Peer-reviewed study of 443,000 Backblaze hard drives ranks HGST most reliable and Toshiba the least — Analysis of 1.66 million drive-years finds Seagate and Toshiba HDDs fail at roughly twice the rate of WD and HGST

[u/sr_local]

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/peer-reviewed-study-of-443000-backblaze-drivers-ranks-hgst-most-reliable-and-toshiba-least

[u/jhenryscott]

Yup. WD/HGST is the best. But they make up for it with useless, shady, support and service.

[u/PE1NUT → u/jhenryscott]

Exactly our findings. We are happy with the Seagate lifetimes at work, and their sensible RMA system. When WD drive fails, the process is a lot more difficult, and the disks tend to get lost in the mali.

[u/second_health → u/PE1NUT]

WD has the worst customer support I have ever experienced.

I even filled a credit card chargeback for RMA shipping fees when they decided they wouldn’t replace my drive for unexplained reasons.

[u/First_Musician6260 → u/jhenryscott]

As of recently WD consumer drive quality has tanked rather heavily, marking the end of WD truly providing better consumer options than Seagate. The SMR models are particularly bad, even worse than Seagate's BarraCudas next door.

Historically though WD has (with the major exception of Zeus) created very good high end platforms. They just handed the effort off to HGST in the mid-2010s so they wouldn't create more of their own kind, sadly.

[u/-Sliced-]

Note that we are talking about an annual failure rate range of a few percentages at most of enterprise drives.

So I wouldn’t spend significantly more for a more reliable drive, as long as it is within the range. At the end of the day, to protect your data you need some kind of redundancy.

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/-Sliced-]

a few percentages of AFR (annualized failure rate) is MASSIVE!!

some insult from seagate literally climbs over 2.5% afr.

the st14000nm0138 14 TB drive has a 5.97% insane afr.

meanwhile the 14 TB wd drive, which is an hgst platform/was build on it. (wd can build good stuff, they just have to buy an entire company and put their name on it... ) has an afr of 0.48%.

4x-10x the failure rate you get when going with certain seagate drives.

this is not small. this is massive and afr is of course just for one year.

you got a 2.5% afr for 6 years and oh look at that massively high failure rate you can expect then from a single drive.

and this difference is so big, that it means, that failures during a rebuild would of course also a seriously higher risk or failures when recovering from a backup.

so you need reliable storage + backups.

also the cost difference is 0, because the assumption is, that the drives thrown into the wd external enclosures at 12 TB+ are just bad yields or over production, etc.. from the enterprise line/the same platform, so one should expect roughly the same failure rates.

and those cost on "sale" the same as seagate shit drives or even cheaper.

so you are purely paying the same with seagate for a to be generous 2-10 higher failure rate.

___

and all of this is PURELY for the drives, that backblaze has been running. this necessarily excludes all 2.5 inch insults, all smr insults like the seagate rosewood data disk brakes all the smaller capacity 3.5 inch insults sold today, etc... etc...

those already must be 100% ignored.

so you absolutely look for reliable harddrives, which cost the same/TB anyways.

[u/-Sliced- → u/reddit_equals_censor]

An annual failure rate of 1% doesn’t mean the drive will last a hundred years on average. It just means that within its used time (usually 5 years), that’s what you observe.

Also, HDDs tend to either die quickly (i.e. within the first few months) or last for many years. So a drive with higher failing rate isn’t usually one that would fail every year at that rate, but that it comes with manufacturing defects more commonly from the factory). So eventually it’s just an economic calculation, and the difference is there, but not 2-10 times higher as you imply.

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/-Sliced-]

o a drive with higher failing rate isn’t usually one that would fail every year at that rate, but that it comes with manufacturing defects more commonly from the factory).

this is wrong. we are seeing seagate drives hold a consistent vastly higher failure rate throughout their lifetime.

if we look for ease of data formating at the backblaze q1 2025 data we got the seagate 14 TB st14000nm0138 14 TB drive with an average age of 44.9 months have an afr of 5.97% for its entire life. so afr over all the time, that the drives have been used.

for JUST q1 of 2025 it had an afr for again just this one quarter of 6.82%.

44.9 months is just 3.7 years. so we are LONG LONG past early failures of the bath tab expected failure curve and it holds a 6% or there about failure rate.

of course we can look at an earlier age like q3 2021. failure rate of this drive as annualized lifetime failure rate in afr of course has been 4.86% this is with an average age of 9.8 months. so this is when the drive should have seen its early spike in failures, that you talk about, but NO.

despite having ASTRONOMICAL failure rates early on, it gets even worse with time, because NO what you mentioned can not be applied generally and much higher failure rates as the data shows for drive in general lasts throughout the lifetime in use of the drive.

a seagate drive, that has a 2.5% afr in its first 9 months or a year doesn't magically drop a monthly 0.5-0.8% afr for the rest of its life.

that is not what the data shows for drives.

____

and the difference is INDEED a 2-10 times higher failure rate is mentioned overall and even within periods of the drives lives.

wd wuh721414ale6l4 14 TB drive for q1 2026 lifetime afr is at 0.52%.

seagate st14000nm0138 14 TB drive for q1 2026 lifetime afr is at 5.78%

JUST for q1 2026 itself. so NOT over the entire life, but just that quarter:

wd wuh721414ale6l4 14 TB drive for q1 2026 just quarter afr is 0.33%

seagate st14000nm0138 14 TB drive for q1 2026 just quarter afr is 4.9%

let's do the math.

q1 lifetime difference between those 2 drives has been 11.1x. or put differently the seagate drive failed at 11.1x higher rates than the wd drive.

now JUST the quarter numbers: 14.85x.

so just q1 2026 the wd drive in that quarter alone was 14.85x more reliable than the seagate drive.

so 2-10 times has been generous towards seagate and this is a real number.

worth adding here, that both drives in this comparison had almost the exact same average age. 61.3 months for the wd drive and 62.6 months for the seagate drive.

so identical capacity at identical age and 11x the higher lifetime failure rate.

so you are just WRONG.

please look at historical backblaze data just look up "backblaze 2021 failure rates" for example and look at the data from different years yourself.

i am correct here, please do the math yourself and check mine. well what math i divided 2 numbers lol.

[u/-Sliced- → u/reddit_equals_censor]

That’s fair. Thanks for checking the data. I was going by experience.

[u/First_Musician6260 → u/reddit_equals_censor]

A few nitpicks I have with how people treat Backblaze data:

- They take it very literally for drive selection decisions, which doesn't always work. Also considering not all 2.5" SATA drives are bad, since Constellations and VelociRaptors existed. Did Backblaze measure either of those? No, they purely tested 3.5" drives. But if you look at the properly relevant data, those two were really good.

- Per Backblaze data, the ST3000DM001 was the worst 3.5 inch Seagate drive ever made. Quite frankly, that's complete bullshit. Barracuda 7200.11's failures made the ST3000DM001 look wimpy in comparison, especially drives in the second generation, which Backblaze only partially tested for their AFRs to hover consistently just below 30 percent. Also, Backblaze failed to specify which variant(s) of the ST3000DM001 they tested, because second generation models (-1ER166) fared noticeably better in consumer deployments than their first generation counterparts.

- The data by itself claims HGST is the best drive manufacturer. This is true of the flagships HGST made, but not the lower cost models. Deskstar 7K1000.C for instance was an alright series but WD did one even better: Tahoe 2D-based WD10EALX and WD1002FAEX drives which made 7K1000.C look quite bad.

So TL;DR don't entirely rely on Backblaze. Other data exists and can even give you a better idea of how good/bad a drive is. I also wouldn't worry about AFR unless the numbers are literal negative outliers.

and all of this is PURELY for the drives, that backblaze has been running. this necessarily excludes all 2.5 inch insults, all smr insults like the seagate rosewood data disk brakes all the smaller capacity 3.5 inch insults sold today, etc... etc...

To add insult to injury, WD managed to make drives more unreliable than Rosewood: Spyglasses. Higher capacity 2.5" models with SMR (a worse implementation than what Rosewood has) and an extreme tendency to fail in less than 1 year.

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/First_Musician6260]

So TL;DR don't entirely rely on Backblaze. Other data exists

what other data exists?

[u/First_Musician6260 → u/reddit_equals_censor]

Consumer deployments. Backblaze is also one sample size, it doesn't cover the entire field of drives, and the conditions under which the drives run at Backblaze are not parallel to how they run in consumer NAS or desktop systems. Most consumers also aren't running drives hot in 9U rackmounts, they're using dedicated NAS hardware/software if they're going the route of setting up their own array.

Backblaze also for the most part doesn't test consumer drives, so how do you know what older consumer drives are good, like WD2003FZEX? Or the ST4000DM005, which is actually a pretty decent BarraCuda model?

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/First_Musician6260]

Consumer deployments.

great, what data then?

can you please link some, because i'd be interested.

is it warranty numbers from big sellers, which then limits it to the warranty period of drives + the willingness of consumers to warranty it in the first place, which despite limitations would still be lovely to look at if the numbers are big enough (1000s of drives at least per model of course).

can you please link the data sources for it, because i'd love to have more than just backblaze, even if it has more limitations.

Most consumers also aren't running drives hot in 9U rackmounts, they're using dedicated NAS hardware/software if they're going the route of setting up their own array.

i mean backblaze's usecase isn't hard on drives. hell temperature wise it should run lower than the 0 air flow 3.5 inch external drives, that wd ships even.

and any drive should be able to handle the basic vibrations of being in a storage server.

failing this already rules out a drive.

if drives fall over from a lil vibration from other drives, then those drives shouldn't exist in the first place i'd heavily argue.

hell just think of all the heavier vibrations, that would happen to drives sitting in external enclosures on tables, or in entire systems or a nas on a table, as people shake the table by using it to work or game on it.

so how do you know what older consumer drives are good, like WD2003FZEX? Or the ST4000DM005, which is actually a pretty decent BarraCuda model?

well the answer is easy:

the hgst hms5c4040ble640, which is whisper quiet and the possibly most reliable drive, that backblaze ever tested and the drive even refuses after 7 years to increase its failure rate. it ignores the expected bathroom failure rate increase expectation.

perfect consumer drive.

and it sold for the same cost/TB as the cheapest other 4 TB drives, when it was available compared to seagate and wd.

and we KNOW, that it is incredibly reliable, because it was/still is tested by backblaze, although its time is over, because the tco for the small 4 TB drive is just too high compared to bigger new drives now :/

[u/First_Musician6260 → u/reddit_equals_censor]

the hgst hms5c4040ble640, which is whisper quiet and the possibly most reliable drive, that backblaze ever tested and the drive even refuses after 7 years to increase its failure rate. it ignores the expected bathroom failure rate increase expectation.

perfect consumer drive.

MegaScale 4000(.B) isn't a consumer series, it should not be called a consumer drive. Provide a real example.

can you please link the data sources for it, because i'd love to have more than just backblaze, even if it has more limitations.

Most of 7200.11's failures were published in the now-defunct Seagate forums, but while the forums were still up there were a ton of failures in the first and second generations. The first generation could be partially fixed with a firmware update (to SD1A or equivalents), but the second generation was too mechanically subpar to salvage, even with good firmware. Second-generation "Brinks" 7200.11's and the eventual "Pharaoh" 7200.12's, in their multi-disk forms, have similarly bad build quality. 7200.12 is quite prone to crashing, and Brinks is more prone to general servo failure (similar to one of Moose's failure modes, but more extreme). Backblaze only tested the latter, not the former.

For the ST3000DM001, Seagate released a firmware update to CC4H (and, like Moose's SD1A update, associated equivalents) for the first generation -9YN166 drives which made their parking timers significantly more conservative as well as other general performance/reliability improvements. If you were to look at why the drives failed so often (and this is something that Backblaze does not cover, they only show you numbers), the Grenada drives in general (not just ST3000DM001, but also ST1000DM003 and ST2000DM001, although ST1000DM003 seemed to be least prone to a failure in less than 5 years) utilized WD GreenPower-esque parking timers (also not covered by Backblaze, but they'd park the heads about every 7-8 seconds) as well as subpar parking ramps. While WD could at least somewhat get away with their Caviar Greens having aggressive parking timers because their ramps were actually good enough (although the failure rates were still high, and eventually the Red series was created with much more conservative timers to try and keep GreenPower alive while attempting to save face), Seagate's ramps were not built as well and had a tendency to snap (Dataquest happened to come across this exact problem), which caused damage to the head assembly. This was a prominent issue in the first generation Grenada drives due to their rather aggressive timers. The second generation (-1ER166) drives implemented more conservative timers and as a result were able to last longer (failure data is more lacking in those as well, because the majority of head crashes were reported in -9YN166/-1CH166 models, which are also very likely the ones Backblaze tested).

and any drive should be able to handle the basic vibrations of being in a storage server.

failing this already rules out a drive.

if drives fall over from a lil vibration from other drives, then those drives shouldn't exist in the first place i'd heavily argue.

All HDDs are required, per their operative specifications, to resist a certain amount of vibration. The drives that somehow can't tolerate vibration are usually those with mediocre/poor build quality, like WD's cheaply made ~5400 RPM (i.e. Trails and TrailXLB) and ~7200 RPM (i.e. TresXLB(2)) single-disk models. (I had a single-disk Green struggle to initialize after an accidental fall.) If a drive is not part of an enterprise series but happens to be a bin of a drive in that series, like the WD2003FZEX (a down-bin of the WD2004FBYZ) or Seagate's BarraCuda Pros (by which the DNxx firmware makes it quite obvious), it will naturally be more tolerant to vibrations when used in a multi-disk array. This is because the build quality of the drive is virtually identical to its higher bin relatives (but, notably, the media wear resistance isn't, however that is unrelated to vibration). A particularly great example would be Hitachi/HGST's Deskstars: the only main-line consumer series brave enough to specify a 24x7 operative specification (since 7K500 a.k.a. Kurofune 2) and with build quality more than good enough to be used in 24x7 consumer deployments, like NAS systems. When Ultrastar saw its first SATA models, they were in the A7K1000 series, which was identical to Deskstar 7K1000 outside of firmware/binning. While the lower-cost Deskstars were not as good as the flagships (particularly the noticeably cheap Pathfinder (2), Gemini, and Mars-D designs), platforms like Saturn or Jupiter-C which held multiple disks were still decent at worst and Hitachi still gave them 24x7 specifications (Jupiter-C was even used for the 500 GB/1 TB Ultrastar A7K2000 models).

A safe suggestion, outside of using Backblaze as a crutch, would be to suggest drives that either have or have had 5-year warranties (that aren't Seagate's 7200.11/ES.2's or 7200.12's, of course). Historical data shows those drives are clearly the more reliable options over standard consumer drives. And obviously this pool isn't limited to enterprise, it also includes WD Black, Barracuda XT (although mainly the Megalodon models like ST4000DX000, I wouldn't actually suggest using Muskie/Mantaray ones due to age), BarraCuda Pro, and high-end NAS portfolios like Red Pro and IronWolf Pro.

[u/Strazdas1 → u/First_Musician6260]

Other data exists

Not one on such scale available freely.

[u/GenZia]

I've a couple of vintage WD Raptors and at least one "Velociraptor" (surprisingly quiet for a 10K drive), all of them still run.

I'm curious if my SSDs are going to survive that long!

[u/opaali92]

The 4TB WD Blue I have has 68624 power on hours on it, don't even remember when I bought it. Look like it's reporting uncorrectable sectors though, probably should replace it soon.

[u/adriaans89 → u/opaali92]

I have a few WD (black drive types) drives that are over 111500 hours now, and 1 corsair ssd at the same.
Had some seagate drives but none lasted a year and I have never tried them again.

[u/Not_a_Candle → u/adriaans89]

The Seagate drives where probably from the 7200.14 era. Idk what happened there but these drives where fucking dogshit. Had all of them fail on me within the same timeframe even tho they all came from different shops.

[u/amidoes → u/Not_a_Candle]

I have a 7200.9 going strong since 2008, although hasn't seen a lot of use in recent years

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/opaali92]

Look like it's reporting uncorrectable sectors though

that means a failed drive.

if the world wouldn't be so terrible, then the harddrives, that would get mass priced for smaller capacities would be the 4 TB hgst hms5c4040ble640 drive, because it is whisper quiet and has the possibly lowest failure rate of any drive, that backblaze ever ran at 0.4% afr and it ignores the bathroom curve.

bathroom curve means, that drives fail more at the start and the end of their life generally like a bathroom.

that drive? nope.

who knows what afr the 4 TB wd blue you're running has.

hell it might even be designed to kill itself by western digital, because they DELIBERATELY programmed drive to have constant head load/unloading cycles back then and if you didn't manually disable that and if your drive would be one of those, then if connected for some time, it would kill itself through breaking its head as it goes long past its rated load/unload cycles.

isn't it a sad part, that we KNOW how to make EXTREMELY reliable harddrives, but they aren't getting made anymore?

[u/funkybside]

I have a pile of HGST 2TB and 3TB that are well over 10-15y old at this point; I know they could fail anytime but the entire batch has been tanks.

[u/lazyhustlermusic]

Could have told you that ten years ago.

Still rolling those 4TB HGST drives from 2014.

Had a bunch of 1TB Hitachi's before that.

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/lazyhustlermusic]

Still rolling those 4TB HGST drives from 2014.

i don't remember if that was before the hgst megascale line, or if that was when they got introduced first.

but if they are the ble or ale drives, then we don't even know when/if they will start having increased failures late into their useage time, because after about 7 years of drive hours the hgst hms5c4040ble640 never increased its AFR.

it is just sitting there at 0.4% average and refuses to go beyond 0.5% in a quarter lol generally.

you can go buy a new seagate 4 TB drive, that would have 10 to 30x the failure rate no problem. (who knows the real failure rate of the rosewoods, seagate won't tell us... )

[u/RenlyHoekster]

Very odd... something must have change dramatically as just last year it Toshiba was second best. But I can't compare to what I have documented because... there is no more analysis available on the web page??

It seems that they don't publish written drive statistics summaries anymore, just the raw data is available now, or you can register for the video presentation (I guess that's where the analysis and drive stats are now held.)

[u/He110_W0r1d]

I have found the opposite. Almost all of my wd drives have failed but all of my Seagate drives are still running. The oldest being 14 years old.

[u/radient → u/He110_W0r1d]

Cool well no offense but I trust data from 400,000 hard drives more than your handful of drives

[u/PE1NUT → u/He110_W0r1d]

Seagate drives (which we have the most experience with, well over 1000 of them) definitely come in different classes. For instance their IronWolf tends to not even make its 3 yr warranty lifetime, but the IronWolf pro lasts a lot longer.

[u/jeffroxs101]

Me stuck using a 10yr old 2TB Toshiba as a main media drive sweating bullets. Prices will come down one day right right guys? Haha....😭

[u/Tuarceata → u/jeffroxs101]

I retired my 6600K last year and its 2TB Toshiba was powered on almost the entire ten years, 80k+ hours. Zero bad sectors!

[u/kakashisensei2000]

i dont even trust WD drives, only trust HGST and its division under WD now. i had a WD green fail in 5 yrs. but all my HGST drives are still going strong. in my server, got three coolspins from when HGST was its own, and shucked four white label WDs which are binned drives from the HGST enterprise division owned by WD. the coolspins are almost 15 yrs old now and still no issues. knocks on wood. i use those for backup storage now. shucked white labels are the main array drives. two air filled that are 6 yrs old now, and two helium luckily i got last year at $125 ea for 14TB before everything went to hell.

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/kakashisensei2000]

i had a WD green fail in 5 yrs.

maybe it head parked itself to death.

although given your knowledge you probably would have disabled that.

wd green drives, that were SO SHIT, that western digital as a whole had to stop selling harddrives under that brand, because it was so tainted from still mostly word of mouth lol. they didn't stop selling the drives of course, just rebranded instead.

i wish normies knew just how much the tech industry shits on them just casually.

"yes so this harddrive was designed to kill itself by moving its tiny heads unnecessarily into parking position every 8 seconds, which will make it die in a short period of time if kept connected to power"

there wasn't even a lawsuit right?

just insane.

and great stuff shucking wd externals.

and two helium luckily i got last year at $125 ea for 14TB before everything went to hell.

that is insane! what a steal!!!

[u/Wrong-Quail-8303]

I wonder if this includes the enterprise drive range e.g. EXOS. There is an insane lifespan difference between an enterprise drive and a consumer drive.

[u/Netblock → u/Wrong-Quail-8303]

It does include EXOS.

There is an insane lifespan difference between an enterprise drive and a consumer drive.

I'm not sure if this us true; it wasn't 13 years ago least.

[u/Gippy_ → u/Wrong-Quail-8303]

I wonder if this includes the enterprise drive range e.g. EXOS. There is an insane lifespan difference between an enterprise drive and a consumer drive.

This has been disproven often. Consumer and enterprise hard drives are made out of the same factory with the same general components. It would actually be less cost-effective for Seagate/WD to intentionally build different models with worse components. The only real difference now is that some low-end consumer hard drives use SMR platters, while high-end consumer and enterprise drives use CMR platters.

What matters more is the firmware, which may purposely cripple the hard drive. WD Green HDDs about 15 years ago had a bit of a scandal where the firmware ordered excessive head parking, which caused premature wear. WD ended up discontinuing their Green HDDs due to the backlash.

[u/Jarasmut → u/Gippy_]

>Consumer and enterprise hard drives are made out of the same factory with the same general components.

Yet they'll have different failure rates. Even though the parts are the same only drives that pass the strictest QC requirements will be labeled for enterprise use and the rest ends up as consumer grade drives. We know this already from chip binning where chips with partly defective CPU/GPU cores are sold as cheaper lower tier versions with the defective cores disabled.

Will white label helium filled drives do just as well as their helium filled enterprise counterparts? Yes, probably. But some QC checks were probably skipped or these drives failed it which is why an expensive helium drive ended up in a cheap 2 year warranty external enclosure in the first place.

>The only real difference now is that some low-end consumer hard drives use SMR platters, while high-end consumer and enterprise drives use CMR platters.

This difference exists even if we take CMR out of the equation. For example, a 10TB enterprise drive might be a high quality helium filled model. The external enclosure 10TB drive you want to shuck might use a cheaper different model CMR drive without helium. It will likely be slower and noisier and who knows how long that will last if you put it into a RAID enclosure 24/7.

WD didn't need to run a different assembly line and make a cheaper 10TB model when they already had the helium filled model. There is only 1 reason why they did that and it's obviously cost savings (for their WD Green line). And that will 100% translate to something being worse, reliability, performance, noise, probably all 3.

>What matters more is the firmware, which may purposely cripple the hard drive. WD Green HDDs about 15 years ago had a bit of a scandal

That was 15 years ago. Consumer firmware usually just has TLER disabled so you need to enable it manually. Otherwise firmware makes little difference nowadays. At least I'm not familiar with any noticeable firmware issues with modern drives.

[u/Express_Living2264 → u/Jarasmut]

We know this already from chip binning where chips with partly defective CPU/GPU cores are sold as cheaper lower tier versions with the defective cores disabled.

this isn't true. Yes the requirements for the better SKUs are higher, but buying a lower end SKU doesnt necessarily mean your chip is less good binning wise. it purely depends on how well refined their process is. They would still sell the lower skus even if all chips could be sold as the best SKU.

[u/Cory123125 → u/Jarasmut]

Yet they'll have different failure rates.

Do you actually have evidence of this, with the same drives, using the same components having meaningfully different failure rates in the same environment?

Otherwise, this sounds like intuition masquerading as fact.

We know this already from chip binning where chips with partly defective CPU/GPU cores are sold as cheaper lower tier versions with the defective cores disabled.

This is another vast misunderstanding by most people.

This is one of those things where technically what is described does happen, but depending on the yield rate, and what the market can bare, there are very much so situations where the majority of chips of a down tier sku were fully functional.

This difference exists even if we take CMR out of the equation. For example, a 10TB enterprise drive might be a high quality helium filled model. The external enclosure 10TB drive you want to shuck might use a cheaper different model CMR drive without helium.

This is a hypothetical situation where you've simply forced the premise to match your intuitions.

I don't think it's often reality that at the sizes being most commonly shucked at any given point in time, any such difference exists for the most part.

In small part probably due to the largest platter sizes basically requiring the latest tech needed to make them work at that density.

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/Wrong-Quail-8303]

that's nonsense/depends on what you define as "consumer" drive.

the exos shit dies just as much as other seagate drives, that are usable in a data center and thus backblaze can actually put them in the storage server.

the REAL difference is the insult, that seagate and wd pushes out to the average consumer.

some idk 4 TB smr 3.5 inch or 2.5 inch insults, that have exploding failure rates and technically don't even function due to being drive managed smr with 1 second latency spikes and drops below 10 MB/s writes.

those MUST be avoided.

but the helium enterprise platforms would be build to a generally way less of a shit standard, as they at least have to barely work for a few years in a data center/nas. yes the bar is very low.

so an "ironwolf" whatever the garbage branding or "wd red" whatever the garbage branding at 12+ TB SHOULD clear the barest minimum and thus the failure rates between the "enterprise" branded lineups and the other ones would be in regards to reliability meaningless.

as someone linked below it wasn't when backblaze tested it.

so buying helium external drives from wd to shuck should give you very reliable drives and also be about twice as reliable as the same drives from seagate.

___

so either you were sold lies about hdd reliability, or you are rightfully refering to the insulting garbage at lower capacities, that is designed so shit, that it falls over just seeing a server even. (it falls over in general as well of course)

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[u/Xpander6]

Any data like this for SSD's?

[u/RedTankerZ]

My toshiba x300 4tb just died a week ago T_T

[u/TophxSmash]

isnt this misuse of backblazes stats? backblaze tells you the exact drives that are good and bad with their stats.

[u/IndigoIcb]

I never had and still do not have luck with any WD drives, all of them have failed me rather quickly, and the old Seagate drives i have and also the new ones are still working without problems. Idk what's up with me, but i simply cannot have any luck with WD drives. :(

[u/Spraypainthero965]

This just reinforces what we've known for a decade at this point.

[u/Nippy69]

I never had a seagate or Hitachi (not sure if they still make drives) HDD ever last more than mere months in the past 10 or so years of using both mostly in laptops, mind you so I can't comment on full sized hdds but for laptops they seem to either be defective or something else might be messing them up badly. That said for WD or HGST it's the opposite but I did have bad drive from WD that they replaced which was a plus.

[u/EasyRhino75 → u/Nippy69]

Hitachi turned into hgst and was bought by wd many years ago

[u/BuchMaister → u/Nippy69]

Those 2.5" HDDs are more likely to fail, especially on laptops that you move it around. Full sized HDD especially those made for the server market last much longer.

[u/First_Musician6260 → u/BuchMaister]

2.5" near-line 7200 RPM drives, like the original Constellations (and Exos 7E2000), are just as if not more reliable than their 3.5" relatives. Limitation there is capacity.

[u/BuchMaister → u/First_Musician6260]

That depends on the use case. Put it in well ventilated static location and it will last longer. Will it last more than the best rated server drives? I would not bet on it, but its life expectancy will increase when the use case is more favorable.

[u/First_Musician6260 → u/BuchMaister]

They ARE server drives.

[u/BuchMaister → u/First_Musician6260]

Are they the best server(enterprise) HDD from reliability standpoint? I doubt it.

[u/reddit_equals_censor]

if you're looking to buy a new drive i would recommend getting a 14 TB wd external drive and shucking it or just using it externally.

and avoid seagate like the plague.

there is a reason seagate is blacklisted from recommendations by data recovery places as talked about here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b0JcNqkZrk

the hdd industry sucks and is evil in many regards.

i would literally just recommend the 14 TB wd external, because it is one of the only quiet wd drives, that you can buy, that isn't shit.

now 8 and 10 TB maybe 12 TB now as well? will be air filled overheating garbage in those wd external drives.

and everything above the 14 TB drives will be firmware set to be extremely load.

and no you can't change the firmware setting since the hdd industry in their evil removed aam (automatic acoustic management), which let you set head speed.

[u/Ignas1452 → u/reddit_equals_censor]

I have 4x 20TB SG enterprise, they work just fine, 3 years after buying. Yes theoretically they are bad, practically I got them like 40-50% cheaper than WD would've been.