of your opinion.

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More important than brand is making sure to get the right type of drive for your needs. For your particular use case, all you need is a sturdy desktop-grade drive, you won't need to spend extra money going with something specialized for NAS/surveillance/enterprise or anything like that. From our offerings, the fit here from our product family is BarraCuda (capacities 1-3TB are 7200 RPM & 4TB and up are 5400 RPM), if you want something with longer warranty & beefier workload ratings, you could also take a look at the BarraCuda Pro (all capacities are 7200 RPM).

Thanks for considering Seagate, regardless of which brand you decide to go with in the end!

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Seagate or Western Digital?  Which one would be better?  Sorry, I'm sort of new.

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13 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

If you're a fan of Toshiba drives that's fine but don't hype them up like you have proof they're the best. Acting like that lowers the value of your opinion.

I said "easily". Then mentioned how there's only 4 brands anyway. 

 

How do you even define a good drive? Good warranty? Toshiba gives 24 months in Europe.  Quality? Their drives don't fail that often from most data you can find. Fast? 7200rpm with a 64 or 128mb buffer, speeding up loading speeds in games for example, or just faster access speed in general. What else do you need?

 

edit: there's only 3 brands left actually. WD/Seagate/Toshiba, with toshiba being the only non-american one. 

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someone's offering $40  for a brand new seagate barracuda drive or $20 for a wd green drive.  (same capacity).  Which one should I get?

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21 minutes ago, The Viking said:

I said "easily". Then mentioned how there's only 4 brands anyway. 

 

How do you even define a good drive? Good warranty? Toshiba gives 24 months in Europe.  Quality? Their drives don't fail that often from most data you can find. Fast? 7200rpm with a 64 or 128mb buffer, speeding up loading speeds in games for example, or just faster access speed in general. What else do you need?

I was well aware of the word "easily" but it doesn't change to context of the sentence. I like ASUS/ASRock motherboards but I wouldn't say they're easily the best. I like Sapphire brand GPU's but I wouldn't say they're easily the best.

 

Saying anything is the best or easily the best just makes you sound like a fanboy (which is fine) but when you say it to others it makes you sound biased to a particular brand which lowers the value of your opinion.

 

And my idea of quality in a drive is longevity and how well it holds up performance wise over that time.

 

Another issue is location. In china phones, cars, and other electronics have a fraction of the lifespan of the identical products they ship out. You pay for it but it last much longer than the inland equivalent. It's possible the exact manufacturer for your drives uses better quality parts than the manufacturers that ship to the US or certain other countries. The opposite could also be possible for the companies that ship the other two brands to your country which you state fail far more often.

 

The region/country you live in can change the quality/reliability of the components you own even if they're all labeled Toshiba/WD/Seagate.

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1 hour ago, The Viking said:

Look, Seagate has a 31% failure rate on their 4TB model!

Did you miss the part where I said Seagate makes a few duds?

You must have.

 

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53 minutes ago, freezingfire879 said:

someone's offering $40  for a brand new seagate barracuda drive or $20 for a wd green drive.  (same capacity).  Which one should I get?

I stand behind Seagate, assuming it's not the 4 TB model with a high failure rate

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2 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

-lots of text-

well then, I honestly don't know what to say :)

 

I wish I could come up with some reliable data to back up my claims but I guess the only easy one to find is Backblaze who's polluted the internet with their unreliable data.

 

 

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5 hours ago, freezingfire879 said:

someone's offering $40  for a brand new seagate barracuda drive or $20 for a wd green drive.  (same capacity).  Which one should I get?

If you're talking about buying used, then buy whatever is cheaper, because you have no way to know if the drive is still healthy when you buy a used drive. Buying new though it really does just come down to your needs as @seagate_surfer mentioned above. If you're using it for general storage, then something like a WD Blue or Barracuda drive will do perfectly. If you're running the drives 24/7 though, say in a NAS or for video surveillance, you need to look into WD Red/Purple drives or whatever Seagate's equivalent is.

 

As for brand, everyone is going to have their favorites for their own personal reasons based on experience and opinions. Just like automobiles, hard drives are mass produced using parts and processes that are of occasionally questionable quality or QA testing, and thus all brands can churn out a batch/production lot of drives (or cars) that have issues or are straight up Dead on Arrival. I currently have 2 WD green drives, 2 Toshiba "reviews say these are shit" drives, and a plethora of SSD's and other laptop & desktop drives that are no longer in service or used as spare parts.

 

To be clear, I'm not including drives or cars where bad firmware (Seagate's 7200.11 series were horrific for their cache freezing the drive up) or faulty parts (Takata airbag shrapnel bombs that were used in hundreds of thousands of cars) because those were produced using knowingly bad firmware and parts at the time. Just keep in mind that even drives and cars made with quality parts run through proper QA testing can fail immediately after purchase, so you really want to buy from a manufacturer that has a better after-sales service department, the most important department consumers should be concerned with when dealing with ANY COMPANY on the planet.

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12 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

Terrible source. They put drives that aren’t meant to be used in such environments (we don’t even know what temps and workloads they’re subjected to) and expect those findings to be conclusive.

Temperatures are proven to have no statistical significant effect on the lifespan of a harddisk.
And in terms of workload, does it really matter? As long as the workload is the same over the different brands of drives then it proves that WD, HGST and Toshiba drives are more reliable for at least the tested workload.
The source is fine.

I currently have two 9 year old Hitachi drives that don't even have a bad sector. Another 6 year old second hand one with a few swapped sectors, and 2 Toshiba drives and an Ultrastar that have been running for two years in continues operation with no problems. I recently bought two WD Gold drives because I am interested how well they will hold up against the HGST's.

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13 hours ago, freezingfire879 said:

someone's offering $40  for a brand new seagate barracuda drive or $20 for a wd green drive.  (same capacity).  Which one should I get?

If there's no difference in warranty and both drives are in good health, go with the cheaper Green. 

1 hour ago, Pyramiden said:

Temperatures are proven to have no statistical significant effect on the lifespan of a harddisk.
And in terms of workload, does it really matter? As long as the workload is the same over the different brands of drives then it proves that WD, HGST and Toshiba drives are more reliable for at least the tested workload.
The source is fine.

Where has it been proven that temps are insignificant? As far as I know, it's been inconclusive. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-temperature-does-it-matter/

Backblaze drives are working under different conditions so their testing methodology might be unreliable. 

14 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

I don’t know, but my Gold tends to be louder when I look in its direction.

That's what you get for getting a Gold drive though.

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The article you posted.
 

Quote

Overall, there is not a correlation between operating temperature and failure rates. The one exception is the Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB drives, which fail slightly more when they run warmer.

As long as you run drives well within their allowed range of operating temperatures, keeping them cooler doesn’t matter.


If the conditions are equally different, in other words, they do not run specific loads on specific brands or models of disks then the results do say something about reliability.

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21 minutes ago, Pyramiden said:

The article you posted.
If the conditions are equally different, in other words, they do not run specific loads on specific brands or models of disks then the results do say something about reliability.

Also from the article:

'Google and Microsoft have both done studies on disk drive temperature in their data centers. Google found that temperature was not a good predictor of failure, while Microsoft and the University of Virginia found that there was a significant correlation.'

 

Their findings are inconsistent. 

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It doesn't matter

 

Why people so over-complicate the question.

BRAND doesn't matter, Model Number/Release date and specifically the type of usage you are going to do with the drive are more important.

 

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Thanks, I decided to go with the newer Seagate Barracuda 3 tb drive.  The WD green drive was cheaper, but it was pretty old.

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