Comparing Seagate vs Western Digital (WD), Toshiba and HGST hard disk failure rates and lifespans.

[@polaris911]

lol 14 minutes later and I can't draw any meaningful conclusions..

[@neoturfmasterMVS]

Which drive is the best? or which maker? lol

[@Francesco-vu6ik]

Ty for saving me time bro

[@lancecorgos683]

@@neoturfmasterMVS if you were looking for a second hand hdd, I prefer the HGST. However, some are selling this broken online without any notice from the buyer, so buy at your own risk.

[@HappyBuddhaBoyd]

exactly. It is like asking what car is best. Well wtf? Obviously, you would need to refine the spectrum to certain categories. Seagate makes the best NAS drives. WD makes the best basic computer storage. Toshiba makes the best paperweights.

[@firstfahri7586]

​@@HappyBuddhaBoyd ur sure? Toshiba has the best overall durability over the others for NAS and even used it as surveillance storage even though it was not designed for that, Toshiba hdd has great quality of head performance and durability

[@skyknight0408]

What you say about personal experiences in the beginning is absolutely true. I avoid using mechanical WD drives, because I saw a lot of their drives fail in the early to mid 2000's. Did not have any problems with their SSDs yet. Had only 1 Hitachi/HGST drive ever fail on me within the last 25 years and it was after over 10 years of daily usage and in a way that I was still able to save the data to a new drive. The only downside, they're a bit on the louder side and not good for silent builds. And I never saw a Seagate fail. All of those I had still worked perfectly fine, when I replaced them with a larger one. Didn't have too many Toshibas yet(but I love their external drives for storage), but so far they compare to Seagate and HGST in quality.

[@RealLordy]

I ve been using Ultrastar/HGST drives for years now. They are quick and up to now none of them failed in my home lab. Fingers crossed of course. I thing the Ultrastar series from WD and the EXOS series from Seagate are both very reliable. Reason for sticking with WD/ultrastar is just historical for me

[@sometechguy]

Hi, and thanks for sharing your experiences. I did some in depth analysis on the historical failure rates for HGST/WD Ultrastars and the Exos drives. The HGST/WD drives seem to have a reasonable edge and the AFR rates seems to remain consistently lower, that video is here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/n5Sxk5iujrtmg5Y . But I agree, in that I use both and have had good experiences. I ordered some Ultrastars and Exos disks this week for some additions and to replace some aging WD Reds which themselves have over 8 years on the clock. The statistical nature of failures, especially when they are down in the 0.5% to 1.5% range mean that some people will have a bad experience, but many won't. And its always those with bad experiences that share them, understandably. So good to have a positive and balanced piece of feedback.

[@blackimp4987]

I had a couple of IBM and then Hitachi drives. They were very good. It was very sad the first time when IBM sold its drives industries to Hitachi and then when Hitachi did the same to WD.

[@simmo1024]

Excellent. Cheers. Will be looking at replacing my (nearly) 5 year-old Iron Wolf Pros next year, so nice to know Segate don't do too badly. Can't say I have had any complaints so far.

[@sometechguy]

Thank you for the comment. There is a lot more in the data also about specific models and I plan to look more closely at the larger capacity drives to see what they look like. Backblaze do not seem to deploy any NAS disks, probably for reasons I called out in my previous video, so there isn’t any data as yet on Iron Wolf, Iron Wolf Pro, or recent info on the WD Reds, though the Reds they deployed years ago seemed to fail pretty badly. So far I also had great experiences with the Exos disks, and IW Pros, but price wise right now Exos seem to be the pick.

[@marcq1588]

I bought 8 Seagate Exos Enterprise 18TB not long ago. 3 of them failed in my "Storage Space" and I had to send them back to Seagate for replacement. Got 3 "Refurbished" drives back with no warranty from Seagate and after a few more months, another 3 of the 6 show in ZFS with unrecoverable errors - too many errors and my mirrors unusable! Now I am trying to recover some data that I can using Linux live cd and running some rsync commands to get what I can on a single Exos 18TB drive. So ftrustrating! I will NEVER buy Seagate again.

[@sometechguy]

This sounds like one of the worst stories I heard, and this would suck. I do believe Seagate can replace warranty returns with 'Reburbished' drives and I seem to remember seeing that in the T&Cs, but I believe these have a close proximity to new drives.They should however still provide the warranty period on these, and in fact in most countries, I think that is a legal obligation. It is possible the warranty date starts from the original warranty and you don't get 5 additional years however. It sounds very raw, and these are the kind of experiences that lead to never buying a vendor again. Which I completely understand. Sorry you had this experience, it really sucks to be in this position.

[@guffyHQ]

I've got a mix of Exos drives and IronWolf Pro; my 3 month old 20TB IronWolf Pro just died in my NAS and crashed the storage pool. Funny thing, it passes both Quick & Extended SMART tests. I backup all data to Exos Disks in another NAS! Seems no one can win with Seagate!!

[@boiswag3509]

I had 2 Seagate drives failed on me, never buying any drive from Seagate ever again.

[@SynthOSphere]

Weird... I can't find Verbatim in the diagram at 4:06... They had the best warranty out there for a while (7 years!). Were they just not included, not part of the dataset from BackBlaze or were they purchased by another company? I still have some old 3TB external units and they are still solid. Perhaps it was that they used HDD from one of these brands and relabeled them to Verbatim, after testing to get the best ones (to offer longuer warranty).

[@sometechguy]

I don't think Verbatim ever manufactured spinning disks. They may have rebranded others, but I have not come across them. If they are external units, they may just contain disks from another manufacturer. But for sure, they were not part of the BackBlaze data. There were a few Samsungs and others, but the numbers were so small they didn't have significant data to draw conclusions from.

[@SynthOSphere]

@@sometechguy yeah. Probably what happened. They purchased the top binned one or asked actual manufacturers to produce to certains specs, because their warranty was 7 years!

[@c0p0n]

Very happy your channel popped up on my feed recently mate, I'm in the market for hard drives for my NAS now that black Friday approaches. Great content and drills down to exactly what I want to know. Cheers.

[@SergSpace]

What did you get? How does it perform?

[@c0p0n]

I didn't get anything at the end as I couldn't find any black Friday deals that would justify the expense. I currently have 3x4TB Ironwolfs on a raidz1 configuration with about 15000h on them and I'm at 50% usage after as much time, so I can wait until black Friday next year. I wanted 2x12TB or 2x16TB ironwolfs or ironwolf pros that I could put in a mirror vdev. The ironwolfs have worked well for me so far.

[@SergSpace]

@@c0p0n Thanks for info. I heard IronWolf is noisy, though. What Model do you have that works that long? Any bad clusters, Search Errors? Personally I'm with Toshiba P300, don't have any RAID/Z1's though. BTW, do not wait for black Friday. It's a trick now. I haven't seeing any good deals on Black Friday on Amazon at least for 5 past years. Just take a pick in Amazon from time to time, they have like Cyber Sales.

[@legothemadscientist9174]

The data on the Toshiba drives is quite interesting, from my experience as a Tech, I've seen more Toshiba Drive failures than anything else with Old Western Digital drives (Pre 2010) being equal to Seagate's, and newer Western Digital drives being a bit better than Toshiba, but not as good as Seagate. Traditionally I prefer Hitachi Hard Drives, but those are quite hard to find now, and I learned why from your video, (thank you very much!). Hitachi merged with Western Digital to make HGST. I just got an HGST drive a few months ago and so far, I haven't been impressed. The drives seem to be worse than WD and definitely worse than Hitachi Drives ever were. I've found that the HGST drives don't resist impact as well as Toshiba, WD, Hitachi or Seagate which is what killed my last two Enterprise 10TB HGST drives. It's also worth noting that I've had experience with most of these drives in a used condition as I mostly pull drives from old machines and rarely buy brand new drives. Just thought I'd share what I've found with the rest of the community!

[@lancecorgos683]

Thanks for the tip. I bought two HGST hdds, and both of them were second hand. I've done some stress test like copying large files and unplugging the socket after ejecting many times, to see if any data corruption would occur. To my surprise, nothing happened, and been using it for a year. The first drive was less than 600 days old, while the other was more than 100 days old prior to former owner's usage. Anyway I'm using them both as additional storage for my files, and keeping them hidden away from all elements like dust and humidity.

[@sometechguy]

I did some in depth AFR analysis on the HGST drives, and they seem to go on and on. So second hand units could be great buys if they run nicely and pass a solid test when you get them. I am sure they will go on to serve you well.

[@lancecorgos683]

they did. All HGST drives are properly working. Took a risky gamble since I don't have any cash to spare. That was a year ago. Now I bought anaother one a few days ago and no errors occured after serious testing. 👍

[@zeroturn7091]

I also buy HGST second hand for active storage like games and downloads, or if I clone a drive from a laptop. In my experience I’ve noticed that they are really noisy and throw off some serious heat. I try to stay around the $30.00 price range which can be 3 to 4TB. A much better deal than 2TB for $47 plus tax new.

[@lancecorgos683]

@@zeroturn7091 nice. As long as it doesn't create any clicking sounds, you are good. Its normal for hdd to heat up since you're using it as active storage, just try adding some pc fans it that bothers you. Unless the rpm of your drive is 5400 instead of 7200, it will likely create some noise and generate heat if connected to your pc.

[@mytech6779]

I wish I could get datacenter quality in 5400rpm format, That seemed to be where everyone was going 8-10 years ago as SSDs took over the high performance market. Lower RPM means less noise/vibration, less idle power (less heat), and generally longer life (fewer rotations). My personal server sits at Idle 95% of the time. Though both drives may fully park in a sort of sleep/hibernation where they use the same power, this is hard to predict and adds spin up lag. The advantage does depend on the task of course, percentage idle time to active read/write. For near saturated I/O the power per byte is probably very similar for 7200 and 7200 has slightly lower latency than 5400, but in most cases where I/O is not saturated and you have SSD cache or tier for the hot data, that small seek time is irrelevent. It is only a 3:4 ratio in a world normally scaled in orders of magnitude. The main role for 7200 that I can see is when the array drive count is limited and sustained sequential I/O is the bottleneck rather than the network, IOPS, or other components. (Sustained being a large proportion of transfers are larger than an SSD tier/cache can buffer). Maybe like adding a bunch of additional cameras (steady data output) to an old surveillance system so the end result falls into that narrow range of 100%-120% of 5400rpm I/O capacity.

[@sometechguy]

You make some excellent points here, and I agree. For low latency, high performance use cases, SSD win hands down. HDD have their place in high volume, lower performance requirements use cases like near line and high volume with cost and density. So how does 7200 differentiate against the 5400 in that second use case, it isn’t strong.

[@guffyHQ]

I have an issue with Hibernating my drives in my Synology, it does power down and park the disk but only for 30 mins then it ramps back up again even when the NAS is not being accessed. I'm trying my best to extend life expectancy of my drives.. but this stop/start is bothering me!

[@mytech6779]

@@guffyHQ I don't know why you made your question a reply to my post(mistake?), but the disks should park the heads and spin down when not being accessed even when the system is powered on. There may be some sort of log entries being written or similar event. It is rare to cache writes in RAM because it has high risk of data loss so any write will spin up the disk. Most small read-only services like DCHP and local DNS should be cached in RAM after the first use (I don't know the size of the cached blocks, if it grabs the whole file, just the lines used, or enough to fill a memory page.) Assuming you don't have some memory hog application run in the interim which would kick out the cached storage in favor of the application memory needs. Now if you somehow set it to fully hibernate it will need to spin up the disks every time is goes to sleep and when it wakes up because it must write the contents of RAM to disk swap space and then read it back on waking up. But this would be a strange configuration for a server aside from a strict schedule where it would be down for times when you absolutely know you won't need it like overnight (even then you would need a pretty strict schedule, like if it was at a business with regular posted hours.) If it is just sleeping suspended to RAM, maybe but it may still need to spin up a disk to write a log entry about the sleep event. (A good case for having the OS on an SSD separate from plain data storage drives is the data drives won't be woken up for every little log entry or or service.)

[@BType13X2]

I have primarily been using WD drives since 2008 mainly because Seagates reliability was so awful back then. I took a flyer 3 years back on trying the Toshiba X300 drives, and have a pair of them, I am fairly happy with them considering people were sure they would grenade in a matter of months but here we are and they are humming along happily. That is my only complaint about them they are audibly louder than my WD Black & Gold drives. About 45 minutes ago I bought a pair of Seagate Exos 18tb enterprise drives because I figure that after 16 years I really should give them a try again.

[@sometechguy]

I have quite a few Exos, and I specifically have the X18 18Tb disks, and they have been great. I did some deeper analysis videos which you can find on my channel, and though WD Ultrastars (which I also own) appear to have better reliability statistically, I don't think either of the options is bad and if the Exos drives come at a better price point, I wouldn't hesitate to buy them. I hope they serve you well.

[@CoolTI-Daniel]

I can admit I am part of the Anti-Seagate due to past experiences. What I experienced is, seagate from 1GB to 200GB lived forever. 250 and 320GB models 7200.9 or 7200.10 were fine. EVERYTHING 320GB up to 2TB 7200.11, 7200.12 was absolute trash that would die within 6 month, get an RMA which was a 7200.12, dies again. Barracudas were a bit better. I seen some last forever and some die quick deaths. This hurt lots of businesses. I kept on hearing stories of Seagate failures for the 4tb up to 8tb. Stopped following since. I guess it's time to give them another chance for their new Ironwolf enterprise series. Their pricing is excellent.

[@sometechguy]

Hi, and thanks for the thoughtful comment. I am not sure if you saw them, but I did release some follow up content to this with some detailed AFR analysis on 10-16Tb models, as well as 4-8Tb models which I think had some interesting detail on those manufacturers, but also called out some specific models which were stinkers. At least, based on the Backblaze data, as those could be influenced by shipping/handling issues. Though some of the drives that did badly had large numbers of units, so I think unlikely. What I did find was that consumer drives do not seem to have shorter lives or worse reliability than the enterprise variants. Though, shorter warranties of course. Even though the < 4Tb drives in the data set are mostly pretty old I think I will also cover those as it will probably crystallize some of the experiences people have had with these manufacturers from the past. I know Barracudas did not always have a good rep, so would be good to see if that is supported by data. Also, in one of those videos I think i saw some iterative improvements as Seagate moved though the X10, X12, X14 and X16 ranges, so I may also take a look to compare those (as well as the iterations also from Tosh and HGST/WD) to see if we are seeing general improvements as they consolidate incremental improvements in the drive manufacturing process. But I would skip Ironwolf/Pro personally, and go straight to Exos. They can be a bit noisier, but the price point and the warranty seems to make them a good economic choice and there is lots of reliability data on the models to avoid.

[@sebastiankorfanty8015]

Where is the link mentioned in the Vid about your recent experience with WD HDDs?

[@sometechguy]

It’s down in the description, but will add it here also. kzbin.info/www/bejne/i3end2ZvibemopI

[@jasond.valentine5931]

This channel is an absolute treasure.

[@sometechguy]

Thank you 🙏

[@amitghosh4166]

I don't buy 'made in China' mechanical drives. I don't buy 'Toshiba' drives because their models are made in China. Even before buying Seagate or WD drives, I make sure they are 'made in Thailand' drives. I also avoid 'made in Malaysia' drives. I still have a 40GB 'made in Singapore' Seagate PATA drive which is 18+ year old, connected to a very old system. This drive is built like a tank. Its circuit is covered with a metal cover. I deliberately dropped it 3/4 times but it still runs. HD sentinel shows 100% health and performance.

[@gregoryzet]

my Toshiba MG drive is made in Philippines...

[@lancecorgos683]

I happen to own two HGST hdds, both product of malaysia, and second hand bought from online store (not marketplace). Only using them as storage for additional files and kept hidden away from elements like dust and humidity.

[@lancecorgos683]

@@gregoryzet I also own toshiba hdd made in philippines. Nothing to worry as long as its not made in china.

[@Michael-it6gb]

I don't remember how it was 20 years ago. But in the last 5 years the only failures I've had is with Seagate. 3 in a row. Never buying Seagate again. They were the cheapest, and I wasn't thinking.

[@700gsteak]

wha. You may have heard of the infamous doom drives. They were 3tb seagate drives made in thailand.

[@RockTouching]

The seagate drives used in 2013-2014 by backblaze were the trash seagate ST3000dm001, enterprise workload or not..

[@azurekite3870]

so are they better to use now?

[@Maolana_ModiG]

bro cam u tell me does HDD enclosure may cause of hdd failure. i means can it badly impact hdd to eventually fail it.

[@sometechguy]

Hi, I don't know if you mean a single disk enclosure, like a caddy, or an enclosure that can store many disks in an array. But the only things that are likely to add to a risk of disk failure are excessive heat and movement, especially when the disks are unparked and being used. Sudden G-shocks can cause head crashes, rotational movement of the drive is not good due to the gyroscopic affect of spinning disks, and vibrations caused by other things in the enclosure, such as other disks. So it isn't the enclosure that would cause a failure, but the the environment the disk is subjected to while in the enclosure. If the disk is in use, making sure it is kept still on a stable surface will help. When disconnecting the drive, give it time to park and come to a rest before moving it.

[@harrytsang1501]

The quality and stability of the 12V DC power supply is a major risk factor for HDD enclosures. Then it's just a matter of whether you can check the SMART data via the enclosure

[@POPnRollApps]

Were all the HDDs at Backblaze in use under the same conditions regarding temperature, humidity, and vibration?

[@sometechguy]

I can’t talk to vibration and humidity as that data is not recorded. However, they temps are recorded and are not in a perfectly controlled environment as it varies over time. The data also implies there are multiple locations as different groups of disks are in obvious alignment for temps. But they said; the locations so all appear to be generally temp controlled and although I have not yet done a detailed analysis of this part of the data, I did graph it all and the temps seem to be within manufacturer bounds. At least generally. It might be possible to infer how the disks are distributed physically and how temp impacts reliability. And in the most recent data, Backblaze has started to record more details about locations and chassis disks are in. So could be some findings there with some digging.

[@BType13X2]

@@sometechguy I'm not sure if it really matters if they are precisely in the same temperatures so long as the drives are equally represented and within standard deviation in each cluster. If there is equal representation in each data center and they are finding Xdrive by manufacturer A is failing moreso in those temps / that environment than YDrive by that same manufacturer then that is the type of info I care about when making purchasing decisions.

[@kerai129]

Very informative, thank you. I'm considering getting a Toshiba MG Series drive in the sales as they seem good value for money. Western Digital has always been my go-to since 1997 when my first drive was a 2GB Caviar. Never actually had one of theirs fail on me in all that time after going through a lot of computers and drives, but have had at least 3 Seagate drives of various sizes and a Fujitsu fail that I can remember. All anecdotal of course, but it goes to show how people can become glued to one manufacturer. Best of luck with your channel, you deserve more subscribers. 👍

[@sometechguy]

@kerai129, thank you for the comment and the encouragement. It is appreciated. I think like many things, if you buy a certain brand and it serves you well then you tend to stick with what you know. If you have a bad experience, you are likely to change and less inclined to give them another chance if you move onto a good experience somewhere else. As long as pricing remains inline and the products are available when you need them of course. And thanks for the support on the channel. It is a slow and gradual process building up a channel with lots of other excellent content available. I will keep plugging away with it. 😎

[@Maolana_ModiG]

bro cam u tell me does HDD enclosure may cause of hdd failure. i means can it badly impact hdd to eventually fail it.

[@BType13X2]

Yeah, people become glued to and loyal to the brands they know. I have used Asus motherboards on all of my own personal computers since 2001, I will be changing over to either Gigabyte or MSI for my next computer due to Asus's anticonsumer behavior recently. I also used WD drives since 2001, and like you my only drive failures were with Seagate and I swore off them altogether in 2008 and have been using WD black or gold drives primarily for the last few years with a pair of Toshiba X300's in there because they were to cheap / cost effective to ignore. The X300's kind of opened my eyes in that they were 40$ cheaper than the WD equivalents, but seem to be holding up just as well, my only gripe is they are audibly louder when they spin up. Earlier today I bought a pair of Seagate Exos 18TB enterprise drive figure 16 years is a long enough time to circle back and try again.

[@troyBORG]

I had some HGST 4TB drives in my NAS I just replaced. They were still working with 2700 days powered on hours!

[@LumpiDeluxe]

In 7 years running 5 Seagate 4 TB Iron drives in a Synology NAS, one of the five failed after 3 years, 4 months with bad sectors - shorts outsite the 3 years warrenty. One time after 7 years a drive power off (hang up), but can be reinstalled to the RAID again without an other fail. For the future I switch to Toshiba, because all Toshiba drives have 5 years warranty.

[@SergSpace]

I own HGST 3Tb. It sounds like a coffee maker when is accessed. I tolerated it for whole year then switched to Toshiba P300. it has 7300 power on hours now. CristalDiskInfo shows 29C/Good. No bad clusters or other errors.

[@henrichandrew]

Hi there, thanks for your analytic sharing. I need a 3.5'" 2 TB to 4 TB SATA HDD for movie or film data storage and attach it to Zidoo Media player for watching movie on TV purpose. The question is which one of the HDD from your review suit that task most? I consider to choose one of Caviar Blue or Barracuda, and Toshiba PC 300. In term of reliability and long term, which one will you recommend? And for information this HDD, I will put it in Orico multi bay Hard drive enclosure with other HDD from the same Brand.

[@sometechguy]

I released some other videos with more in depth model comparisons, but I think the summary is that consumer and enterprise drives don't have significant differences in failures from the same manufacturer, at least for the models in the data. Of course, enterprise drives have better warranties, and for larger capacities they are often cheaper per Tb. So personally, I buy enterprise disks, though they can be a little noiser if they will be running somewhere that is a problem. Overall, WD seems to make the most reliable disks. Toshiba seem a little ahead of Seagate but actually there is far less data on Toshiba drives, so I don't think thats a perfectly safe assumption. Watch the WD Blues, as there are quite a few SMR drives, which are not good for long writes. But they are the cheapest option for the 2-4Tb range. Overall, I would recommend WD currently based on all that analysis as they appear the most robust. Check this video for model and price comparisons for their disks. kzbin.info/www/bejne/h3XcooGorsSgetE Hope this helps.

[@henrichandrew]

@@sometechguy ok. Thanks for your opinion and advise. I think both Toshiba and WD are SMR type. I used these 3 brands of 2.5" sata drive before. And so far so good. Finally, I choose the Toshiba 3.5 sata hdd. It very hard to decide either purchase Toshiba or WD based on your review. I choose Toshiba because it cheaper quite a lot from WD. And they both offer 2 years warranty here.

[@HappyBuddhaBoyd]

Exos or Ironwolf Pro.

[@tweed0929]

Based on 3 samples of WD Caviar and 1 sample of 10 TB WD Passport (external drive), I wouldn't touch Western Digital with a barge pole. Seagate and Toshiba for me. Those die too, but at least these continue to work, so I can recover essential data.

[@ms-ex8em]

what’s the largest capacity tape in terms of tape backup out there ?? does anyone know ?? thanks

[@sometechguy]

Enterprise tape backups are in the realm of 50Tb uncompressed currently. But depending on your need, might be considered expensive.

[@ms-ex8em]

@@sometechguy how much is this 50 terabyte tape ?? thanks

[@sometechguy]

I don't know, I can't find a published price so I guess you contact a distributor. But the LTO-9 drives, which have around 18Tb capacity are around $6000. And the tapes around $100 each. So, not cheap.

[@ms-ex8em]

@@sometechguy ok thanks how long does it take to complete or do a back up of around 18 terabytes of data ?? thanks and bless you lots

[@spikeevans1488]

Consumer drives were not designed to run in racks; particularly large ones like backblaze. Enterprise drives are designed to deal with vibrations found in racks.

[@sometechguy]

This is true, but interestingly the data shows that consumer drives are not significantly more likely to fail in most cases. And those consumer drives, often with only 2 years of warranty are surviving just as long as their enterprise counterparts, often over 7 years. I have a video that compares data on exactly this if its interesting : kzbin.info/www/bejne/opC8opeMfMh2ZtE

[@neoturfmasterMVS]

So which company is best to buy hard drives from? And the models that are best? Someone watch the video for me and make sense of this!

[@sometechguy]

Thanks for the comment, and yes this gives an overview of drive deployments and failure rates but as I said there is a lot of data here and some deeper analysis is needed to arrive at firm conclusions. I did this, and here are three follow ups with in depth AFR analysis on the data to directly answer those questions. kzbin.info/www/bejne/n5Sxk5iujrtmg5Y - Comparison of failure rates for Seagate, WD and Toshiba drives across a range of models. kzbin.info/www/bejne/f5itZ4ylobGrj6c - Failure rate comparison of a range of 10tb - 16tb drives from these three. kzbin.info/www/bejne/opC8opeMfMh2ZtE - Failure rate comparisons of 4tb, 6tb and 8th drives from these three with comparative failure rates for Desktop vs Enterprise disks over long periods. Hopefully that helps. There is so much data, that it needs slicing different ways to get specific insights from it.

[@guffyHQ]

Interestingly, I still have a Maxtor 1.6GB hard drive from the 90s that still works.. sure it may be slow but it shows how technology was built to last longer in the old days unlike today!

[@sometechguy]

😂

[@oeaoo]

lol

[@Beevreeter]

For what it's worth, I bought a 4Tb WD drive to replace an older 3Tb in my personal system, cloned three partitions to it successfully, and two days later it failed to the point where it could not be initialised by Windows or accessed in any way. I have several drive recovery apps and none of them could access the drive at all, even as a raw drive. Luckily the old 3Tb was still functional, but this should never happen.

[@ericjarvie]

Had my mind set on an drive and after some initial homework i settled on an brand not particulary well known to me but as manufactured in either Thailand or Malaysia i thought it perhaps an wise choice.. the brand was HGST, it seems that with your and back blaze's analysis and that despite my ignorance of what some even more ill informend than me regard as dated or defunct Hard Disk drives inferior to SSD's that in fact HGST wasnt an unwise or uneducated choice..thanks!

[@sometechguy]

HGST drives have proved to be excellent, and I have some other videos with deeper analysis of failure rates etc. HGST were actually acquired by Western Digital some time ago now, and the brand was eventually subsumed into WD, but the Ultrastar disks continue under WD and continue to appear to be generally of great build quality with good reliability. And yes, its a gross over simplification to say that SSDs are better than HDDs. Both types of drives have their use cases, but most traditional home PC users are primarily worried about read/write performance over other things so machines boot and games load faster. But HDDs remain the best tool for many mass storage and long term endurance use cases. I am sure you will be happy with your HGSTs. Though the normal caveat applies, any disk can fail and don't neglect backups. :😁

[@JohanH1990]

9 years in with my WD Red WD30EFRX, home nas, no issues yet *knocks on wood. But unfortunately with the development of WD and the 3 year warnings with new disks, cmr/smr debacle and high failure rates when new, I am switching to Seagate. Question, Ironwolf or Ironwolf Pro? Thanks for the great vids, subscribed

[@sometechguy]

You may have seen some compares I did of WD vs Seagate and recent reliability. WD look stronger, but there always models (or batches of a model) that are lemons. That said, I totally understand about some of the ‘transparency’ problems and how they can switch you off a brand, sometimes for ever. For the ironwolf vs pro, the pro have a better warranty but the main selection criteria may be capacity. I would personally go for Enterprise grade though. Often far better Tb per buck, but maybe a little noisier.

[@edrissariss4205]

Toshiba MG09 18TB vs Seagate Exos X18 18TB which one is better ?

[@sometechguy]

I did another video directly comparing AFR rates from various drive lines from Toshiba, Seagate and Toshiba. For Tosh the data is all for MG07 and MG08 with data for around 55k drives. For Seagate, there was a great deal of data for the X18 line, but a lot of data for X12, 14 and 16. So unfortunately I can't compare those directly, but the data would likely give you a good idea about how each of these manufacturers are doing, and the direction of travel for reliability. The spoiler is that the Toshiba lines are a bit better, and more consistent over time also. You can check it out here : kzbin.info/www/bejne/n5Sxk5iujrtmg5Y Usual caveat, more reliable doesn't always mean 'better' though its a really tangible data point. Price, availability and warranty/support will play a part in that also.

[@warrenbull8716]

honestly back in 2012-2017 We had a lot of Western Digital Drives failing inside of warranty periods. But I haven't had to send any back in the last 5 years. Around that time Seagate drives were pretty much all dying after 1 year and I've just stopped touching Seagate completely since then. Weird

[@tallertecnidam3029]

In my case I’ve had bad experiences with 2.5” Toshibas

[@kiranjoshi2025]

As Data Recovery Service provider since 25 years we always open disks. Enterprise hard disks are only having reliability. Toshiba enterprise hard disks are having far better build quality and reliability, however this may change from model to model.

[@DeiLux]

so you're saying i should get toshiba mg10 20tb instead of exos 20tb?

[@kiranjoshi2025]

@@DeiLux Hi Our observations were based on build quality, internal components like preamp, head /spm etc and engineering design. Since this varies from model to model, we will have to analyze these 2 particular models in order to conclude. In general I will recommend Toshiba over others. Thanks

[@DeiLux]

​@@kiranjoshi2025thank you. I ordered mg10's because they have 512mb cache over 256, extra 15 bucks for that hehe.

[@mbahmarijan789]

​@@kiranjoshi2025 thank you man

[@mbahmarijan789]

​@@kiranjoshi2025what about the latest Toshiba consumer HDD 2TB-8TB. are there any of them that are being faulty yet? how much is the faulty rate if any?

[@DJDocsVideos]

The only drives that ever failed on me in 40 years have been Seagate (non Samsung) Still have a bunch of Gen 1 2 TB Samsung SATA HDDs that run perfectly. I had DOA drives from any brand however.

[@sloo6425]

I've had a bad run of 3 WD drives that die instantly in space of months with no hope of recovery... then I decided to only have Seagate HDD and only had 1 bad Seagate drive that was slowly on it's way out after 5 years and I was able to recover about 70% of non-essential data (it was made around the Thailand flood period) , I've not had a bad Seagate drive in the last 15 years apart from that one. Also I had an enterprise SSD that died last year (fried capacitor) that did have important data but it was not critical as I did have the Seagate backups...

[@muramasa24]

I'm still using seagate agent externals from 2011 and my oldest is from 2009 I believe.

[@salmonsandwich3183]

good to know. I purchased a Toshiba laptop and one of their external HDD around 2014 and they work as if brand new. Had a Western Digital external HDD and it crapped out on me in less than a year. Would not recommend

[@dancarpenter419]

What about PRO vs non pro disk choices ? Great info

[@sometechguy]

Hi, and thank you! The Backblaze data doesn't contain many NAS disks, its around 2100 in total out of the 450k total, and these were nearly all Normal WD Red disks, not Pro disks. These disks also suffered pretty high failure rates and were removed. So there isn't any comparative reliability data there for Pro vs Non-Pro unfortunately.

[@dancarpenter419]

@@sometechguy thank you so much ! Huge help for me as I am planning on setting up a home NAS for family photos ;)

[@saultube44]

Both are bad, after years of being PC Tech, weak HDDs from Seagate and WD, Toshiba or Hitachi last a long time. 2 Factors are important: 1) Cushioning: put vibration absorption material underneath HDDs: plastic sponges, silicone, Sobothane, etc. 2) Static electricity, that's not properly grounded: will interfere with the quality of read/write of data, and might damage the material if strong enough discharges happen

[@buzomatic]

Consumer drives all went 5400 rpm. That's why they disappeared. Backblaze moved to pro/enterprise only to get 7200 rpm.

[@izri134]

People say WD is of a better quality. I assembled a pc in 2009. It came with Seagate drives. About 9 years later i kept getting errors from the drives on my Win7 pc. It kept giving me messages that i should save my data otherwise i might lose everything. I used a Toshiba usb drives from about 2007. I used it for more than 10 years and never ever got an error.

[@automatedrussianbot]

time to store everything on blu-ray

[@sinephase]

for some reason there's a lot of pops and glitches in your mic audio

[@sometechguy]

Hi, thanks for pointing this out. I can't notice this on speakers, but when using headphones there are some small (at least they seemed small to me) glitches as you say. I don't think its from the microphone, but seems to be an issue with some post processing. Maybe someone can give opinions. I am going to keep an eye out for this, and see if I can make some improvements. Getting the audio right does seem to take some experimentation and work. Thanks for bearing with it.

[@sergeytsygankov]

​@@sometechguy Those pops and glitches usually appear when the recording audio buffer size is too small (too short). Try increasing it in your recording software (e.g from 5ms to 20ms). Also try to switch so called Audio Device or Driver Type: MME/DirectX/Asio inside your recording software. Another reason may be your improper Windows audio settings. The third possible reason may be aggressive settings in your limiter/compressor/etc. module if any of these is used during the recording or editing.

[@chionyenkwu2253]

My personal experiences with some of these manufacturers is in the after sales support (when you have an issue ?) --> response I got from Seagate was some of the worst I have had from any hardware manufacturer, in any category; I have been building and developing on hardware for over 30 years. Poor customer service tends to be part of a companies corporate identity so I don't think Seagate's could possibly have changed. Caveat emptor !!🧐🧐

[@sometechguy]

The way a company treats customers when there is a problem and they need help is their true measure. I guess that's equally true of people generally. 🤔

[@joejoewilson5130]

I have had luck with Toshiba portable drives. Have not had luck with Western digital since one of them died and Seagate I feel like dies just as much as WD. From my perspective Toshiba is the brand I prefer. However, I will go with whatever is on sale and cheapest. I know it's random when drives fail. I can't believe the year is 2024 and the most affordable drives are still mechanical for backup purposes. SSD drives are overpriced but probably much more reliable since it doesn't have any moving parts. I also love that with portable drives they're constantly changing up designs and or colors so that way you can distinguish the drives.

[@sometechguy]

HDD's will have their place for a while, due to the cost per TB, and I don't think that's going to change in a while. At least in the lower end. And actually, HDD are in many ways more reliable than SSD. You are right, no moving parts but the stability of the data actually requires constant management by the drive as the data degrades naturally, where HDD this doesn't happen anywhere nearly as badly. And SSD also 'wear out' as the cells also degrade as they are used. So SSD are great for speed and physical size. But HDD are better for cost per TB and long term data endurance. So for the time being, they both have a role to play. 😁

[@jayhartbarger2793]

The drives I have had fail the most were WD Gold.

[@sometechguy]

It's interesting how the anecdotal experiences of people vary so much. I did a few videos looking at failures on the different manufacturers and drive models and despite the data, the comments are full of people who love one manufacturer and/or hate another. Their data is so important to people, that bad experiences with drive failures can have a significant affect on peoples opinions of the drive makers. But that aside, WD Gold drives are basically the same as Ultrastars with just branding differences and statistically they appear to be the most reliable. But there is still a 0.3% or so annual failure rate, and someone has to experience those failures. 😢

[@mytech6779]

It looks like WD has completely dropped the HGST branding and now sells datacenter drives as "Western Digital Ultrastar" (posted July 2024)

[@sometechguy]

This change was done some time ago, but some HGST drives were hanging around the supply chain. Hard to find now, but they are the same as the WD branded anyway.

[@jonhard12]

my WD my passport 5tb started to get corrupted files so far my seagate 1 touch 5tb hdd experience is fine except for like early 2000 seagate got some issue for me

[@NicolasSilvaVasault]

expert always suggest seagate, but personal users have always been bashing seagate for failing hdd on the first1 to 3 years of use, i don't know what or who to trust

[@sometechguy]

I did some other video that compare reliability between different models (4-8TB and 10-18TB) and WD generally seem to have the edge. But Seagate are often a bit cheaper and though not quite as reliable, the failure rates are still mostly low at 1.5-2% a year for most models. Seagate have a significant market share, and this also means more will complain about them, because more of their drives exist. But overall, price aside, WD seem the pick at the moment.

[@NicolasSilvaVasault]

​@sometechguy didn't think about more units on the market means more failures, you're right i didn't thought about it

[@pdmark311]

Have had two WD drives die in my NAS and it's a huge pain

[@kenwilliams3279]

Very useful video thanks

[@sometechguy]

Thank you, appreciate the comment.

[@orhunkabakli]

I owned a lot of (at least 50) hard drives over the last 30 years. Even a huge 10MB! hard drive for an Amiga 500. The only ones that did not give any problems were Western Digitals.

[@ThtsWhaSheSaid64]

10 megabytes isn't huge unless you had old hard drives that come from a time people thought megabytes were a lot

[@orhunkabakli]

@@ThtsWhaSheSaid64 It was huge back in the 80s.

[@ThtsWhaSheSaid64]

@@orhunkabakli exactly what I was thinking but I also thought u might have made a typo

[@bufordmaddogtannen]

I remember a friend of mine bought a Micropolis SCSI hard drive around 1994. That brand is gone too. 🙄

[@sometechguy]

I remember this name, a real blast from the past. 😄

[@alanhamford2538]

Which 10TB for home storage on windows 11 (personal files etc not business).? Low volume as its storage not OS and the PC is stand alone. No gaming just file storage. Want to buy new not used.

[@sometechguy]

I have some other videos that compare reliability data as well as price per Tb. But in short, I would be looking at a WD disk, and the price is going to be a key consideration. Often the enterprise disks such as the Ultrastars offer surprising value. I have a video that specifically compares the drive models from the WD range and where the sweet spots are for price, it will give you an idea, but prices vary over time and by location.

[@alanhamford2538]

@@sometechguy Thanks for replying. Price is last. Non-failure & long-life are top priorities.

[@sometechguy]

@@alanhamford2538 take a look at the Ultrastars. They have had excellent reliability generally and they are built to last. Doesn’t mean they never fail of course, and the enterprise drives are noisier. But often they are actually not more expensive.

[@birgerolovsson5203]

WD is the worst crap imo. I don't buy them anymore after 8 "failures".

[@sometechguy]

What model or type of disks where they and did they all fail early? I had a few WD Reds die (non Pro), but they were 60k hours and well beyond warranty. Not been a fan of WD for a while, but not actually due to product quality problems.

[@birgerolovsson5203]

@@sometechguy It was almost +15 years ago and it was both internal and external disks. I don't remember the exact model since it was perhaps between 13 to 18 years ago. The one who failed fastest failed after 3 days and some of them survived perhaps a "whole" year but one/almost one year is still lousy. Never a WD in my house anymore.

[@sometechguy]

@@birgerolovsson5203 product quality can change, but it shows that brand reputation is the hardest thing to repair and customers have long memories. 👍

[@nickname2729]

​@@sometechguyi can't decide between 5tb western digital passport or 5tb seagate 😢 please help.

[@sometechguy]

The WD My Passport would be a 2.5" disk in a caddy. So its most likely a WD Blue, or possibly a WD Black inside but you can't really be sure. I have not seen good reliability data for the 2.5" disks, and I have not really looked too hard for it. So I can't really say if they are 'good'. Given you never really know what disk you will get in a caddy drive, I normally buy based on brand reputation (or experience) and on price and use it for low usage cold storage, e.g. backups or carrying unimportant and bulky data when I am traveling. Also, I am generally suspicious of the reliability of caddy disks for intensive use. But I don't think any of this really helped you make a decision. 🤔

[@sampsasohlman]

Thank you, looking to upgrade my NAS and really good info

[@sometechguy]

A pleasure, thanks for the feedback.

[@SimpMcSimpy]

Lot of comments and personal experiences (some bad some good). But here is the conclusion. Whatever experience you have had with certain brand, statistics clearly show WD Ultra series is the most reliable, Toshiba is second best while Seagate is the worst.

[@ZeldagigafanMatthew]

Reliability aside, WD burned a LOT of trust with their SMR Red's.

[@sometechguy]

They did, and despite the evidence that they make great some great disks, I stopped buying their products for some years. And of course, it wasn't a one off, they made other poor choices around the way they treat their customers. And a pattern of behavior is a bigger red flag than a single piece of poor judgement. Thanks for commenting!

[@jong7258]

My experience with Seagate, Seagate IronWolf, Seagate IronWolf Pro, Seagate BarraCuda, Seagate Enterprise Exos = SHIT (all in 16, 18 and 20TB verison) Seagate Skyhawk I never have used, so I can't say anything about them.! My second last Seagate HDD worked for around 2 weeks before it died, the last 20TB was alive for about 10 min after I formatted it, no files was ever written to it.! and Seagate have stoppe responding to my mails, so that one I haven't got replaced ore got my money back for.! My HGST disks in 2 & 4TB versions bought in 2006/2007 and have been active almost 24/7 is still running, my WD Ultrastar 14TB from 2019, WD Ultrastar DC HC550 18TB from 2021 (also up 24/7) no problem with.

[@alexcidjavillonar7973]

I tried those brand I don’t have any issues.

[@arghyaprotimhalder5592]

Well I used Toshiba in a NAS very bad experience terrible speed within few years died personal experience. Not much reliable

[@HappyBuddhaBoyd]

Toshiba is the worst brand ever in HDDs. Seagate makes the best NAS drives. WD makes the best non specific HDDs. HGST is slightly better than Toshiba. I truly think that generalizing these does not give a good assessment. WD does not make a good NAS drive. Seagate does not make a good laptop HDD.

[@nathanruben3372]

A video of total waste of time. If you are afraid to say anything concrete, do not make a video about these subjects.

[@westfield90]

Thank you

[@davehenderson6896]

From my experience, Seagates are terrible, stick with WD. I had a Seagate that lasted about a year, my WD drives are 8 years old and are going strong.

[@gizmo_therapy]

same i had been having bad experience with seagate, i will say like 3 HDs failed.

[@davehenderson6896]

Yeah go with WD instead. Have WD drives for 8 years now and still at 100%.@@gizmo_therapy

[@HappyBuddhaBoyd]

Seagate mostly sucks, but their helium NAS drives are far better than WD.

[@Alex27uh]

I've owned 6 seagate hard drives and have used them for 20 years, including some lasting 12 years before decommissioning. Never had a failure.

[@davehenderson6896]

@@Alex27uh Well lucky you, I was not so lucky.

[@mbahmarijan789]

Id buy coca cola instead. I have stored lots of p0rn movies in the and never failed. Better than WD

[@KWANTlZE]

all i hear was blah blah blaaaah so i just wont buy it lol

[@blackimp4987]

sorry I'm interested in statistics and methodoly and it might be that it's because I'm not English mothertongue but I find really hard to follow all the details you inject rather than going straight o the point. Consider we can't see clearly the charts you show and had time to examine. It's not very clear sometimes what is shown in the Y and on the X and I think it would be better, when you present them, you don' t spend time adding irrilevant details but explain them better. One thing I''ve noticed: all the editing done for cutting natural human pauses in videos like this make them really stressful and doesn't give viewers enough time to elaborate what they are listening to. This absurd mania of pushing a ton of information in a few minutes without natural speech pauses is a plague spreading around youtube. By the way thank you for the information, I'll have a second view later

[@sometechguy]

I understand, thanks for the feedback. Here are a few of the problems here: For every person that complains that its too fast paced or dense, there are 5 people that complain its too long and detailed. I certainly don't try to add irrelevant details, and I try and keep the analysis relevant, but again different people want different things and whatever you do, someone will complain about it. As for the editing, I appreciate your feedback on this. Again, if its too slow paced, people complain and don't watch. At least if you want to spend a little more time analyzing the graphics, you can pause the video, or replay a section. I don't think there is an answer here that will make everyone happy. I am sure it is far from perfect, but I try to improve in each video. In this video I explored the data and looked for interesting trends, but I think some follow on videos did a better job at getting into more detail on specific models and comparing failure rates in more tangible ways. Its a really large dataset that contains a huge quantity of data, so extracting it efficiently and representing it so its actionable is the challenge. If you are interested in more, maybe check these follow ups which dive deeper into some specifics. But if you find them too hard to watch, I understand. Analysis on AFR rates for 10Tb - 16Tb drives: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f5itZ4ylobGrj6c Analysis on 4-8 Drives and Enterprise vs Desktop failure rates: kzbin.info/www/bejne/opC8opeMfMh2ZtE Seagate vs WD vs Toshiba for AFR rates: kzbin.info/www/bejne/n5Sxk5iujrtmg5Y Thanks for dropping by and commenting.

[@enhncr]

As a computer scientist, I fully agree with @blackimp. Plus there are no real and clear conclusions:( I still don’t know which had to buy for my nas :(