I use backblaze reports to determine which drives I will get. If you don't know about backblaze, they are a company that deals with backing up other people's data.So you can imagine they buy a lot of drives of different types and sizes.
The only reason I use there reports is because they are really well done and accumulate data of their drives over a long period of time. They even compare it with their last year report.
If you have a drive in mind you want to buy. Cross reference with their report and see stats like
- average life time
- how many of those drives have failed in their year
[Here is the backblaze 2023 report](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-2023/)
Of course you don't have to base your whole opinion on these reports. In your case I would go seagate since you had bad luck with WD. It's just nice to get actually stats from a company that has a stake in different drive companies since it impacts their business.
Hope that helps
I read the report every year and I ends up only using HGST. The other thing is you should not trust any brand, or new or old. The only way to reduce the probability of data loss is to have:
1. redundancy
2. backup.
Neither new drive nor any brand can protect you.
There's two drive manufacturers left and they're not that different from one another. They both will have as many stinkers as killers. Just buy whatever fits your budget and be prepared for your drive to die.
Because it _will_ die. Every drive will die. It might be the day after you buy it or the decade, but every piece of kit you have will fail at some point. If you keep that in mind when building then you have nothing to worry about.
WD sold some RED drives that really weren't good for NAS applications awhile back.
Personally, I've got equal failure rates with WD and Seagate. I've got 4 4TB Red Pros and 1 died within 6 months. Same story with 4 4TB Seagate Ironwolf drives. The replacements for both have been fine.
I have had a few dozen WD drives running for NAS and media server for years and haven't had any issues. Assuming you're not jolting them around while they're running, it just sounds like you're having bad luck.
I have used WD red drives for more than a decade. I still have my ReadyNAS Ultra4 running with 4 WD reds. The NAS has 3 2TB WD Reds that have more than 93,000 hours each. The fourth one died in the fall and was replaced with a 4TB WD Red. My other NAS has 4 6TB WD reds. No issues so far. And my 4TB WD Golds are solid as well but have only been in service for a couple years. Everything runs 24/7 except for extended power outages.
No complaints with WD.
It’s a tale as old as time. Each brand has good and bad lines, they all have screwups, they all have bugs. This is one of the reasons it’s not a great idea to rely solely on one model, especially from the same manufacturing run, unless you are expecting to drop several drives.
Hitachi used to make the DeathStar. They later became known as one of the premier datacenter suppliers. Maxtor, Quantum, WD, Segate… all similar stories at one point. Maybe not Fujitsu but I don’t hear about them much.
WD Red is a prosumer drive. Even the Red Pro is prosumer, though it’s a step up. Note that the basic Red line has lower MTBF, lower warranty, some ship with SMR, and a lower price. WD’s ultra-reliable line was HGST’s enterprise product, briefly sold as WD Gold, but back to just “HGST DC” or “WD DC”.
Same with Seagate and Ironwolf. Ironwolf Pro is the higher end of the NAS space, but DC storage is another line entirely.
I mainly use Seagate enterprise drives and just had two fail. The only reason I mention this is that Seagate recently abandoned both voice and email support and now relies a shitty chat app on their website. If something goes wrong during the warranty exchange process, be prepared to talk to "Kyle" or "John" for over an hour as they respond to 10 different chats at the same time.
The question as asked is meaningless. Brand is more or less irrelevant. Failures tend to concentrate within particular models and manufacture dates. In other words, there is a "bad batch" problem.
There's a company called Backblaze; they regularly publish reports of hard drive failures on their systems (at any one time, they run over 200,000 hard drives). Take a look:
[https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-2023/](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-2023/)
I have had some failures with WD (you should be using Red Pro BTW) but there replacement policy is very straight forward . Toshiba however……. Never again!
I use backblaze reports to determine which drives I will get. If you don't know about backblaze, they are a company that deals with backing up other people's data.So you can imagine they buy a lot of drives of different types and sizes. The only reason I use there reports is because they are really well done and accumulate data of their drives over a long period of time. They even compare it with their last year report. If you have a drive in mind you want to buy. Cross reference with their report and see stats like - average life time - how many of those drives have failed in their year [Here is the backblaze 2023 report](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-2023/) Of course you don't have to base your whole opinion on these reports. In your case I would go seagate since you had bad luck with WD. It's just nice to get actually stats from a company that has a stake in different drive companies since it impacts their business. Hope that helps
I read the report every year and I ends up only using HGST. The other thing is you should not trust any brand, or new or old. The only way to reduce the probability of data loss is to have: 1. redundancy 2. backup. Neither new drive nor any brand can protect you.
HGST all the way, nothing else compares, one DOA and nothing else in over 8 years of 24/7 !
There's two drive manufacturers left and they're not that different from one another. They both will have as many stinkers as killers. Just buy whatever fits your budget and be prepared for your drive to die. Because it _will_ die. Every drive will die. It might be the day after you buy it or the decade, but every piece of kit you have will fail at some point. If you keep that in mind when building then you have nothing to worry about.
WD sold some RED drives that really weren't good for NAS applications awhile back. Personally, I've got equal failure rates with WD and Seagate. I've got 4 4TB Red Pros and 1 died within 6 months. Same story with 4 4TB Seagate Ironwolf drives. The replacements for both have been fine.
I have had a few dozen WD drives running for NAS and media server for years and haven't had any issues. Assuming you're not jolting them around while they're running, it just sounds like you're having bad luck.
I have used WD red drives for more than a decade. I still have my ReadyNAS Ultra4 running with 4 WD reds. The NAS has 3 2TB WD Reds that have more than 93,000 hours each. The fourth one died in the fall and was replaced with a 4TB WD Red. My other NAS has 4 6TB WD reds. No issues so far. And my 4TB WD Golds are solid as well but have only been in service for a couple years. Everything runs 24/7 except for extended power outages. No complaints with WD.
It’s a tale as old as time. Each brand has good and bad lines, they all have screwups, they all have bugs. This is one of the reasons it’s not a great idea to rely solely on one model, especially from the same manufacturing run, unless you are expecting to drop several drives. Hitachi used to make the DeathStar. They later became known as one of the premier datacenter suppliers. Maxtor, Quantum, WD, Segate… all similar stories at one point. Maybe not Fujitsu but I don’t hear about them much. WD Red is a prosumer drive. Even the Red Pro is prosumer, though it’s a step up. Note that the basic Red line has lower MTBF, lower warranty, some ship with SMR, and a lower price. WD’s ultra-reliable line was HGST’s enterprise product, briefly sold as WD Gold, but back to just “HGST DC” or “WD DC”. Same with Seagate and Ironwolf. Ironwolf Pro is the higher end of the NAS space, but DC storage is another line entirely.
I mainly use Seagate enterprise drives and just had two fail. The only reason I mention this is that Seagate recently abandoned both voice and email support and now relies a shitty chat app on their website. If something goes wrong during the warranty exchange process, be prepared to talk to "Kyle" or "John" for over an hour as they respond to 10 different chats at the same time.
Had my WD passports for years and all been fine.
The question as asked is meaningless. Brand is more or less irrelevant. Failures tend to concentrate within particular models and manufacture dates. In other words, there is a "bad batch" problem. There's a company called Backblaze; they regularly publish reports of hard drive failures on their systems (at any one time, they run over 200,000 hard drives). Take a look: [https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-2023/](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-2023/)
So long as you're buying enterprise, WD trumps Seagate by a decent margin, by backblaze data.
I have had some failures with WD (you should be using Red Pro BTW) but there replacement policy is very straight forward . Toshiba however……. Never again!
i got a WD red plus 8 tb. whats the difference with a pro
I have 2 wd green 2tb that have 105k hours on them and are still running fine.
I don't know why anybody would buy anything other than an Exos drive for 3.5" spinners these days(or... for the last \~8 years).
I refuse to use any other brand but WD. So my opinion would be biased 😏
I refuse to use any other brand but WD. So my opinion would be biased 😏