Whats the deal with Seagate?

Who makes the best overall consumer HDDs, ranked by Reliability>Performance>Price?

  • HP

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Other (please comment with brand)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Two different brands for Plex & Surveillance (please comment with brands)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    44
Rule # 1 Always have a cloud backup and a physical BU stored in a safe deposit box in a bank vault.
Rule # 2 All things fail at some point use MTBF to gauge when to swap out.
Rule # 3 see rule # 1 many of our customers made backups of their PCs but did not store off site, so when fire or flood (TS Harvey) disaster hit office or home, all was lost.
I have a 6 tb 7200 rpm Seagate Ironwolf for my Steam drive and it is good, no issues.
 
  • Like
Reactions: x509
like this
So, I voted "stupid question", but in a way, no question is really "stupid". This is more of a "nonsense" question. Why? Vendors make good drives, vendors make bad drives. Vendors make good drives with a specific model, and turn around and refab under the SAME model name and it turns out bad (sigh).

So, for me, it's all about "timing". Can't say who is making the best drive. I can comment about great drives of the past (ones that are 5+ years old).

I mean, even with Backblaze producing all their data with regards to drive reliability, it's not meant to focus on "brand", but on drives. And, of course, over time.
 
I wish Blackblaze would use more WDC drives so that I could get better data on the reliability after the HGST models have been phased out.

With that said it is clear from their data that Seagate no longer has the issues they had in the 3TB and smaller drives that had crazy high failure rates.
 
Nice to see this thread revived again ha ha. I decided on 3x WD121KRYZ, and theyre working great so far.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Nside
like this
Just research Individual models. I buy all brands without hesitation. If a model has a legit reputation for being junk though, look elsewhere.

Be aware of SMR drives being snuck in to consumer drive lineups
Seagate SMR/CMR
WD SMR Model List
Toshiba SMR List

Either way, having dealt with dozens of consumer drives, I have not seen any theme for one manufacturer over the other as far as failure. Some are louder than others, warmer, etc... but that doesn't directly coincide with reliability. I will say that I've never had a bad HGST drive in my possession, even used ones. That company was unfortunately absorbed into WD though... so...

Most Failed drives I've dealt with were insanely old, abused, or DOA.
DOA is fairly common, though it might be my definition. To me DOA means that it is failing from the start. It doesn't necessarily mean it's "unusable", though it certainly shouldn't be used.
I think most people don't realize they have (had) a DOA drive until a few months into ownership because as soon as they get it, they initialize it, run a quick format, then start loading it with porn or whatever. Their System doesn't see the bad sectors on the massive drives for a while.

When I get a new platter drive:
I initialize it.
Test One - Run a full format
Test Two - Run a Short Generic test in Seatools
Test Three - Run a Long Generic Test in Seatools

Long Generic will take up to a day or so depending on the size of the drive, so I tend to use my server for this. Be prepared to leave it alone for a while for that one. I think the 6TB I got 2 weeks back took 10 hours or so.
If there's an issue with the formatting, or if it fails either of the Seatools tests, it's a bad drive, pack it back up and send it back to the place you bought it from. Don't RMA it, you would get a refurb from the manufacturer.
I've had probably 5 or 6 "DOAs" over the years, all initialized and formatted fine (though full format can find bad sectors sometimes) 2 of them failed the short test, the rest failed the long test.
Most importantly, I lost 0GB of data, and got a new drive as a replacement for each one. A little patience and work at the beginning can save a lot of hassle later on.

EDIT: I test External Drives that way too before shucking. Warranty void once shucked, but I take that risk if they pass the tests.
 
Last edited:
Just research Individual models. I buy all brands without hesitation. If a model has a legit reputation for being junk though, look elsewhere.

Be aware of SMR drives being snuck in to consumer drive lineups
Seagate SMR/CMR
WD SMR Model List
Toshiba SMR List

Either way, having dealt with dozens of consumer drives, I have not seen any theme for one manufacturer over the other as far as failure. Some are louder than others, warmer, etc... but that doesn't directly coincide with reliability. I will say that I've never had a bad HGST drive in my possession, even used ones. That company was unfortunately absorbed into WD though... so...

Most Failed drives I've dealt with were insanely old, abused, or DOA.
DOA is fairly common, though it might be my definition. To me DOA means that it is failing from the start. It doesn't necessarily mean it's "unusable", though it certainly shouldn't be used.
I think most people don't realize they have (had) a DOA drive until a few months into ownership because as soon as they get it, they initialize it, run a quick format, then start loading it with porn or whatever. Their System doesn't see the bad sectors on the massive drives for a while.

When I get a new platter drive:
I initialize it.
Test One - Run a full format
Test Two - Run a Short Generic test in Seatools
Test Three - Run a Long Generic Test in Seatools

Long Generic will take up to a day or so depending on the size of the drive, so I tend to use my server for this. Be prepared to leave it alone for a while for that one. I think the 6TB I got 2 weeks back took 10 hours or so.
If there's an issue with the formatting, or if it fails either of the Seatools tests, it's a bad drive, pack it back up and send it back to the place you bought it from. Don't RMA it, you would get a refurb from the manufacturer.
I've had probably 5 or 6 "DOAs" over the years, all initialized and formatted fine (though full format can find bad sectors sometimes) 2 of them failed the short test, the rest failed the long test.
Most importantly, I lost 0GB of data, and got a new drive as a replacement for each one. A little patience and work at the beginning can save a lot of hassle later on.

EDIT: I test External Drives that way too before shucking. Warranty void once shucked, but I take that risk if they pass the tests.
Yeah, I was very careful to avoid those SMR drives. Shady shit by WD, but alas I bought WD anyway lol. I'm hoping these "enterprise grade" helium drives will outlast this system. But as a precaution I have active monitoring on them. They're configured in a Raid 5 with Snapraid, and I have a script setup to do nightly scrubs of 3% of the storage. On top of that, I have Stablebit Scanner, which does sector and SMART checks of all my drives (except the WD Purple) on a regular schedule.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Nside
like this
Back
Top