Best are in order: WD, HGST, TOSHIBA, Seagate

@dominicalvin

15 күн бұрын

WD and hitachi is famous for durability for years already. Never buy seagate, even rarely used disk breaks i had 6 of my seagate HDD broke

@midgetcooker5000

15 күн бұрын

I have no idea where you've gotten your luck, but I've been running 6 Seagate's in a raid with 24/7 operation for over 5 years now, the drives I've had fail the most are WD

@ACFUN34

15 күн бұрын

Pff... I just bought an Toshiba MG 20TB 3.5" Enterprise to store movies on it. Should i return it ?

@marvin902x

15 күн бұрын

The WD Ultrastar in this example are only rebranded HGST Ultrastar, so they are only newer HGST models. So HGST were always the best. In fact there were no original WD models in this test.

@suli687

15 күн бұрын

@@ACFUN34 i wouldn't say to do it. i have a couple of hgst 2tb drives in raid 1 with over 50k hours and no smart errors or spinning noises or whatever. Depends on what NAS are you using it in.

If it's a big enough sample to provide a chart that shows high enough resolution data, it's big enough for me to make a decision off. If it's a sample size of, say, 5 disks, then the resolution just won't be there. I'd say the data you're presenting here is more than enough for people to make a valid decision on. Thanks so much for posting it and the hard work you've done.

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

Appreciate the feedback and comment. 😊

The amount data presented to make these conclusions is great and very in-depth! thank you for your work!

@sometechguy

2 ай бұрын

Thank you, I appreciate this! The data from Backblaze is fantastic and contains a lot of detail and a huge volume of stats, its over 410 million rows, each with around 35 columns of good usable data, with many more that isn't so useful. They also did a great job in keeping the data pretty clean, I worked with really dirty datasets before that require a great deal of clean up but the BB data is highly consistent. But it still takes a lot of work to extract the trend data and aggregate it up so you can get the AFR stats. Glad you found it useful.

This is outstanding analysis. Thank you. Am impressed with my WD and HGST drives so far

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

Thank you, appreciate the feedback and the likes on this comment. Glad people found this valuable. 🥳

@yeeaahBUDDY

Ай бұрын

@kevinlsims7330 curious how long it took you to write that comment with all the unnecessary capitalization

@LatitudeSky

Ай бұрын

WD used be my worst nightmare. I had a lot of their 80GB drives and every single one failed. The warranty replacements failed. It was a disaster. But flash forward 15 years or whatever it is and I ended up running WD NVME in everything and now the 10TB HGST HE drives in my NAS. Mostly because they absorbed Hitachi, my old go-to. But I've been quite happy with current NVME and spinning drives and SanDisk for memory cards. Samsung, Crucial, and Silicon Power have all let me down. Would never use those again. Hynix has been good to me.

Thank you sir! This is what i was searching. It would be great to find more video like this.

I watched 3 of your movies. I like the analysis, and the visual stats about the performance of the drives. You put in a lot of effort visualizing the data, which is most appreciated. It comes in handy to change the WD drives in my synolgy NAS, thanks.

@sometechguy

7 ай бұрын

Thank you for the positive feedback. When it comes to failure data, especially comparing many devices I think its really hard to get a good picture of this without visualizations, as there are so many variables to include. It did take some time to put together, and structuring the data also takes time, so I really appreciate the comment that it was useful.

Thanks for making this data much more understandable, where I've seen other channels make a mess of this, subbed!

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

And thank you for the comment and feedback. Glad I did a reasonable job and thanks for the sub!

Thanks for all your work in doing this, much appreciated.

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

Glad you enjoy it! Thank you

I can't tell you how much information like this is appreciated! It cuts through all the mud. People can make genuinely informed decisions on storage!

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

Thank you, appreciate the comment and glad it was valuable. 😃

I have a Seagate Hard drive that been running for more than 139000 Hours, that's almost 16 years of 24/7 and it is still going, it just recently re-mapped for the first time 8 sectors to spare ones but so far nothing else gone. it have load/unload the heads 5 million times so far

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

That's impressive, which model is it? 😎

@Pulverrostmannen

Ай бұрын

@@sometechguy ST96812AS 60GB 2,5” I actually think when it comes to 2,5” drives Seagate been the generally best. And WD when it comes to 3,5”. Worst ever is Hitatchi Travelstar for 2,5. And the IBM Deathstar lol. I had very bad luck with drives in general but I also seen very long lived ones in my days too

@Helios.vfx.

Ай бұрын

Hi, how do you remap the drive?

@Pulverrostmannen

Ай бұрын

@@Helios.vfx. Typically a normal drive will automatically re-map sectors when needed by itself through its built in Smart function. You can monitor this using software such as Gsmart control and Crystaldiskinfo. You can manually do a sector scan of a drive and search for bad sectors using Gsmart control or Windows/programs to check the drive for problems before they eventually get big enough to cause major problems. When a drive is getting worn out and it re-map a lot of sectors or mark many as problematic it is a sign of eminent failure and you should replace the drive. For example: reallocated sector count. This is the value of successful remaps that the hard drive done for you both on mechanical and SSDs. A value higher than 0 is a sign of age or increasing risk of failure. Current pending sector count, this value indicates the drive have problems with sectors but it is waiting for a suitable time to re-map it or check again. It may also be that it is failing to do a re-map of these sectors hence it is a pending problematic sector. Increasing values here have a big chance of damaged data as data is often still stored in these inaccessible sectors. Uncorrectable sector count. A value here indicates the drive have problems with sectors and could not correct them with the built in smart. This is often caused by locked data due to file systems on the drive. Your data is at eminent risk of failure as your drive cannot correct damaged sectors. If your drive have all the 3 combined in higher values you can be assured you have to backup immediately because your data is at maximum risk of complete failure. Monitoring a drives Smart is a very good thing to do at all times as all hard drives are constantly keeping track of their own health at all times

@sanquinteros

Ай бұрын

dude, whats the model?

Building a nas and found your channel through this video. Enjoyed it enough to subscribe. Thanks for the info!

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

Thank you and welcome. Small but growing quickly! Appreciate the support.

an amazing analysis, absolutely shows the difference in manufacturers . allows me to make an informed choice. ❤

0:28 ah yes. the notebook and pen taking notes while looking at the back of server racks lovely ain't it

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

When I am the server room, I always carry a notebook and pen. 😑 But actually, back in the day when patching cables, I really did. But not sure it looked quite like the b-roll.

@XantheFIN

Ай бұрын

Be fair.. notebook and pen is by far easiest anbd quickest way.

@meateaw

Ай бұрын

@@XantheFIN I take photos personally, much quicker and has no transcription errors. (though sometimes they are fuzzy)

@yw1971

Ай бұрын

Somebody please make an app

@derekisthematrix

16 күн бұрын

@@yw1971 I'm genuinely curious about this. What exactly are you checking when looking at the racks? Is it a visual indicator to tell if a drive is down? How big of a problem is this that it can't be automated and/or checked remotely? Thanks.

thanks for taking the time making other's choice much easier

Thank you for this analisys. Great video, simple explanations, looking forward to your content!

Fantastic data presentation, the truth is always in the numbers!! I've got about 13k hours on my 16tb X16 drives in my nas, I'm happy to see the data shows they are quality drives!

Super useful and insightful. Good job!!!

very handy video as i go into making my own homelab, thank you so much

@sometechguy

7 ай бұрын

You are welcome, glad you liked it.

Excellent video, well researched, much appreciated!

@sometechguy

2 ай бұрын

Thank you 🙏

Thanks, excellent analysis, and all of the limitations of the data with their impact on your conclusions have been well explained. I'm just new to your channel but will look out for it in future. I would be interested in an overview of the factors that make Seagate successful despite the dramatically worse reliability shown here - I would have thought that equipment selection for enterprise data centres would be much more sensitive to reliability.

Long story short: - if you have a large number of discs you have to change faulty drives anyway and the cheaper Seagate drives make sense from economical standpoint. - If you are building a server/nas for you home and you want to get close to zero defect discs as possible, you should pay the extra money and get the WD drives. ...this confirms my personal observation.

This is incredibly useful. Thanks mate.

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

No problem 👍

Seagate ... Advice from 25+ years of experience is: avoid Seagate.

@dociekania

5 ай бұрын

Mechanical storage now starts from 4TB up. Personaly I use Adata 8200 pro as main disk, Cruical MX500 for linux, and 4 old 1TB hdd Model: Hitachi HDT721010SLA360 x2, Model: WDC WD1002FAEX-00Y9A0 x2, mechanical drives have about 5.5 years of sumed power on working time and no signs of fatigue so far. In work we have some Synology nas + Synology drives (no idea about model of drives inside) and WD8003FFBX WD Red pro for asustor nas. @@arshkarim_

@sometechguy

5 ай бұрын

For the smaller capacity drives, I have a video that compares enterprise drives to desktop drives for failures, found here : kzread.info/dash/bejne/npON08aPd8apYNI.html. But the short answer is that desktop drives are not generally statistically more likely to fail than enterprise, despite the lower warranty. But the warranty of course allows you to get a replacement for a failure. Yes its true that Seagate appears to have a higher failure rate than HGST (and recent WD drives), and Toshiba can be better also, but its also true that it varies by model, and any drive can fail, or last years. The failure rates over all however, are low, typically 0.5% to 1.5% AFR, meaning that there is around 1% chance that a drive will fail in any given year. So I personally wouldn't avoid Seagate and I have a lot of Seagate drives and have had a good experience. But I would do the following things. 1) Make sure that you do not have 1 copy of data you can't lose on any single disk or in any single drive array. If you care, have a backup. For things I really care about, I have more than 1 backup and keep one somewhere different. 2) If a drive shows signs of failure, replace it. 3) Buy base on pricing, as well as its reliability. I am not saying buy known problem drives, but don't pay huge premiums for specific drives, because any can fail and see point 1. 4) Treat spinning drives properly. Secure them when in use, and don't move them. Don't have them hanging around loose in chassis. 5) Ideally use a UPS to protect systems, especially NAS's. This will result in less unscheduled shutdowns. 6) Be cautious about where you get drives from. I personally buy from trusted retailers where I believe the warranty is valid and its a new drive, the drive hasn't been shucked, removed from a system or 'refurbished'. SSDs are not better than Spinning disks. They are better for certain things. Cheap, long term storage is a good use case for spinning disks and its a more stable medium also for long term data retention. Good luck!

@GrannyDryden

5 ай бұрын

Same. Been in the industry 20+ years. I've built a lot of PC's over that time and one thing i can tell you is that when Seagates fail, they fail HARD. What i mean by that, is that, one day all is well and then suddenly the drives start to go downhill very quickly. Seek error climb drastically and if you don't notice it in time or haven't some active SMART Monitoring keeping an eye on things, you'll have a dead drive in no time at all. In Data Centers, this isn't a huge deal, as they have hard drive redundancy as part of their model, but for home users, not as much. I stopped buying Seagate's a long time ago (i can remember when they bought out Maxtor and their plants, so they could increase their warranties from 2 years to 5). I stick with Western Digital personally, for no other reason, that when those drives start to fail, it's a noticeable, gradual downward curve, not a cliff edge.

@GrannyDryden

5 ай бұрын

depends on the budget. If you want cheap and cheerful, then go for a Western Digital Blue drive. If you need a bit more speed (like storing your steam library on), then a Western digital Black drive should work nicely. @@arshkarim_

@club4ghz

3 ай бұрын

I have 5 WD drives working from 5 to 16 years, none of them died expect one had errors because i dropped it on the floor but i make partitions around the broken area and it's still working.

Great analysis - liked and subscribed

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

Thank you 👍

Excellent video and analysis! I am just thinking about building a home NAS with 10+ TB RAID 1 configuration so the video is straight on my needs. Thank you!

@tomghzel

10 күн бұрын

Why Raid 1? I use Raid 5. Only had one WD disk failing and with the 5y warranty, I had a brand new one from WD within days, rebuild the raid and was good to go again. Amazing service.

Thorough, and very useful to me. Thank you.

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

👍

The data matches my experiences. Great work!

@sometechguy

Күн бұрын

Appreciate it, and thanks for watching. 🙌

Love the video. Thank you. And since finding real drive reviews, as those that are to be found tend to be more like, look at one drive in a family and then pretend it speaks for all of them. This then makes your work even more helpful.

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

Thank you, appreciate this. You can review drives for performance and noise, but can’t really do this for reliability until the drives have got to, or close to their warranty period. And even then, doing this for one or a few drives isn’t very useful. So I think this is the lost useful way of seeing how there drives really perform in a real world scenario, even though BackBlaze may be a harsher environment than some but that is probably a good thing to make sure the drives are subjected to some real work. Thanks for commenting!

Impressive work, it is very interesting even for one not working in this field anymore.

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

Thank you, appreciate you taking the time to comment. 🙏

Very nicely done video. Thank you.

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

Thank you, appreciated. 😎

Very useful info, thank you

What a wonderful and informative video. Just the facts. Thank you for making some NAS HD upgrades an easier purchase.

@sometechguy

19 күн бұрын

My pleasure, and thank you for the feedback.

This is great, thank you!

This just just outstanding!

Thank you for the great video

Thanks for great analysis

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

You're welcome 👍

Bro what do you mean under 6k subs?! Subbed!

@sometechguy

11 күн бұрын

Thanks for the sub! It all helps with growing the channel and getting better reach, so I appreciate it.

Brilliant analysis. tnx

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

Thank you 👍

This is one of the greatest datasets in all of technology, as it allows our purchase decisions to pressure vendors to build more dependable drives!!!

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

Yes! I believe this is why Backblaze publish it and why others should to. I am sure it’s leverage over the hard disk suppliers to do the right thing by them also. Backblaze also do a great job at keeping the dataset relatively clean. It didn’t require too much clean up to ensure consistency.

@jasont80

Ай бұрын

@@sometechguy I wonder if we could write an app to monitor drives in Win/Linux machines around the world? That could really grow this dataset. You'd just have to trust the use to determine is a drive failed vs removed. Could work. Would be fairly easy to write.

Thanks, good info!!

Through the years, my experience has been that Seagates are hit and miss, and WD drives have generally been very reliable. I did have a single WD which failed early, but the rest have been solid. Your videos reinforces these impressions with hard data. Thank you.

That's a lot of info and I know it was a lot of work. Thank you! The Seagate results came as no surprise. They are a huge drive manufacture and a lot of companies and individuals are happy with them, and I'm sure they have made many great drives. Unfortunately, they never made one for me which is why I avoid them like the crackhead at the gas station.

I worked at 2x of these companies. One had me look through backblaze data for an interview question. What id say is that modern HDD are incredibly complex and precise electromechanical devices. Pretty mindblowing they work at all.

Awesome info! It always intrigues me that in these days of modern times when almost everything is CNC machined to molecular tolerances and the parts should be absolutely identical, that there is this much difference in the failure rates of the different brands/models. Cars are another good example. One person can buy a particular make/model of car and get 500000 trouble-free miles, and another will get a lemon that is in the shop every other week for a new transmission. Doesn't make sense. Hard drives are amazing devices in any case.

I got three Seagate Barracuda Drives (Model# ST8000DM004-2CX188) that have been running (mostly) 24/7 for 31500+ hours one of them has finally gave me the caution flag in SMART so I've been needing to get them replaced. I have been deciding on what to get next this video has been a big help. I am planing on getting two 16TB Drives so I can reduce the amount of mechanical drives I have (one in my rig & one as a external backup). All my other drives are going to be solid state.

Awesome video! My 2 HGST 4TB 7200 Red label NAS drives that I've had since late 2014 and they are still going. I'm actually quite surprised I haven't had a drive drop out of my RAID-1. Although the drives are powered down when not being used for 30 minutes which is good, but they do have a lot of spin up counts. Looking for the ideal double digit terabyte drive for a raid 5 configuration with the hot spare.

In 7 years using 5 Seagate 4 TB Iron drives in my Synology NAS, one of the five cashed after 3 years and 4 months with bad sectors - shorts outsite the 3 years warrenty. One time after 7 years a drive power off (hang up), but can be reinstalled to the RAID again without an other fail. But in the future I switch to Toshiba, because all Toshiba drives have 5 years warranty.

@sometechguy

5 ай бұрын

Thanks for sharing your experiences. The warranty will depend on the drive class, and has varied over time. All the manufacturers appear to offer 5 years warranty currently on current enterprise class disks, but NAS class disks, surveillance and desktop vary. For example the Toshiba S300 Surveillance Drives have a 3 year warranty, and their desktop P300 have 2 year limited warranty currently based on their datasheets. I think generally you will find similar warranties between them on competitive products.

Rule #1 -- as true today as it was 20 years ago -- avoid Seagate drives

I honestly really like the classic HDD ticking sound my Toshiba X300 12TB makes. Still going strong after buying secondhand a few years ago with regular usage. Also helps to know when the drive is actually being used for diagnostic purposes.

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

For sure, certain drives have personalities. 😁

Seagate's are also more competitively priced, hence the larger deployment base IMO.

Not surprised by the data. I notice trends with regards to performance with nvmes in favor of WD also

Does backblaze track idle time vs usage? As a home server user, my drives are spinning 100% of the time, but active use is probably much less than 12 hours a day.

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

I don't think SMART has any stats that tell you that, and the data is basically daily SMART extracts along with data on when drives died. So you can see when a drive first appeared, when it disappeared and if it disappeared due to a failure or not. But drives themselves don't record usage, other than number of power down events etc, for which there are very few, probably maintenance. That said, these will be in chassis in large arrays, so I would imagine they are being accessed pretty much 24x7.

@GetOffMyyLawn

Ай бұрын

Ya, I guess we can view their info as a torture test weeding out the weakest drives. All good info... thanks!

Top stuff!

Absolutely great analysis and thanks for creating this video for it. Is there an analysis/conclusion (=recommendation) for 4/6/8TB drives, eg. Seagate Iron Wolf? Edit: I’m a subscriber now

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

Thanks and welcome! I did make the following video that covers the 4-8 TB disks in the data set : kzread.info/dash/bejne/npON08aPd8apYNI.html it has all the drives and also compares enterprise failure rates to desktop as this dataset has a pretty good mix of both. Hopefully it has useful info you for in it. 🙂

@mph8759

Ай бұрын

@@sometechguy it’s super useful. Thanks so much

I recently upgraded my NAS from my old HGST He8 drives to Seagate Exos. I had 1 X16 arrive DOA (Reallocating Sectors etc...from day 1)..however I dont think it was a logistical shipping issue as the others have been perfectly fine shipped in the same packing foam package. The X20's have been fantastic; no issues with any of them.

I have several 15 year-old Western Digital drives that still work just fine.

@sometechguy

2 ай бұрын

This is good to hear. The data shows they are excellent drives, and I did some other analysis also comparing the manufacturers more broadly and HGST and the WD descendants come out glowing.

Three things: 1) Seagate vs. WD HGST/HGST WDHGST/HGST is at worst, 1/3rd the AFR of Seagate drives, and at best, almost 1/10th the Seagate AFR. That's HUGE! 2) WDHGST/HGST This is, I think, why WD bought the HGST division from IBM/Hitachi because the drives AREN'T the fastest in terms of read/write/I/O/s performance, but they're absolutely rock solid drives. And yes, whilst you pay more for the initial capex for the drives itself, it also pays dividends with having a lower overall failure rate vs. Seagate. 3) This data shows why I avoid Seagate drives like the plague. 2024 and not all of their drives have some kind of ramp load/unload mechanism for the drive read/write heads, which STILL leads to their R/W heads crashing into the disk platters in some failure cases. This tech is almost 25 years old by now. I remember when IBM first introduced it in 2000 (which then became HGST).

@LatitudeSky

Ай бұрын

Agrees. Used to buy Hitachi drives and now buy the HGST WD drives and they've been extremely reliable. Knock on wood. WD NVME Black has also been excellent. Really hope they maintain quality after the current split.

Great analysis...basically, "if contracted at a company you hate, make sure it's all Seagate!". 10-4-73

My oldest WD Caviar Black is nearly 14 years old, daily heavy use in my main desktop (bought in early 2010, it came with a Seagate drive that failed within the week). Second oldest is 12 years old, secondary drive in that same computer now. Both are working like in the first day, no bad sectors. Both 1TB, older one is a FAEX model and slightly faster access time than the less old FZEX model. I only buy WD Caviar Black 1TB since then. I have a couple more (both FZEX) in secondary machines, both much newer, so far working fine. These newer ones match the access time (13ms) of the FAEX one.

Your video reinforced my own 16+ years in web hosting. While I had strong support for Seagate early on in my business, they've definitely failed a lot more than any other drive. HGST has been my new favorite brand for a while and hasn't let me down just yet.

@sometechguy

2 ай бұрын

Thanks for leaving the comment. While, due to the way failure distribution works there can be different experiences, its good to hear that a lot of people share the experiences that the data shows, especially those that have experience with higher drive volumes. Appreciate you sharing.

This is some good stuff.

@sometechguy

16 күн бұрын

Thank you 👍

Hey great video.... Would you suggest one to get Western Digital over the rest and especially enterprise disks as I think enterprise disks laster longer. I want to build a fairly large NAS, and seeing I've had a few WD black enterprise disks for the past 8 years they haven't failed on me once.

@sometechguy

4 ай бұрын

Hi and thanks for watching and commenting also. I put out a video a couple of weeks ago which covers exactly this I think, found here: kzread.info/dash/bejne/m5eCxMexibmZfZc.html. I hope this gives all the specific data and context to help. The TL:DR is that WD disks appear to currently be the most reliable enterprise disks, and although the available data for these disks only goes back 2.5-3.5 years or so, it appears to closely follow the past behavior or the Ultrastar range when it was branded under HGST. The small caveat is just around price point and availability, but I just bought some 20Tb Ultrastar DC560s myself as they were actually cheaper at the time than Exos 20Tb disks. Toshiba Enterprise Capacity 20Tb disks were cheaper still, but the current data seems to look great for those Ultrastars, so I went with them. But of course, price varies day to day and by location, so your mileage there may vary. Good luck with the NAS build.

@bricefleckenstein9666

2 ай бұрын

@@sometechguy HGST / WD "Ultrastar" have been my go-to models for about a decade. Followed by Toshiba enterprise models.

This was fantastic, thank you very much for your time and presentation. I'm curious if the manufacture site code is not really relevant anymore? If I remember correctly, at least in terms of seagate's, if they had an active recall published, it was generally based on a specified site code in addition to a certain min-max index of serial. As I stare at a few drives here, I'm failing to see an obvious site code on WD, HGST, or Hitachi drives which has piqued my interest if perhaps HGST, WD, Hitachi are all manufactured from a single site indifferent to that of seagate potentially having multiple manufacturing locations...?

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

I don't believe any of the manufacturers embed this data in the serial number or model number, at least not in a way thats easily accessible. I would love to have that data to include in the comparison, as people comment that the country of origin is related to the quality and reliability. A lot of manufacturer happens in Thailand still, but I think there was some diversification following the issues with the devastating floods that hit that country and seriously impact HDD availability for some time.

I was really iffy about buying a 14TB WD drive a few years ago; but from your charts, it would seem I picked the best of any brand at the time.

@bricefleckenstein9666

2 ай бұрын

If it was an Ultrastar model, that's the old HGST design - WD finally got to merge their HGST purchase from about a DECADE ago into the company a couple years ago. Most reliable drives on the market overall, and WD seems to have been smart enough to have the HGST staff keep designing that line and NOT mess up their production.

@Jannickjay

2 ай бұрын

@@bricefleckenstein9666 i would love to buy hgst again, but Cant find it… so hgst is now WD Gold or how?

Remember the notorious Maxtor 20Gb?

I still have a HGST Deskstar NAS that's been on for 10 years straight, and still cooking along. I wish they were still around.

Bought a WD750 Black early 2000's I think it was. Used it as a boot drive for NT. Still using it as a storage drive today.

At some point, we're going to etch important data on glass, while the operating OS and other superfluous data is going to stay on semi- volitile RAM up to a month. If you shut down the system for longer, it'll use a snapshot to SSD that it'll use to boot up from, which will take a bit longer than usual.

My 2GB Seagate drive just went kaput after 2 years of minimal use. Even after reformatting and resetting the drive, it only partial transfers/downloads a file and then stops. I now need a replacement and that's what turned me to your comparison videos. Thanks for these detailed videos.

@sometechguy

6 ай бұрын

Sorry, sounds unlucky. But thank you for checking out my channel, and I hope the video was useful in helping you compare the manufacturers and products. I have some other videos that look at different aspects of the failure data, but I have not yet covered the disks under 2Tb. I think a lot of people still use these in PCs or for offline backup, so I will take a look that data and see if it provides useful information that's worth digging into. Good luck with the new disk!

@sigerlion8608

6 ай бұрын

@@sometechguy Sorry, meant 2 TB, not GB.

@EJEuth

5 ай бұрын

@@sometechguyReviewing the 1TB and 2TB 3.5” HDD would be great. For instance: I have almost 10 of them: 5x 2TB (HGST being 2x in a NAS Raid0), 2x NAS 1TB (Maxtor and brand?), 1TB USB (Bufallo). And several (~20 units) of 2.5” from Seagate and WD, ranging from 160GB to 1TB, but mostly in the 320GB-640GB range. ​​⁠Reviewing the 1TB and 2TB 3.5” HDD would be great. For instance: I have almost 10 of them: 5x 2TB (HGST being 2x in a NAS Raid0), 2x NAS 1TB (Maxtor and brand?), 1TB USB (Bufallo). And several (~20 units) of 2.5” from Seagate and WD, ranging from 160GB to 1TB, but mostly in the 320GB-640GB range. As most of these are now “off-line” HDD, for storage or backup, expect for the ones used in LAPTOP’s main HDD (after ~5Y, being replaced by SSD), their actual accumulated hour is typically small (guess to be in the range 1K~5K Hr), but 90% were purchased in 2009~2011. Thank you for sharing such great compilation of information.

@angrysocialjusticewarrior

Ай бұрын

@@sigerlion8608 Its common knowledge that seagate makes unreliable drives (they are hit or miss), and for some reason it is considered taboo to say this even though we all know it. Usually when you say this, you will get a response along the lines of (oh well its not just seagate, all drives have a chance to fail". Trust me, even though any drive has a chance to fail, seagate drives have the highest chance. I feel like seagate has a real life failure rate of 40% after around 3 years but people don't want to admit it.

@sigerlion8608

Ай бұрын

@@angrysocialjusticewarrior Yeah, I barely used the drive. Only uploaded files every few months. Kept it in a cool place. Never bumped or dropped it, and it still failed before reaching 2 years.

Good video.

@sometechguy

19 күн бұрын

Thank you 👍

I still have old SCSI and IDE drives from over 30 years ago and the data on them is still good, 4 of them were spinning constantly in a BBS for over 8 years, the only drives I have had fail in the last 20 years are seagate.

The Toshiba's Mg series so for have been very good. Having 2*16TB of the them working fantastic.

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

Good to hear. They have a smaller market share and there are less vocal defenders and critics of them. But generally, the feedback seems to be positive. The fact that you don't hear a lot of people complaining about them has to be a good sign. 👍

@VTGGT

Ай бұрын

@@sometechguy I also have the toshiba;s HWF. 2x8TB that show up on backblaze's charts. So far no fails. But they are extremely LOUDER than the 16tb's I have now. I also have to mention that My WD 10EZEX the legendary 1TB is 10years old and still working like hell

two of my drives over the last decade failed at the sata-to-usb adapter. The 1st one was a Vebatim, and the usb end's contacts broke. Taped this one up, copied everything off, and retired the drive. The 2nd one's adapter just stopped working one day. Fortunately I had bought 2 of that Seagate drive while it was on sale, so could test and find the problem. Gonna have to get a sata to usb cable to use the other drive regularly again

So.... after going through the video, thank you for the free content and the effort put in. the conclusion im getting is : WD first, HGST [ unlikely avaliable], followed by toshiba ? my comment is that : theres no take away point from the entire video, if im a layman, going for what is the recommended. Yes theres not much further data to infer to, but there can always be disclaimers given that things go wrong, and will have higher chances as the size increases

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

I prefer to stay away from telling people what they should do, and instead provide data to make their own informed choice from. The overall reliability of the drive is not the only factor, price availability and reputation of the vendor is also something that varies over time and location. Some people are not interested in the detail and just want to be told which to buy, others will want the data and make their own choices. So its a balance. But I take the feedback that the conclusions could be more concise. Creating content is about learning and improving with each video, so this feedback is constructive and useful. Thank you for that!

Thank you!

@sometechguy

2 ай бұрын

Pleasure, thanks for watching!

Looks like voltage retention on the platforms so you will need radial transmission assistance to keep them alogned

This data itself can be super boring thing for 99% of us, but you managed to make some sense out of it, thanks for the informative video, there really is some real value in it! I will be certainly looking this video again, at the time when I consider my options upgrading harddrives in my NAS.

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

Personally I love mining data to find hidden information, but it isn't for everyone. 😁 Thanks for checking it out!

So if I want to buy a 10TB enterprise HDD, WD is the best choice?

@sometechguy

3 ай бұрын

There is a short and long answer. Short Answer: WD appear to be producing more reliable drives over the last few years. And across the models I analyzed, that seems a solid trend. I did some other videos on this as well, and the data seems to robustly support that, even if you slice it different ways. Long Answer: Drive reliability varies by model, and its all statistical based on the available sample. So any drive can fail, but the data indicates the likelihood for each model. Also, the 10Tb models analyzed in this data set, may not be the ones you get today. Actually, you can pick up 10Tb from different model lines and reliability could vary, for example between an Exos X10 10Tb and X18 10Tb. But taken in aggregate across a very large sample, WD appear to provide the most reliable drives. Its also worth noting that 'most reliable' doesn't mean the best drive to buy. Price is going to be a consideration, as well as how long you plan to keep the drive, and your trust in the brand as a whole. Support and warranty is also important, though I don't think any of these manufacturers have problems with their warranty, as long as you buy from an approved reseller.

I used to employ several dozen mechanical hard drives and saw a failure about every 18 months on average. In 2015 I replaced all of the mechanical hard drives with solid state drives. To this day I have not had a single Drive failure.

Did back-blaze include WHERE those driver were used? I mean a drive that's on a very high utilization server has completely different failure rates than server that's for daily backups which is different from one that has weekly dumps etc... That would be interesting data to take into account... Basically, IO/day data? :)

Greetings, im struggling between choosing one of this drivers, if you could help. its for PC but will be using for media server, so work constantly EXOS™ X16 10TB ST10000NM001G and 10TB Toshiba S300 / MG06ACA10TE

@sometechguy

4 ай бұрын

The Enterprise options (Exos X16 and Toshiba Enterprise Capacity MG06) will come with 5 year warranties, which is a positive but will be a bit noisier if its for a PC. So depends where the PC will be running if the noise is a consideration. The S300 and the S300 Pro will come with a 3 year warranty I believe, and will be a bit quieter, the S300 doesn't come in a 10Tb AFAIK, so you would need the pro version to get that capacity, and the Pro is a 7200RPM drive like the X16 and MG06, where the S300 non-pro is a 5400 RPM drive. You could look at the N300 also, which is a NAS drive. I don't think there is a lot between them. The X16 seemed like one of Seagate's better models, and the Tosh drives also are good. So it probably comes down to price, warranty period and maybe if the noisier drive will be a problem for you if its running 24x7. But the usual caveat is that any drive can fail, so no matter what you choose, that can happen and plan accordingly. 😉 Hope this helps you make your choice!

@pikapika3

4 ай бұрын

tnx, im just skeptical about Seagate drivers over the 10 years 3x6TB ones died on me.

@nocturnal101ravenous6

2 ай бұрын

@@sometechguy The Toshiba drives are loud, I am using the 2x X300 Pro I don't know how they compare to the N series, but they are pretty loud, honestly the X18 EXOS drives(Both are 16TB) while they are a little loud they are not actually that bad for a PC, I am using a Lian Li Dynamic Mini so results may vary depending on case, If you are using something like a Be Quiet Dark Pro case you are probably not going to hear anything.

These figures are for continuous use, correct? If the use is intermittent, say six hours a day, does it it extrapolate to 4x the life? Or does the way its used increase or decrease the MTBF?

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

The use case is 24x7, but the test data is actually calculated against power_on_hours anyway and not elapsed time. So its based on continuous use, and because the power on hours lines up with the drive ages closely, its clear they are powered on for approx 24hours a day on average. I am sure there are brief maintenance windows. But in terms of the stated MTBF on the drives, its based on assumed workload for the drive. For enterprise drives in this video, they are all 24x7, but MTBF on desktop drives is often based on numbers around 8 hours a day.

I've always FELT HGST and WD Enterprise were the bomb. I see that my gut feeling was right. I had a 4TB die once but it was consumer grade.

@sometechguy

3 ай бұрын

Unfortunately, any disk can die and for different reasons, so backups are always important. I get a variety of comments on videos about various vendors and people are most likely to hate on products that have failed on them understandably, but WD seem to have broad respect for their HDDs at least, and the data seems to support that. So yes, your gut isn't failing you! Thanks for commenting and sharing. 😎

Thanks!

@sometechguy

5 ай бұрын

Thank you for the comment, and especially appreciate the Superthanks. 🙌

Weibull statistical analysis is what you need to analyze this data

Pretty amazing data crunshing. So Seagate is a good choice when price on each drive do matter, but you also as a former IT professional want some high quality drives. seeing the Exos drives are actually very reasonable priced for an Interprice line of disks but how much does all the different models mean to the individual type used ? I assume that large scale server farms will be using SAS versions only. But I still asume that the SAS/SATA versions is only the interface and the base design of a particulary model and size variant still behave somewhat the same. I had one bad Exos ST18000NM000J which was DOA and am now trying to figure out which brand / model to choose for a 6 disk DIY home NAS project but its a jungle with all the different versions many of the brands have for different use cases. Does it make a lot of difference which specific type is used for a home project ? where you propably have a very mixed load type of both large size videos, pictures and also a mix of very small to medium sized files for games, documents and other stuff. Is it worth coughing up the extra money for a WD if you are already going to choose an Enterprice grade disk ? I have been around for some years and had my shares of both good and bad examples of most of the brands and know that crashes is very random at just about every disk you purchase. My favorites is still Seagate and WD. Beside that single Exos neither Seagate or WD ever given me headaches but IBM/HGST and Toshiba is the only brands where have had disks completely die on me without any chance of normal software data recovery.

Brilliant Stats! I guess that at some point there must also be a tradeoff between reliability and cost? Or is the cost so marginal between brands that it is not considered by data centers?

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

It varies over time and by disk model. But Seagate often have a price advantage over WD, with Toshiba varying. And yes, I am sure the price vs reliability is going to be part of the decision, especially for customers who carry spares.

Thanks 😁

i've always had good luck with HGST and Seagate Enterprise capacity/Exos drives, even if they are refurbs i'll continue to buy. just make sure you plan for enough redundancy and backups

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

Yes, no matter which brand you buy or how good they are, they can fail and will fail. And if you are planning for those failures, it can then make sense not to pay a high premium for the most proven reliability also. A lot of people share their bad experiences, and more than most it seems about Seagate. And though the data shows they are probably more likely to fail, I don't think the numbers are too outrageous, and it will come down to statistics. Personally, I have had many years of good experience with Seagate also.

I love you... seriously

@sometechguy

Күн бұрын

I love you all too. ❤

Even though Hitachi had a terrible start after they bought the HDD manufacturing division from IBM (I still remember the Hitachi "DeathStar" jokes), they eventually became one of the best, in my opinion. I currently have three HGST hard drives in my computer, running anywhere from 6yr 7mo to 9yr 1mo of actual uptime, and they're still going strong (though I am replacing them soon, just as a precaution). Hopefully WD doesn't make any major changes and maintains the same level of reliability I've come to expect from HGST.

Our 8 poweredge Dell are using the Seagate 10 TB EXOS drives x 6 for each server, and the 6 poweredge are there for backups these have 12Tb exos drives. But after three years, every drive is replaced with new ones, except the backup servers those run 4 years. Our servers are used for content creation, music, video etc. So very big file transfers. For my personal NAS I use the Ironwolfs Pro disks. But that server doesn't do much.

So model is the most realble long term on heavy read and write use ?

@sometechguy

2 ай бұрын

These are all rated for the same kind of workloads, and being Enterprise drives they are designed for 24x7 usage. Server use cases would often have these under heavy load, read/write or both depending on the application. So it really just comes down to the drive with the best reliability stats, and this is going to be the WD Ultastars based on the data.

I just watched 5 minutes of this and I have no idea what he is talking about

@Luredreier

Ай бұрын

This is about how likely a number of different hard drives are to fail after x amount of time. It's useful when picking a hard drive to buy for reliability.

@njdxnjdx

17 күн бұрын

Totally agree. He should remove this video and I motion for KZread to ban his posts. Ridiculous

@Luredreier

17 күн бұрын

​@@njdxnjdx What the heck are *you* talking about?

I had the best luck with Western Digital drives, the first drive I bought was in around 1997.

Chapters please, saves time if we dont want to watch every detail

@samsabruskongen

Ай бұрын

it's a 15 min video ffs

@p.p.burnell7294

Ай бұрын

Watch the video. Don't be a lazy fuck

@Voornoek

Ай бұрын

ADHD hits hard

Seeing my experience backed up by numbers is fantastic! I have had so many hard drives fail from many different brands, and have lost a lot of data because of it. I have yet to have a Western Digital to give the ghost on me without complaining about old age first for months of slow speeds, screaming "Please retire me" 😂 Many drives die by looking at it wrong but have rough-handled WD's, and they are still alive today. This is how you earn my brand loyalty! PS. Don't worry I have grown up now and backup properly on raided systems.

@paulmichaelfreedman8334

Ай бұрын

Yes, I've been a long time WD user, because all this time, to me, they've proven to be most reliable, overall. In my box of antiques I have one of the first SATA drives, a WD1600, from 2003. I can plug it in and use it if I like, even now. Still works perfectly thanks to the FD bearing. In fact, all the WD drives still work and I have a lot of them, accumulated over the years. HGST also performs very well, and Seagate...well...I've had plenty of those conk out on me. Quantum drives never failed me, until Seagate raped them. Never had IBM drives, they tended to have bad batches. When it was bought by Hitachi, quality went up dramatically (This is now HGST). Moderately satisfied with Toshiba 3.5 inch drives, their 2.5 inch laptop drives are exceedingly good.

@m1stertim

Ай бұрын

RAID is not a backup

@Stoney_Eagle

Ай бұрын

@@m1stertim I think you missed the s there at the end. 😉

As an IT guy this is really handy information! So you get a thumbs up for that. 👍 However your presentation of this information is a bit lacking. It would be far easier to read the graph if you focused on one vendor at a time getting rid of all the noise from other vendors.

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

Appreciate the feedback. There is always room for improvement and the balance is comparing the models from each, to how the manufacturers compare to each other. It’s been a while since I did this and there is more data becoming available, including 22Tb drives, so if I do an update, I will see what I can do to improve on the visualisations. Thanks for commenting

@LokiDaFerret

Ай бұрын

@@sometechguy What gravitated me to your videos is the fact that I need to buy some new drives for my NAS. So my focus is not so much on any particular model but more determining which vendor is the most reliable generally speaking. Let's face it any drive you buy is a crapshoot as to its longevity. You need to find a happy balance between price and risk.

@sometechguy

Ай бұрын

@@LokiDaFerret you may have seen it, but I did a video comparing the vendors where the data is cut into models lines vs individual drive models. For example, Exos X14. X18 or Ultrastar HC520 or Tosh MG08, and for the reason you say. Thanks again.

Have you got any analysis on whether the SMART data provided a warning prior to drive failure?

@sometechguy

8 күн бұрын

This might be worth a deeper look at. It’s complex as there are lots of smart measurements, each with an unclear correlation to drive failure. Some are likely more correlated but the numbers increment differently, so hard to compare one directly to another. But given the size of the data set, there could be some good indicators hidden in here waiting to be found.

Cool information, very important. May SSDs be as cheap as hardisks this year,we pray. Hitachi and IBM were the most durable, I hope they get revived, though they're maybe a bit more expensive. God bless.

@sometechguy

Күн бұрын

It looks like there may not be price per terabyte parity for SSD vs HDD for quite a few years yet. HDDs are still keeping ahead and greater density on NAND comes with challenges for performance and durability. So for now, SSD for performance, HDD for low cost volume. I have some content on SSDs and SSD vs HDD planned. Thanks for watching and commenting. 🙂