Question New Report: Seagate and *SHUDDER* Hitachi seem to be the worst HDDs to buy

[igor_kavinski]

Drive Study Shows Most Failures Occur in Under Three Years

If you have a potentially bad hard drive, failure is most likely to occur early on.

www.tomshardware.com

From the Blocks and Files site:

Toshiba drives, in his sample, are the longest-lived, working for 34,799 hours before failing, with Hitachi’s the worst, at 18,632 hours. The Hitachi drives also have the highest pending (bad) sector count.

Burlee says the Secure Data Recovery engineers looked mote closely at the two most popular manufacturers; Western Digital and Seagate. He says: “We found that the five most durable and resilient hard drives from each manufacturer were made before 2015. On the other hand, most of the least durable and resilient hard drives from each manufacturer were made after 2015.”

He notes: “in general, old drives seem more durable and resilient than new drives,” and “disks with CMR (conventional magnetic recording) appear more durable and resilient than those with SMR.”

Wow. So it's better to avoid newer drives from Seagate and Hitachi. Hitachi! I thought their data center Helium drives were not bad. Wonder what happened?

 

[mikeymikec]

SMR has to work harder, so it wouldn't surprise me if it failed more often.

 

[WilliamM2]

Drive Study Shows Most Failures Occur in Under Three Years

If you have a potentially bad hard drive, failure is most likely to occur early on.

www.tomshardware.com

From the Blocks and Files site:


Wow. So it's better to avoid newer drives from Seagate and Hitachi. Hitachi! I thought their data center Helium drives were not bad. Wonder what happened?

Says right in the article that the sample size is too small for most brands.
And I don't how recent the drives are, Maxtor hasn't made internal drives since 2006. The brand is owned by Seagate now, and they were actually the best, but small sample size again.Hitachi was bought by WD, and they phased out the brand in 2018.
Samsung quit making HDD's in 2011.

Seems like a non article.

 

[BoomerD]

I remember when Seagate was the most reliable HDD on the market. (20 or so years ago) I STILL have one of their 250 GB drives around here somewhere...still works.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I remember when Seagate was the most reliable HDD on the market. (20 or so years ago) I STILL have one of their 250 GB drives around here somewhere...still works.

I would love to see the Speedfan SMART status of that.

If you ever have nothing better to do...

 

[gdansk]

I have 8 Toshiba and 7 Western Digital drives. Not really by any preference but simply as a result of cost at the time of acquisition.

It's a small sample size but the Toshiba are now 5 years old with no failures. Any day now they should start kicking the bucket.

 

[BoomerD]

I would love to see the Speedfan SMART status of that.

If you ever have nothing better to do...

I'd have to dig it out of a box in the garage. It was in service from...maybe 2005 (Newegg order system doesn't go back that far) or so until 2019. I added a 1TB drive to that system in 2013 and took most of the load off the 250. Just used it for misc. storage.

 

[mikeymikec]

I remember when Seagate was the most reliable HDD on the market. (20 or so years ago) I STILL have one of their 250 GB drives around here somewhere...still works.

Yup, after encountering a DeathStar drive I was going for Seagate pretty much all the way with the 5-year warranties and such. Then came the flooding of HDD facilities, the slashing of warranties, etc.

IIRC Google did some research some years ago which concluded that if a HDD makes it beyond the 5-year mark then they're significantly less likely to die.

 

[fzabkar]

That report is lacking in detail.

For example, when Seagate acquired Maxtor, it didn't retain Maxtor's architecture. Instead Seagate rebranded its own drives as Maxtors. Similarly, Seagate rebranded Samsung drives as their own, ie a "Seagate" 2.5" HDD may really be a Samsung underneath the label.

WD does the same, ie it rebrands HGST architecture as WD, and sometimes rebrands WD architecture as HGST.

Toshiba's early 3.5" drives were actually rebranded HGST models.

 

[igor_kavinski]

(rebranding)

That sounds plausible but is there an easy way to determine if an HDD manufacturer is doing this? Like WD to HGST and vice versa? Some utility that can query an HDD and return controller/architecture specifics?

 

[fzabkar]

I can still distinguish them visually, but programmatically it's a little harder.

The quickest way to identify the real make is to look for the part number on the PCB.

2060-nnnnnnn -> WD​

0Annnn or 0Bnnnnn -> HGST​

BF41-nnnnnn -> Samsung (some recent Samsung PCBs now have Seagate part numbers)​

Gnnnnnnn -> Toshiba​

100nnnnnnn -> Seagate​

 

[Fallen Kell]

This is the worst kind of statistics to get any kind of useful or meaningful data. Besides the small sample set, it is also a self-selecting sample (i.e. they only know of drives that failed and ones important enought to have data worth recovering from people/companies that didnt have proper backups). This means they dont know how many drives died total. They dont know how many good drives are stull out there. They cant even say which company has a worse failure rate because not all the failed drives would be sent for data recovery from this company.

In other words, the data is useless other than to say that this company gets more drives made by company XYZ than from company ABC... And there might be 10,000 reasons for that (might be better companies that specialize in this type of business for certain types of disks, so most if the owners of those disks might go to the specialist, or their competitors are cheaper and get more business, or their location makes it less likely for someone to take it here, or the delay would be too long to use this service and they go elsewhere, etc., etc., etc.). This data is useless. If you want real drive statistics, go to Backblaze, as this info is useless.

 

[VirtualLarry]

This data is useless. If you want real drive statistics, go to Backblaze, as this info is useless.

This!

 

[Torn Mind]

Toshiba is garbage in security DVR application. They probably build those cheap to meet the price point.

The first died years ago. Had some useful footage I wanted.

Another was extracted new and used as a external drive for about the past year. Failed on me a couple weeks ago and I had to fork over the money for data recovery. I did run it 24/7. Heads crashed. I stopped the drive upon noticing symptoms. Plugged it in one last time to see what was going on. Recognized but incorrect parameters. Resisted further temptation to power it and contacted datarecovery.com. They say recovery was successful and now I'm waiting to get the drive and then review the files.

Secure Data Recovery is one of the companies Western Digital recgonizes when processing warranty claims. Basically, if you don't want WD to deny a warranty claim....use one of the four WD mentions on the website.

 

[fzabkar]

Secure Data Recovery is one of the companies Western Digital recgonizes when processing warranty claims. Basically, if you don't want WD to deny a warranty claim....use one of the four WD mentions on the website.

Those companies are way overpriced. There are far better alternatives for far less money.

As for warranty, why would you care if you save $100 on a warranty replacement HDD if you are paying $1000 extra for the data recovery?

 

[Torn Mind]

Those companies are way overpriced. There are far better alternatives for far less money.

As for warranty, why would you care if you save $100 on a warranty replacement HDD if you are paying $1000 extra for the data recovery?

Disk Doctors acted real weird when I sent in my enterprise drive to them. They didn't do things promptly at all and I suspect the either raided the good parts or were using it.

I sent in my drive to Secure Data Recovery, they couldn't make an image and sent it back, I didn't have to pay beyond the shipping label to send it to them.

I used datarecovery.com to get a different drive recovered. ~$900 for recovery of non-deleted files and a $400 add on for those files that were deleted.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I used datarecovery.com to get a different drive recovered. ~$900 for recovery of non-deleted files and a $400 add on for those files that were deleted.

I hope the files were worth half what you paid to recover them.

 

[Torn Mind]

I hope the files were worth half what you paid to recover them.

I had surveillance video of someone doing misconduct. This drive was taken out of a security DVR system(Night Owl) and used for a different, lighter purpose(less writing, but I was lazy and didn't power it off, so it basically ran 24/7 still). Still went kaput.

I had a different surveillance system drive fail years earlier, also with a Toshiba, didn't bother to recover that because it was all surveillance files plus the filesystem required the DVR unit to review. The drives might be designed to fail "just out of warranty". It's actually better to provide your own than to trust the manufacturer's drive. Or better yet, just build a pc or buy someone's old gaming box on craigslist and turn that into a Blue Iris box.

 

[igor_kavinski]

The drives might be designed to fail "just out of warranty".

That might be true. These drives don't have strict CRC error checking coz they are used to store video and video files will run fine even when a few or even many bits in the file stream are flipped. It will just make the video look weird with artifacts but it won't matter in most cases. I think the platters for these drives are cheaper since they don't need to worry about data integrity as much as normal drives.

When I bought my first PS3 (don't ask. I'm nuts in my purchasing decisions), I upgraded the 40GB drive to 160GB. The 40GB drive had a warning on it "Don't use for data files" or something like that. Of course, I thought this was stupid. PS3 was using it to store its data files so why can't I? So I put some files on it for backup purposes. They seemed to be fine but after a few months, RAR files on it started giving CRC errors. It seems the drive firmware lacked proper ECC and the PS3 OS was doing it in software I guess.

 

[Torn Mind]

That might be true. These drives don't have strict CRC error checking coz they are used to store video and video files will run fine even when a few or even many bits in the file stream are flipped. It will just make the video look weird with artifacts but it won't matter in most cases. I think the platters for these drives are cheaper since they don't need to worry about data integrity as much as normal drives.

When I bought my first PS3 (don't ask. I'm nuts in my purchasing decisions), I upgraded the 40GB drive to 160GB. The 40GB drive had a warning on it "Don't use for data files" or something like that. Of course, I thought this was stupid. PS3 was using it to store its data files so why can't I? So I put some files on it for backup purposes. They seemed to be fine but after a few months, RAR files on it started giving CRC errors. It seems the drive firmware lacked proper ECC and the PS3 OS was doing it in software I guess.

WD Purples also don't have those strict checks.

I think the Toshibas simply have worse materials.

 

[WilliamM2]

Disk Doctors acted real weird when I sent in my enterprise drive to them. They didn't do things promptly at all and I suspect the either raided the good parts or were using it.

Why is everyone out to get you?

 

[WilliamM2]

I had surveillance video of someone doing misconduct.

I won't even ask what they were doing to you.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I'm guessing TornMind's lanky frame makes people think it's easy to terrorize him but he brings down the law on them and then they go crying back to their mommies.

 

[Torn Mind]

I won't even ask what they were doing to you.

Overt, brazen trespassing by a neighbor

Dude even took a trash can and put it such to foster nuisances like feral cats. He also has a criminal history of obtaining drugs.

Prior to surveillance being installed, there were indications someone was breaking into the house, forcing my hand to purchase a Ring floodlight for the back and a Nest in the front.

It's not I like filing hundreds of dollars in court fees and reading hours of law to get through a civil trespass, but that's how to behave in a "civilized" manner to obtain justice. If I wanted to be real scrupulous, I am only 90 percent sure of his name based on his prior criminal history, so I would need a private investigator to be 100% sure. Calls himself "lucky" as his nickname and then "Moh"(His brother shares the name with the founder of Islam while his probable name is Ali)

 

[Torn Mind]

I'm guessing TornMind's lanky frame makes people think it's easy to terrorize him but he brings down the law on them and then they go crying back to their mommies.

The unidentified can violate the law as much as they want.
Those who do not provide names are under not under the power of the law. Criminal system can't work on anonymous individuals. This, combined with a certain degree of privacy, the anonymous are living in a state of de facto anarchy, where their are no rules for them.