WD vs Seagate

Which hdd Brand Do you Find Better

  • Western Digital

    Votes: 13 44.8%
  • Seagate

    Votes: 16 55.2%

  • Total voters
    29
  • Poll closed .
I'm a storage specialist and from a SAN perspective a lot of our drives are WD & Seagate (SAS 10k, SAS 15k, SATA, FC 10k, FC 15k & SSD). The drives that I see getting replaced most often is (in no particular order)

- Hitachi Viper 15k SAS
- Fujitsu 10k FC
- Western Digital SATA
- Seagate 15k FC

Now, keeping the above in mind, the one SAN has 192 drives (all SAS) where the 15k drives are either Hitachi or Seagate and the SATA drives are Seagate & Western Digital. On this particular SAN we only ever seem to replace Hitachi & WD drives. Another SAN we have has 195 drives (all FC drives) again, the bulk of the drives are Seagate and we have on average 4-5 drive replacements per year. The manufacturer of the failed drives are predominantly Hitachi & Fujitsu.

Although enterprise class drives are in a different league from standard desktop drives it does tend to lean strongly towards WD & Seagate. However what I do see a lot is that the wrong model of drives are used in certain applications (i.e. not using a drive manufactured for NAS use in a NAS device) which causes premature failure in many cases.
 
I take about 20 recoveries a month, and i would say as a % 75% are WD. A lot of them are drops or surge dmg, however the numbers on my side speaks for itself.

Any hard drive has a very good chance of failure if you drop or surge it
 
I take about 20 recoveries a month, and i would say as a % 75% are WD. A lot of them are drops or surge dmg, however the numbers on my side speaks for itself.

That shouldn't be included in failure rate bud.
I am talking about hdd failing in the sense of failing, not being dropped or human stupidity :p
 
I'm voting Seagate because I've used loads of them, and haven't really had many issues, although I think WD are good as well
 
What we actually need to do is get 2 of the same drives, one WD and the other seagate. Then get them in RAID and see which fails first under the same conditions. Could take a while though
 
What we actually need to do is get 2 of the same drives, one WD and the other seagate. Then get them in RAID and see which fails first under the same conditions. Could take a while though

Same conditions with hardware is like trying to get two women in the same room to agree on the color of a pair of shoes :D
 
I am using both Seagate and WD. Never had any problems with either of them.

/touches wood
/clutches rabbit foot

...but if I had to choose, I'd probably go with WD.
 
What ever is cheaper considering specs, if a different brand has double the cache for R20 more then I go for it.
 
I have only ever had 1 Seagate mech failure. I short-circuited another one whilst trying to move it inside my case. :mad:

As for WD, I remember several mech failures, accompanied by the click of death, but this was a decade ago. It would seem that they have improved their reliability a lot in recent years. I do not know anyone currently that has had a breakdown.

Samsung insist on this stupid proprietary USB interface on their 2.5" drives. I have a G2 640gb on its way out as we speak, but I am so over it I don't care any more. Stupid thing.
 
I am biased towards Seagate...but really whatever has a better warranty, reputation and..... speed XD

Western Digital used to have 3 year warranties on their drives when Seagate only had 2, but now they both have 2 year warranties, so yeah it comes down to specs vs price for me.
 
I'm a fan for WD, only cuz its the only brand I've used for HDD and I've never had an issue for over 4 years now, and now considering buying another one.
 
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