Seagate drives are generally way more reliable now than the pre-TB days.
There is always a risk of premature failure with all hard drives (see the bathtub curve). You should never have only one copy of any data you aren’t okay with losing.
FYI: Backblaze is a cloud storage provider that uses HDDs at scale, and they publish their statistics every year regarding which models have the highest and lowest failure rates.
At this point it’s less about the current quality of the product, and more about the company. I had every right to have my item replaced. I was within warrenty. It’s not MY warrenty policy. I didn’t set the terms. I didn’t set the duration. They did. They said if any issues arrise within a certain time of purchase I could get a replacement. I had the proof. I sent them the proof. I was told something along the lines of “In this case we’re not able to replace the drive”. When I asked what was wrong, I was told it was a high capacity drive with an electronic failure point. I even called on the phone, pulled up a pdf of their warrenty and asked them to show me where in the warrenty there was an exclusion for this situation. They didn’t even attempt to try. They just argued that it couldn’t be done, because the drive failed. I said "Yes. The drive certainly did fail within warrenty period. That’s what’s covered within the warrenty. That’s the whole purpose of the warrenty. To provide reassurance to the customer that if they should so happen to buy one of the 1% of drives with a malfunction beyond their control, that the product they paid for will be replaced without worry. "
They then told me I was wrong, transfered me to their boss, and while on hold hung up.
I understand if I buy a western digital, I run the risk of also buying a dud drive. However I assume they will honor their warrenty.
Seagate doesn’t need to honor any warrenty. They don’t need to offer any warrenty. However as the customer, I’m free to inquire about warrenty terms before buying. If I see a product that does not offer warrenty on new items, or doesn’t allow returns? That tells me the company doesn’t stand by their product. It’s then MY decision on if I want to gamble.
Seagate DID offer a warrenty that they set the terms for. That tells me they stand behind their product. So when they told me no, and gave no reason besides “the drive is dead”? That’s called bait and switch. Which breaks trust between customer and business.
They might have 36TB SSD hard drives at $100 that they guarentee will last 100 years. I still won’t buy it, because I’ve lost trust in the company to stand behind their claims.
And here we are, 20 years later. Still haven’t bought a single seagate product since. And often times being interested in a sale or offer, until I saw the brand. I’ve multiple times in 20 years went out of my way to avoid seagate.
And if they would have honored the warrenty? I’d have moved on from any grudge. Back when Logitech was still a good company I called and asked how much to repair an out of warrenty mouse I have. I understood I’d have to pay. I was getting a price quote to see if it was worth it, as I LOVED that mouse model in 2000. Sad when it died in 2006. Dude on the phone just said “Ah, here. Lets not even repair it. I’m just going to send you the same model”
And sent me a brand new (old stock) replacement of the same mouse I had. That mouse lasted until 2014.
So I used the same model mouse from 2000-2014. And I also still buy logitech products, even though I recognize the company is not as high quality as they used to be. Call it nostolgia, call it brand loyalty, whatever. It still just feels right buying logitech, and a huge part of that is what they did in the past.
Yup, service is way more important IMO than bad products, because if the company is willing to make things right, I’m willing to gamble a bit on a new product.
Take this data with a grain of salt. They buy consumer drives and run them in data centers. So unless your use case is similar, you probably won’t see similar results. A “good” drive from their data may fail early in a frequent spin up/down scenario, and a “bad” drive may last forever if you’re not writing very often.
It’s certainly interesting data, but don’t assume it’s directly applicable to your use case.
It’s absolutely useful data, but there are a bunch of caveats that are easy to ignore.
For example, it’s easy to sort by failure rate and pick the manufacturer with the lowest number. But failures are clustered around the first 18 months of ownership, so this is more a measure of QC for these drives and less of a “how long will this drive last” thing. You’re unlikely to be buying those specific drives or run them as hard as Backblaze does.
Also, while Seagate has the highest failure rates, they are also some of the oldest drives in the report. So for the average user, this largely impacts how likely they are to get a bad drive, not how long a good drive will likely last. The former question matters more for a storage company because they need to pay people to handle drives, whereas a user cares more about second question, and the study doesn’t really address that second question.
The info is certainly interesting, just be careful about what conclusions you draw. Personally, as long as the drive has >=3 year warranty and the company honors it without hassle, I’ll avoid the worst capacities and pick based on price and features.
You’re correct, but this is pretty much “Statistics 101”. Granted most people are really bad at interpreting statistics, but I recommend looking at Backblaze reports because nothing else really comes close.
I agree it’s good data, but good data isn’t particularly useful if you don’t know how to interpret it. It seems to largely answer questions I don’t have, and finding relevant answers is a bit harder since the data is focused on datacenter use.
So I personally look for support quality first (very imprecise, but I look for anecdotes about good and bad customer experience) and avoid the capacities that seem to have consistently high failure rates and low average age in Backblaze data (e.g. 10TB drives). In the past, they largely used consumer drives (not even NAS drives), and now they largely use enterprise drives, neither of which I’m planning to buy anyway, so the main commonality between drives I’ll consider and drives they monitor are the platters, hence the focus on capacity.
I’m glad they publish it, I just think people misinterpret it more often than not.
Is a home NAS a frequent spin up/down scenario though? I’d imagine you’d keep the drives spinning to improve latency and reduce spin-up count. Not that I own any spinning drives currently though - so that’s why I’m wondering.
My drives are usually spun down because it’s not used a ton. Everything runs off my SSD except data access, so unless there’s a backup or I’m watching a movie or something, the drives don’t MHD need to be spinning.
If I was running an office NAS or something, I’d probably keep them spinning, but it’s just me and my family, so usage is pretty infrequent.
FYI: Backblaze is a cloud storage provider that uses HDDs at scale, and they publish their statistics every year regarding which models have the highest and lowest failure rates.
At this point it’s less about the current quality of the product, and more about the company. I had every right to have my item replaced. I was within warrenty. It’s not MY warrenty policy. I didn’t set the terms. I didn’t set the duration. They did. They said if any issues arrise within a certain time of purchase I could get a replacement. I had the proof. I sent them the proof. I was told something along the lines of “In this case we’re not able to replace the drive”. When I asked what was wrong, I was told it was a high capacity drive with an electronic failure point. I even called on the phone, pulled up a pdf of their warrenty and asked them to show me where in the warrenty there was an exclusion for this situation. They didn’t even attempt to try. They just argued that it couldn’t be done, because the drive failed. I said "Yes. The drive certainly did fail within warrenty period. That’s what’s covered within the warrenty. That’s the whole purpose of the warrenty. To provide reassurance to the customer that if they should so happen to buy one of the 1% of drives with a malfunction beyond their control, that the product they paid for will be replaced without worry. "
They then told me I was wrong, transfered me to their boss, and while on hold hung up.
I understand if I buy a western digital, I run the risk of also buying a dud drive. However I assume they will honor their warrenty.
Seagate doesn’t need to honor any warrenty. They don’t need to offer any warrenty. However as the customer, I’m free to inquire about warrenty terms before buying. If I see a product that does not offer warrenty on new items, or doesn’t allow returns? That tells me the company doesn’t stand by their product. It’s then MY decision on if I want to gamble.
Seagate DID offer a warrenty that they set the terms for. That tells me they stand behind their product. So when they told me no, and gave no reason besides “the drive is dead”? That’s called bait and switch. Which breaks trust between customer and business.
They might have 36TB SSD hard drives at $100 that they guarentee will last 100 years. I still won’t buy it, because I’ve lost trust in the company to stand behind their claims.
And here we are, 20 years later. Still haven’t bought a single seagate product since. And often times being interested in a sale or offer, until I saw the brand. I’ve multiple times in 20 years went out of my way to avoid seagate.
And if they would have honored the warrenty? I’d have moved on from any grudge. Back when Logitech was still a good company I called and asked how much to repair an out of warrenty mouse I have. I understood I’d have to pay. I was getting a price quote to see if it was worth it, as I LOVED that mouse model in 2000. Sad when it died in 2006. Dude on the phone just said “Ah, here. Lets not even repair it. I’m just going to send you the same model”
And sent me a brand new (old stock) replacement of the same mouse I had. That mouse lasted until 2014.
So I used the same model mouse from 2000-2014. And I also still buy logitech products, even though I recognize the company is not as high quality as they used to be. Call it nostolgia, call it brand loyalty, whatever. It still just feels right buying logitech, and a huge part of that is what they did in the past.
Yup, service is way more important IMO than bad products, because if the company is willing to make things right, I’m willing to gamble a bit on a new product.
Okay, fair enough.
Take this data with a grain of salt. They buy consumer drives and run them in data centers. So unless your use case is similar, you probably won’t see similar results. A “good” drive from their data may fail early in a frequent spin up/down scenario, and a “bad” drive may last forever if you’re not writing very often.
It’s certainly interesting data, but don’t assume it’s directly applicable to your use case.
Sure, YMMV for any statistical study but it’s also the best source that exists for stats on consumer Hard Drives tested at scale.
It’s absolutely useful data, but there are a bunch of caveats that are easy to ignore.
For example, it’s easy to sort by failure rate and pick the manufacturer with the lowest number. But failures are clustered around the first 18 months of ownership, so this is more a measure of QC for these drives and less of a “how long will this drive last” thing. You’re unlikely to be buying those specific drives or run them as hard as Backblaze does.
Also, while Seagate has the highest failure rates, they are also some of the oldest drives in the report. So for the average user, this largely impacts how likely they are to get a bad drive, not how long a good drive will likely last. The former question matters more for a storage company because they need to pay people to handle drives, whereas a user cares more about second question, and the study doesn’t really address that second question.
The info is certainly interesting, just be careful about what conclusions you draw. Personally, as long as the drive has >=3 year warranty and the company honors it without hassle, I’ll avoid the worst capacities and pick based on price and features.
You’re correct, but this is pretty much “Statistics 101”. Granted most people are really bad at interpreting statistics, but I recommend looking at Backblaze reports because nothing else really comes close.
I agree it’s good data, but good data isn’t particularly useful if you don’t know how to interpret it. It seems to largely answer questions I don’t have, and finding relevant answers is a bit harder since the data is focused on datacenter use.
So I personally look for support quality first (very imprecise, but I look for anecdotes about good and bad customer experience) and avoid the capacities that seem to have consistently high failure rates and low average age in Backblaze data (e.g. 10TB drives). In the past, they largely used consumer drives (not even NAS drives), and now they largely use enterprise drives, neither of which I’m planning to buy anyway, so the main commonality between drives I’ll consider and drives they monitor are the platters, hence the focus on capacity.
I’m glad they publish it, I just think people misinterpret it more often than not.
Is a home NAS a frequent spin up/down scenario though? I’d imagine you’d keep the drives spinning to improve latency and reduce spin-up count. Not that I own any spinning drives currently though - so that’s why I’m wondering.
My drives are usually spun down because it’s not used a ton. Everything runs off my SSD except data access, so unless there’s a backup or I’m watching a movie or something, the drives don’t MHD need to be spinning.
If I was running an office NAS or something, I’d probably keep them spinning, but it’s just me and my family, so usage is pretty infrequent.