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Seagate hard drive controversy persists as scammers discover methods to alter reliability metrics
(www.tomshardware.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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As someone who's always disliked Seagate based more on vibes than actual facts, I feel so vindicated right now
I'm at work so I'm sorry for not being able to provide a source, but there's a website that tracks hard drive failure rates and Seagate is consistently one of the worst brands. So there's some extra facts for you.
Would love to see that site if you can post it later!
Hi! I found it on my lunch. it's definitely not a perfect comparison but I personally think there's enough data to make some useful generalizations.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-2024/
Has that always been the case, or did they just start going downhill somewhat recently? I feel like I remember Seagate being the higher end drives back in the day, the next step up from WD. Definitely doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
My understanding is that it's a relatively recent issue, maybe last 5 or so years? WD is currently leading the pack if I remember correctly.
This is the website im referring to btw. You happened to catch me on my lunch so I could go find it. They have lots of stats, and it's not like it covers 100% of drives but personally I still think it's useful and you can draw some general conclusions from it.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-2024/
It depends heavily on the drive the data always shows. I have a 12TB Exos drive that I got almost 2 years ago with no issues. that specific drive has a 1.3% failure rate for 2024, more along the lines of WD so gotta use the data to your advantage
While it has been quite a while now, I would have a hard time getting over the fact that I have never encountered a WD HDD that did NOT fail. Between prebuilts when I was younger, and friends/family computers I helped with. It was astonishing how pathetic the WD's were.
Disappointing years ago when I read they acquired Seagate.
I've seen this claim twice now in this thread that WD bought Seagate; and I'm not saying you're wrong, bit I legitimately don't see this info anywhere online and I'm pretty sure neither owns the other.
Mind, I'm on mobile so it's hard to verify things but, I suspect there's some confusion here.
Seagate and Western digital are two seperate companies. You're correct in that neither own or are affiliated with the other.
There were talks of a merger for years starting back in ~2014, but that fell through.
I did just find out that Seagate is the parent company to LaCie though. They used to (probably still do) make some decently tough external haard drives.
Huh. I have literally never seen a WD drive fail. I had one that started making some unsettling noises after 10+ years of use but I didn't notice any failure until I ultimately removed it a few years later. A friend even bought a second hand Raptor once, which I thought was a terrible idea, but he had no issues with it for several years until he replaced it with an SSD.
Of course I know this is probably a very biased experience because I have never encountered WDs in a professional setting where the drives are a lot more solicited and thus more likely to fail.
Edit : also I only ever bought WD blacks which are higher end IIRC, and so did most of my acquaintances. Can't speak for blue/reds etc
There were talks about a merge around 2014, but it ultimately fell through. WD and Seagate are seperate companies.
Didn't Toshiba's hard drive division get bought by someone?
No, but Hitachi's was bought by WD back in 2011-2012. IIRC, they sold a part of it to Toshiba though.