4 ms·

My simple rule still stands even after 20 years: Avoid Seagate.

by 1-6 3y ago

Mistletoe 3y ago
I always found it hilarious when they were sponsoring the datahoarder subreddit. I’d like to meet that marketer and shake his or her hand.
- 1-6 3y ago
  I'm surprised that Seagate has consistently kept its 'slightly less reliable' crown after all these years. It's like the student who copies the 'A' student's exam. They'll purposefully get a couple of the answers wrong to avoid suspicion.
kstrauser 3y ago
Conversely, I’ve had nothing but bad luck with WD the last few years, and my Seagates have been flawless. My simple rule is that all drives suck, and always have good backups.
- pcurve 3y ago
  Yup. All drives kick the bucket at some point. That's why I use BB. I don't trust myself with NAS. The ones that never failed me were any drives made by Quantum using SCSI interface. 5 drives, zero failure over 10+ years. But those were slower and cooler running units.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    I’ve got a NAS backed up to Backblaze. It’s a nice setup. I can quickly recover from local data loss, or replace a RAID disk when needed, but if the NAS gets hit by a bus then I still haven’t lost everything.
    - pcurve 3y ago
      That is a nice setup since it minimizes recovery time to nothing. I'm guessing you're using their B2? I've had 2 drive failures since using BB so it's been worthwhile. But their Download software is pretty dreadful if you have large amount of files. I may try their ship-drive option next time. Tracking their stock price, they are operating pretty lean, so I don't fault them for having crappy software.
- Netcob 3y ago
  My WD drives failed pretty consistently, so I'm now giving Seagate a try. Well, my main reason was that WD decided that just failing "naturally" after a few years wasn't enough, but that a drive having been on for 3 years should be considered the same as "failing" (communicated through WDDA), which led to Synology adopting that for a while. Not sure what the current state is of that, but I intend to swap drives when they fail, not when they turn 3.
  - xurbax 3y ago
    Well, for me, WD Reds seem to start to go bad at about 3 years, so...
    - adapiz 3y ago
      You might want to read this: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/clearly-predatory-western-digital-sparks-panic-anger-for-age-shaming-hdds/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/clearly-predatory-we... I had 4 WD Red 4 TB HDDs like WDC WD40EFRX and 2 out of them already failed SMART long tests and hat uncorrectable errors reported by the kernel after about 25000 hrs powered on. I've messed a lot with the drives bought 3 other used drives and it turned out that one of them had the same failure just undetected. I was able to "fix" the issue by running testdisk in read-write mode forcing the disk to overwrite the bad sector. That's how I forcefully fix pending sectors on desktop drives. But it seems that WD Reds don't want to replace sectors because the data is still readable. The drive just needs a second or two. I'm not happy with that but I'm also glad, I could confirm that's not an issue caused by my setup. One would say, I should replace the drive immediately but I trust in ZFS and my backups. I would put the drive on my shelve and maybe reuse it as temporary buffer storage because why would someone buy such a used drive for a high price? In my eyes, it's still okay.
ksec 3y ago
Not quite as long as 20 years, but for the past 15 years: Just buy HGST.
- AnonC 3y ago
  HGST was bought by WD long ago. Has that had any impact on the types of drives sold or the quality?
  - ksec 3y ago
    >has that had any impact on the types of drives sold or the quality? No. To the point when WD tries to rebrand those drives away from HGST, the market demanded HGST and they brought it back a year later.
    - HankB99 3y ago
      At what point do they rebrand crappy WD drives as HGST? They already have a reputation of obfuscating information (SMR vs. CMR)
AnonC 3y ago
My simple rule in the same period: avoid WD at all costs, prefer HGST (which later became part of WD) and use Seagate mostly. I’ve seen variations of these personal rules, and during a time when Backblaze didn’t exist yet (and came up with better measurements on a larger scale), it was like one of those holy wars between tabs and spaces (or vi and emacs).
- joecool1029 3y ago
  > prefer HGST (which later became part of WD) Toshiba got the 3.5" division. WD got the 2.5" division, anti-trust divesture (just 3 companies left): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Diagram_of_Hard_Disk_Drive_Manufacturer_Consolidation.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Diagram_...
Dalewyn 3y ago
I used to swear by WD HDDs, but when I literally couldn't tell which of their NAS drives were CMR and SMR a few years ago I wrote them off and went to Seagate who clearly labeled their drives. Combine that with their lackluster reputation in solid state as of late and I probably won't buy their HDDs until Seagate one day gives me the "WTF are you even selling?" rigmarole too.
gosub100 3y ago
They had a couple bad runs a few years back. If you keep following your simple rule, you'll eventually get a bad WD and not be able to use spinning platters at all. A better simple rule would be to never skimp on buying out-of-warranty drives, as well as having a proper backup regimen. I've had bad seagates back in ~2008 but my current nas has 5x 16T exos and they work fine.

My simple rule still stands even after 20 years: Avoid Seagate.

by 1-6 3y ago

My simple rule still stands even after 20 years: Avoid Seagate.

I always found it hilarious when they were sponsoring the datahoarder subreddit. I’d like to meet that marketer and shake his or her hand.

1-6 3y ago
I'm surprised that Seagate has consistently kept its 'slightly less reliable' crown after all these years. It's like the student who copies the 'A' student's exam. They'll purposefully get a couple of the answers wrong to avoid suspicion.

kstrauser 3y ago

Conversely, I’ve had nothing but bad luck with WD the last few years, and my Seagates have been flawless. My simple rule is that all drives suck, and always have good backups.

pcurve 3y ago
Yup. All drives kick the bucket at some point. That's why I use BB. I don't trust myself with NAS. The ones that never failed me were any drives made by Quantum using SCSI interface. 5 drives, zero failure over 10+ years. But those were slower and cooler running units.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  I’ve got a NAS backed up to Backblaze. It’s a nice setup. I can quickly recover from local data loss, or replace a RAID disk when needed, but if the NAS gets hit by a bus then I still haven’t lost everything.
  - pcurve 3y ago
    That is a nice setup since it minimizes recovery time to nothing. I'm guessing you're using their B2? I've had 2 drive failures since using BB so it's been worthwhile. But their Download software is pretty dreadful if you have large amount of files. I may try their ship-drive option next time. Tracking their stock price, they are operating pretty lean, so I don't fault them for having crappy software.
Netcob 3y ago
My WD drives failed pretty consistently, so I'm now giving Seagate a try. Well, my main reason was that WD decided that just failing "naturally" after a few years wasn't enough, but that a drive having been on for 3 years should be considered the same as "failing" (communicated through WDDA), which led to Synology adopting that for a while. Not sure what the current state is of that, but I intend to swap drives when they fail, not when they turn 3.
- xurbax 3y ago
  Well, for me, WD Reds seem to start to go bad at about 3 years, so...
  - adapiz 3y ago
    You might want to read this: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/clearly-predatory-western-digital-sparks-panic-anger-for-age-shaming-hdds/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/clearly-predatory-we... I had 4 WD Red 4 TB HDDs like WDC WD40EFRX and 2 out of them already failed SMART long tests and hat uncorrectable errors reported by the kernel after about 25000 hrs powered on. I've messed a lot with the drives bought 3 other used drives and it turned out that one of them had the same failure just undetected. I was able to "fix" the issue by running testdisk in read-write mode forcing the disk to overwrite the bad sector. That's how I forcefully fix pending sectors on desktop drives. But it seems that WD Reds don't want to replace sectors because the data is still readable. The drive just needs a second or two. I'm not happy with that but I'm also glad, I could confirm that's not an issue caused by my setup. One would say, I should replace the drive immediately but I trust in ZFS and my backups. I would put the drive on my shelve and maybe reuse it as temporary buffer storage because why would someone buy such a used drive for a high price? In my eyes, it's still okay.

ksec 3y ago

Not quite as long as 20 years, but for the past 15 years: Just buy HGST.

AnonC 3y ago
HGST was bought by WD long ago. Has that had any impact on the types of drives sold or the quality?
- ksec 3y ago
  >has that had any impact on the types of drives sold or the quality? No. To the point when WD tries to rebrand those drives away from HGST, the market demanded HGST and they brought it back a year later.
  - HankB99 3y ago
    At what point do they rebrand crappy WD drives as HGST? They already have a reputation of obfuscating information (SMR vs. CMR)

AnonC 3y ago

My simple rule in the same period: avoid WD at all costs, prefer HGST (which later became part of WD) and use Seagate mostly. I’ve seen variations of these personal rules, and during a time when Backblaze didn’t exist yet (and came up with better measurements on a larger scale), it was like one of those holy wars between tabs and spaces (or vi and emacs).

joecool1029 3y ago
> prefer HGST (which later became part of WD) Toshiba got the 3.5" division. WD got the 2.5" division, anti-trust divesture (just 3 companies left): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Diagram_of_Hard_Disk_Drive_Manufacturer_Consolidation.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Diagram_...

Dalewyn 3y ago

I used to swear by WD HDDs, but when I literally couldn't tell which of their NAS drives were CMR and SMR a few years ago I wrote them off and went to Seagate who clearly labeled their drives. Combine that with their lackluster reputation in solid state as of late and I probably won't buy their HDDs until Seagate one day gives me the "WTF are you even selling?" rigmarole too.

gosub100 3y ago

They had a couple bad runs a few years back. If you keep following your simple rule, you'll eventually get a bad WD and not be able to use spinning platters at all. A better simple rule would be to never skimp on buying out-of-warranty drives, as well as having a proper backup regimen. I've had bad seagates back in ~2008 but my current nas has 5x 16T exos and they work fine.