Yeah, but it’s Seagate. I have worked in data centers, and Seagate drives had the most failures of all my drives and somehow is still in business. I’d say I was doing an RMA of 5-6 drives a month that were Seagate, and only 4-5 a year Western Digital.
And they do have more Seagate failures than other brands, but that’s because they have more Seagates than other brands. Seagate is generally pretty good value for the money.
IMO, its not a brand issue. Its a seller/batch/brand issue. Hard drives are sensitive to vibration, and if you buy multiple drives from the same place, at the same time, and all the same brand and model, you might be setting yourself up for a bad experience if someone accidentally slammed those boxes around earlier in their life.
I highly recommend everyone buy their drives from different sellers, at different times, spread out over various models from different brands. This helps eliminate the bad batch issue.
Yeah. In the Backblaze data, you can see that annualized failure rates vary significantly by drive model within the same manufacturer.
But if maintaining drive diversity isn’t your thing, just buy a cold spare and swap it out when a failure inevitably happens (and then replace the spare).
I use all WD Golds for storage now but I have some Seagate barracudas from 2005 that still work. I don’t use them anymore but the data is still there. I fire them up every so often to see. I know that’s purely situational. I pretty much only buy WD now.
Out of the roughly 20 drives I’ve bought over the last decade or so, the only two failures were Seagate and they only made up five of the drives purchased. The other 15 are WD and all have been great (knock on wood).
I’ve had the same experience. The first HDD that failed on me was a Barricuda 7200.11 with the infamous firmware self-brick issue, and a second 7200.11 that just died slowly from bad sectors.
From then on I only bought WD, I have a Caviar Black 1TB from oh, 2009-ish that’s still in service, though it’s finally starting to concern me with it’s higher temperature readings, probably the motor bearings going.
After that I’ve got a few of the WD RE4 1TBs still running like new, and 6 various other WD Gold series drives, all running happily.
The only WD failure I’ve had was from improper shipping, when TigerDirect (rip) didn’t pack the drive correctly, and the carrier football tossed the thing at my porch, it was losing sectors as soon as it first started, but the RMA drive that replaced it is still running in a server fine.
Yeah, but it’s Seagate. I have worked in data centers, and Seagate drives had the most failures of all my drives and somehow is still in business. I’d say I was doing an RMA of 5-6 drives a month that were Seagate, and only 4-5 a year Western Digital.
Is that just observational, or did you keep track? Backblaze does track their failures, and publishes their data: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q1-2025/
And they do have more Seagate failures than other brands, but that’s because they have more Seagates than other brands. Seagate is generally pretty good value for the money.
IMO, its not a brand issue. Its a seller/batch/brand issue. Hard drives are sensitive to vibration, and if you buy multiple drives from the same place, at the same time, and all the same brand and model, you might be setting yourself up for a bad experience if someone accidentally slammed those boxes around earlier in their life.
I highly recommend everyone buy their drives from different sellers, at different times, spread out over various models from different brands. This helps eliminate the bad batch issue.
Yeah. In the Backblaze data, you can see that annualized failure rates vary significantly by drive model within the same manufacturer.
But if maintaining drive diversity isn’t your thing, just buy a cold spare and swap it out when a failure inevitably happens (and then replace the spare).
The problem with same batch drives is failing together, potentially beyond your ability to recover with replacement drives.
What models of Seagate drives?
I’ve been running x4 Seagate ST8000NC0002s 24/7 for almost 5 years, plus 2 more I added about 6 months ago and they’ve never given me any trouble.
To be fair, the only HDDs I’ve ever had that failed were two I dropped because I wasn’t being careful enough.
I use all WD Golds for storage now but I have some Seagate barracudas from 2005 that still work. I don’t use them anymore but the data is still there. I fire them up every so often to see. I know that’s purely situational. I pretty much only buy WD now.
I hear you. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a Seagate drive not fail on me.
Out of the roughly 20 drives I’ve bought over the last decade or so, the only two failures were Seagate and they only made up five of the drives purchased. The other 15 are WD and all have been great (knock on wood).
I’ve had the same experience. The first HDD that failed on me was a Barricuda 7200.11 with the infamous firmware self-brick issue, and a second 7200.11 that just died slowly from bad sectors.
From then on I only bought WD, I have a Caviar Black 1TB from oh, 2009-ish that’s still in service, though it’s finally starting to concern me with it’s higher temperature readings, probably the motor bearings going. After that I’ve got a few of the WD RE4 1TBs still running like new, and 6 various other WD Gold series drives, all running happily.
The only WD failure I’ve had was from improper shipping, when TigerDirect (rip) didn’t pack the drive correctly, and the carrier football tossed the thing at my porch, it was losing sectors as soon as it first started, but the RMA drive that replaced it is still running in a server fine.
Every drive I’ve had fail has been a Seagate. I replace them out of habit at this point.
My 1st thought was “but it’s a Seagate” …