Looks like Hitachi makes the most reliable hard drives right now

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Jan 21, 2014 10:10 pm

Backblaze, which open sourced their Storage Pod a few years ago, is now giving drive failure rates. They currently have over 27,000 consumer grade drives spinning in Backblaze storage pods.

Almost 13,000 each are Seagate and Hitachi drives, almost 3000 Western Digital drives and a too small for statistical reporting smattering of Toshiba and Samsung drives.

One cool thing: Backblaze buys drives the way you and I do: they get the cheapest drives that will work. Their workload is almost hundred percent write. Because they spread the incoming writes over several drives their workload isn't very performance intensive either.

Also, like you and me, they are willing to spend a little more for a more reliable drive but not a lot more. And unlike you and me they track every single drive that they install.

They measure the annual failure rate (AFR) rather than MTBF because that's an easier number to understand. They count as a failure anytime they have to replace a drive. Of course, vendors report that about half of all returned drives have no trouble found – but I like Backblaze's definition better.

http://www.zdnet.com/who-makes-the-best ... 000025375/

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Tue Jan 21, 2014 10:31 pm

And to think that a year ago, nobody I knew would buy one.

DaMaN · Post by **DaMaN** » Tue Jan 21, 2014 10:55 pm

IBM Deathstar's ring any bells?

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Tue Jan 21, 2014 11:37 pm

Those were over a decade ago though. I'd think they had that taken care of by now.

Err · Post by **Err** » Tue Jan 21, 2014 11:58 pm

Nice list. I've been buying Western Digital Black HDs mainly because of the 5 year warranty. I've only had to return 1 drive and their returns policy was phenomenal. You have two options: 1) Send the Drive back and they will send a replacement or 2) Give them a credit card number and they will send a replacement and you have so many days to return the defective drive.

I need to buy another hard drive and I'm filling up because I've been transferring my old Digital8 tapes over. It's amazing how much better codecs have gotten over the years. One Digital8 tape eats about 19 Gb of hard drive space per 1.5 hours due to being in AVI. I also have a AVCHD camcorder that uses 8 Gb per hour at full HD.

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Wed Jan 22, 2014 2:22 am

I have the same Seagate drives, a total of four of them. Three of them have failed at one point, one of the replacements as well. Their reliability has went down the tubes.

b-man1 · Post by **b-man1** » Wed Jan 22, 2014 8:25 am

i've only had Seagate drives fail, even though i keep buying them. lol

i currently have at least two that i need to RMA, i just haven't gotten around to it. doing security wipes on 3TB+ drives takes too long. sigh.

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Fri Jan 24, 2014 9:47 am

I think I might end up looking into Hitachi for the future. Though to note, I have seen Seagate's notebook drives being the most reliable of the bunch. Fujitsu ones seem to have a much higher failure rate compared to all of the brands I've seen.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Jan 24, 2014 12:57 pm

As for portable (2.5") USB hard drives. my personal experience has been VERY good with Toshiba Canvio 500GB & 1TB drives. Between me and my clients we probably have 50 of them - many running daily backups. Haven't had a single failure yet and some of those drives are 4 years old.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Jan 26, 2014 11:24 am

A rebuttal with some good points here. They correctly point out that the results are highly skewed because of the way Backblaze buys and uses their drives.

Dispelling Backblaze's HDD Reliability Myth - The Real Story Covered
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6028/ ... ndex5.html

Err · Post by **Err** » Sun Jan 26, 2014 1:31 pm

FlyingPenguin wrote:A rebuttal with some good points here. They correctly point out that the results are highly skewed because of the way Backblaze buys and uses their drives.

Dispelling Backblaze's HDD Reliability Myth - The Real Story Covered
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6028/ ... ndex5.html

I was a bit skeptical after looking at the reviews on newegg for the Hitachi drives. Most had mediocre reviews. Granted the number of reviews was low and many only post reviews when they have problems but I didn't see any glowing reviews like I did for the Western Digital or Seagate brands.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Sun Jan 26, 2014 6:08 pm

I posted this a few days ago:
http://www.pcabusers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=55494