Seagate vs WD

[harryj1995]

Hi

I just wanted to hear peoples experiences on the reliability of hard drives from Seagate and WD

I was looking at the WD Caviar Blue 500gb:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/500gb...16mb-cache-8ms

and the Seagate Barracuda 500gb:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/500gb...cache-85ms-ncq

Thanks

[DanceswithUnix]

Not much in it supposedly:

http://www.behardware.com/articles/8...s-rates-6.html

My experience is that storing data on a Seagate is about as safe as writing it down on burning paper, but others have said similar things about WD. Just make sure you have backups. Samsung have been my preference for the last few years, but now that they are part of Seagate my money went to WD last time I needed a drive.

With a 500GB model you should only have one platter in the device so that does help with reliability as it runs cooler and has less parts to wear and fail.

[circuitmonkey]

My personal experience of WD drives is very good, Samsung on the other hand...
Having a F1 1TB drive fail on you and loosing a couple hundred photos in the process has scarred me (And yes, my backup regime has been revamped since then).

[sam3]

I have 10 seagate drives currently in use, 2 samsung and 1 WD and havent had a problem with any of them
I have 2 80gb seagate drives that are over 7 years old now and are still going strong (smart data comes back healthy and no bad sectors etc).

I would say read reviews of the drive in question before buying. Any manufacturer is capable of making a dud drive (there's not one company that you can trust all of their products). Some brief performance reviews can be found here http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd_list.php
Typing the model name into google too is good to find user reviews and gauge the reliability of the drive.
It is becoming increasingly common for hard drives to get important firmware updates after they have been released (so keep an eye out for these).

Also you can get 1tb drives from as little as £52 on scan

[KeyboardDemon]

Take a look at the Newegg customer reviews of the products, Seagate get a lot more bad reviews from customers there and I have recently lost one of my Seagate 1tb drives which just suddenly got hit by the click of death, luckily I was able to get all of important data from it, but towards the end it was taking over 45 minutes to transfer a few hundred megabytes of data from the drive to an external drive.

I think I would now pick WD drives, and recently installed WD Caviar black in a PC I built for my father in law.

[Caveman]

I currently have a 500GB WD blue and a 250GB Seagate drive which ive had for many many years and neither have shown any faults. The only drive that has failed on me is a VERY old Maxtor 40GB IDE drive that I bought with my P3 733Mhz years and years ago. It died 18months +/- ago from the head clicking. I lost some music (actually a lot of music) but it wasn't something that couldn't be replaced.

I really dont know how some people have such bad exps with HDD's failing. 1 drive in 15 years isn't really bad from my POV.

[mikeo01]

Always been using Seagate.
My old Seagate drive back from Vista first came out still runs, although sounding very clunky.

A laptop in my house has a Toshiba drive in it, didn't last long whatsoever. WD drive around 8 years old, near gone, that was used constantly for university work (not mine).

[DanceswithUnix]

I really dont know how some people have such bad exps with HDD's failing. 1 drive in 15 years isn't really bad from my POV.

Sheer bulk numbers I think. I maintain the family computers, which between the wife & kids desktops, server, htpc and a couple of laptops that is 8 PCs with 12 drives (my home desktop currently has 3). Then I have things like my old Series 1 TiVo which has been recording TV programs constantly for the last decade onto a couple of hard drives.

Then there are the extended family machines where I tend to get dragged in, and a few machines at work.

Failures seem less common these days from my experience, but with so many hard drives around you have to expect to lose one every now and then.

So why was Samsung my brand of choice? They are really quiet, and most drives are out of warranty if you run them 24/7 except Samsung. These days 24/7 probably doesn't matter to me, but that used to be a biggie.

[harryj1995]

I've looked at some reviews and there is almost an equal amount of failures between the two drives. I guess it'll just come down to which one is cheaper when I go to buy one.

Thanks for you help

[Zaim]

Personally I'd go with wd, I've always gone with wd drives and haven't been let down, they also have a longer warranty, 2years on green/blue, 5years on black.

If you buy a retail drive you can extend the warranty to a total of 3years for $15

[SilentRoss]

I've pulled an old WD from an old computer, shoved it into an external HD chassis and been using it ever since. Not had a problem with it yet. I've been careful with what I store on it because I always have the feeling it will soon fail, but it seems to keep going. I haven't had any experience with Seagate though.

[JimmyBoy]

Having used both makes many times over the years I could happy recommend either. I have had a wd external hdd fail on me but that was a few days after purchase so it was naff from the off. I've also used maxtor drives for years (although not running any now) and never had any problems *touch wood*

[jiw2003]

I have had both Seagate and WD over 10 years and it's always been the WD that fail. Right now i'm regularly using an old HP desktop system that is 8 years old. It uses a Seagate Barracuda SATA 1 80gb drive and it is still going strong!

The WD drives that failed (started to make random clicking sounds) were external drives - from their My Book range.

But as i say, the drives i'm discussing are from a few years back. Apparently Seagate had some quality issues around 2010 which has given them a bad rep - and the constant questions about quality.

I understand that the quality issues have now been resolved. But when it comes to your data is it worth saving £30 and buying a a cheaper drive? Personally, when it comes to my data, i'd buy the most reliable drive - regardless of cost. Then buy a cheaper drive for backups (because it will not be in regular use) or to be used for content that can be freely replaced

[alth79]

I know this is an old thread but what are your opinions on seagate hdd's now - I have just purchased a 2tb one to use for storing films, music etc but am considering returning it and paying slightly more for a WD. What's your thoughts on Toshiba / Samsung drives in comparison to WD and Seagate?

[harryj1995]

I haven't used Seagate drives I have a 2TB WD Green drive for storing all my games and music and its fast and quiet. I don't think you should return it though especially if it works.

[peterb]

Only drives I've had fail in the last 5 years have been WD, however that might have been partly due to poor packing for transit (they weren't from SCAN).

However, with regular backups, a drive fIlure is only a minor irritation, and if you have RAID 1 then that inconvenience is minimised (but is not a substitute for proper back-ups)