A durability report of 27,134 HDDs

Online backup provider Backblaze have published results from an internal study of the hard drives they use for their service. The study includes 27,134 hard drives from Toshiba, Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital & Samsung. The Seagate drive ranging from 1.5 TB to 3TB have significantly higher failure rate, although their 4TB models fare better.

*blog.backblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/blog-fail-drives-manufacture.jpg

Of the current vendors, WD is the most durable and coupled with their awesome service, looks like the way to go. Full report here:-

Backblaze Blog » What Hard Drive Should I Buy?

hitachi is really doing great.. does anyone have some good/bad experience with hitachi rma? please share your opinions

No mention of Toshiba? I think Hitachi bought Toshiba's HDD division or was it the other way round?

Had some problem in Toshiba's 500 GB ext. HDD. It was a faulty cable which the service center replaced without extra charges. :doublethumb:

H

Thanks for posting this
I never recommend seagate to anyone. High failure rate and terrible RMA
Whereas WD is simply awesome :razz:

rijinpk1 said:
hitachi is really doing great.. does anyone have some good/bad experience with hitachi rma? please share your opinions

Personally using a Hitachi 7200rpm 500gb. Works great; no problems till now(about 3 years old,still few months of warranty left). Actually wanted Seagate Barracuda, but my brother has a Hitachi external HDD-rather old, but in top working condition. So I rolled with this. Not dissapointed at all. Though it's tougher to find HGSA in market right now, WD and Seagate are more prominent...

Wd is my personal preference too. Had several HDD in past , and none of them gave any issues. And the performance was excellent.

Luffy said:
No mention of Toshiba? I think Hitachi bought Toshiba's HDD division or was it the other way round?

Had some problem in Toshiba's 500 GB ext. HDD. It was a faulty cable which the service center replaced without extra charges.

Western Digital has acquired Hitachi and sold the HDD division to Toshiba afaik. And Toshiba has been mentioned, read the post. Just that they don't have enough drives.

Skud said:
Western Digital has acquired Hitachi and sold the HDD division to Toshiba afaik. And Toshiba has been mentioned, read the post. Just that they don't have enough drives.

My bad, i only checked the bar graph.

S

I don't know about the average failure rate but I have had really bad experience with WD, my 2TB passport drive failed only after 8 months of use and without dropping once, whereas my 1TB Seagate Goflex has been working solid for almost 2 years now.

It's good to see Seagate ahead in something
(NOT)

#UnhappySeagateOwnerHere

V

@Silverlight: I guess they're talking about internal drives in the blog, but still, WD external HDDs fail at the mini and micro USB ports. Earlier drives could be put to use by swapping out the casing, but the newer ones have the micro USB ports soldered on to the PCB and it takes a lot of skill to actually replace that port. Fearing that the same would happen with me, I got a Freecom ToughDrive. Not popular I know, but since it was manufactured/assembled by Verbatim, I figured it would be good. Although a bit slower than Seagate/WD HDDs, atleast I have the peace of mind of not losing the HDD over a stupid connector. It doesn't have a detachable cable. Its been more than a year now. Works fine.

WD customer support is helpful and they always try to provide satisfaction to your query. Bought mine WD passport 2 weeks back and is working good and hope for the same in the long run.

Luffy said:
No mention of Toshiba? I think Hitachi bought Toshiba's HDD division or was it the other way round?

Had some problem in Toshiba's 500 GB ext. HDD. It was a faulty cable which the service center replaced without extra charges.

Was it serviced by Rashi peripherals by any chance?If yes,then i must say that its heartening to know that the quality of their RMA process has improved significantly.

quicky008 said:
Was it serviced by Rashi peripherals by any chance?If yes,then i must say that its heartening to know that the quality of their RMA process has improved significantly.

yep, it was Rashi Peripherals.

S

vutonium said:
@Silverlight: I guess they're talking about internal drives in the blog, but still, WD external HDDs fail at the mini and micro USB ports. Earlier drives could be put to use by swapping out the casing, but the newer ones have the micro USB ports soldered on to the PCB and it takes a lot of skill to actually replace that port. Fearing that the same would happen with me, I got a Freecom ToughDrive. Not popular I know, but since it was manufactured/assembled by Verbatim, I figured it would be good. Although a bit slower than Seagate/WD HDDs, atleast I have the peace of mind of not losing the HDD over a stupid connector. It doesn't have a detachable cable. Its been more than a year now. Works fine.

Yeah, I guess we only learn about protecting our drives the hard way.

$hadow said:
WD customer support is helpful and they always try to provide satisfaction to your query. Bought mine WD passport 2 weeks back and is working good and hope for the same in the long run.

I think that value of your data is much more than customer support after disk failure. And these companies do not provide any data recovery services. Sure you get a replacement, but you have to do away with the precious data that you have curated over a long period of time.