• Which hard drive should you buy?

    Posted on February 19, 2016 at 09:33 CST by • Comment in the Forums

    Hard driveI get this question all the time. Of course, the answer is never definitive, and depends on all sorts of things, but there’s a new analysis from data storage/backup firm Backblaze that talks about the reliability of their hard drives in 2015. It’s a very broad analysis: by the end of the year, they had 56,224 hard drives in use.

    Highlights:

    • HGST, in general, had the lowest failure rate.
    • Seagate’s 1.5 TB drive has problems, the 3 TB model ST3000DM001 was so bad (28.34% failure rate) that it was retired in 2015, but its 4 TB and larger drives do well, with an average 3% failure rate per year.
    • Western Digital’s 2 TB and 3 TB drives aren’t particularly reliable, but the 4 TB drive has high reliability.

    For precise model numbers (which are important), you can read the report.

    This comment seems to sum up where things stand for those who need to store a lot of data:

    All of the 4TB drives have acceptable failure rates, but we’ve purchased primarily Seagate drives. Why? The HGST 4TB drives, while showing exceptionally low failure rates, are no longer available having been replaced with higher priced, higher performing models. The readily available and highly competitive price of the Seagate 4TB drives, along with their solid performance and respectable failure rates, have made them our drive of choice.

    A relevant observation from our Operations team on the Seagate drives is that they generally signal their impending failure via their SMART stats. Since we monitor several SMART stats, we are often warned of trouble before a pending failure and can take appropriate action. Drive failures from the other manufacturers appear to be less predictable via SMART stats.

    Just in case you haven’t priced them lately, Newegg sells the HGST H3IKNAS40003272SN 4 TB for $159, the Seagate ST4000DM000 4 TB for $122, and the Western Digital Red WD40EFRX for $150. If you want an external drive, look here, and pay attention to the ratings.

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