Really want to know your view of Seagate hard drives

[conceptualclarity]

A very knowledgeable techie on another website said : "I avoid Seagate like the plague and few other people I know in the business do too. From personal experience over the years, Seagate drive failure rates have far outweighed all other manufacturers combined."

I'm looking to have a computer built for me by allpczone, who has am exceedingly stellar rating on eBay. I want to get two 1 TB hard drives in my new computer. I'm also looking for a 2 TB hard drive to serve as a backup hard drive in some kind of external enclosure or dock. I could save a lot of money on the computer by going with Seagate. But...

 

[getochkn]

Every person has their own preference and says this brand is the best, all the other brands fail on them, and they've never had ABC brand die in them, blah, blah, blah, blah.

In over 25 years of time working on PC's, I've seen every brand die, and if I had all the dead HD's in a big stack I've seen in my life, and then sorted by brand, I bet the piles would be about equal in size.

 

[RealBeast]

Every person has their own preference and says this brand is the best, all the other brands fail on them, and they've never had ABC brand die in them, blah, blah, blah, blah.

In over 25 years of time working on PC's, I've seen every brand die, and if I had all the dead HD's in a big stack I've seen in my life, and then sorted by brand, I bet the piles would be about equal in size.

I totally agree, in my experience over a similar time period the piles are similar with the exception of specific models in the distant past.

Many folks who do not use a large number of drives and have a failure do not have an adequate sample to draw a valid conclusion, but do anyway.

 

[casper1973]

Also agree.

We must average a couple of failed hard drives per week in our repair shop and I can't say have noticed any sort of pattern.

Admittedly most of the failed drives are either Seagate or WD but this purely as they are the most common drives used. If you went out about bought 100 different PC's/laptops at random I would put money on at least 80 of them containing either a Seagate or WD drive.

 

[choucove]

Everyone above has a very good approach and input on this question, which is raised about as often as "Mac vs. PC". Seagate and Western Digital are the two big names out there, and the most important thing to consider is that each drive manufacturer has a large range of products available. You can't just compare Seagate drive X to Western Digital drive Y. When you look at comparable models and ranges, over the course of the last several years, their expected drive failures are going to be pretty much the same.

That being said, as Casper has said above, I can only really give my input based on the average number of failures I personally see in my office. In this case, the majority of the hard drive failures I've seen over the last three to four years have been Seagate hard drives. But also the majority of the computers have been utilizing Seagate drives, so that kinda skews the proportions doesn't it? However, what really steers my decisions for what hard drives to purchase is based on the features and WARRANTY. The warranty coverage alone speaks for how much the company trusts the failure rate or longevity of their product. So that means the majority of the hard drives we utilize are Western Digital Black drives because they have a 5 year warranty and great performance. However, they are also much more expensive than the cheaper Barracuda drives from Seagate.

So, asking your input on a company is really vague because the company and their hard drives themselves are not an issue. They perform as intended, they offer great value, and from my experience have great customer service and support. The real question would be to compare specific drive types or models, as at least you are placing some sort of measure for comparison. And when you get down to it, when you put most any brand of hard drive of similar type up against a similar Seagate drive, you're probably going to find similar performance, features, and reliability. If you want more reliable drives, get those rated with a longer warranty or MTBF ratings.

 

[popatim]

Each manufacturer has produced their less desirable models and will do so again. It takes a little time to perfect a line and the parts supply and we hope they work towards eliminating the weak spots. Heck, even intel has let some Opps slip thru their foundry. LoL

This is why I dont hop right onto new drive models. I like to give them time to work out the bugs.