Report claims Seagate HDDs are much more likely to fail

Posted on Wednesday, January 22 2014 @ 12:07 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Backblaze published a report about the failure rate of 27,000 hard drives they used in their Storage Pods over the last couple of years. The company claims there wasn't a strong correlation between RPM and reliability, but that there are huge differences between the three largest brands. Hitachi (was is now owned by WD) scored the best, their HDDs had a failure rate of only 3.1% after 36 months. Seagate on the other hand scores horribly in the test, a whopping 26.5 percent of the Seagate disks didn't survive the 36 months test period!

Despite Seagate's poor track record, Backblaze says their current favorite HDD is the 4TB Seagate Desktop HDD.15 (ST4000DM000), with the Western Digital 3TB Red (WD30EFRX) being the runner up.
What Drives Is Backblaze Buying Now?
We are focusing on 4TB drives for new pods. For these, our current favorite is the Seagate Desktop HDD.15 (ST4000DM000). We’ll have to keep an eye on them, though. Historically, Seagate drives have performed well at first, and then had higher failure rates later. Our other favorite is the Western Digital 3TB Red (WD30EFRX).
HDD failure rates

HDD failure rates


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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