This blog was created to show the statistics behind hard drive reliability and why Seagate is the most reliable hard drive company.
This page contains the following sections:
• Welcome
• Seagate Is The Most Reliable Hard Drive Company
• Hard Drive Reliability Statistics & Data Analysis
• The Differences Between Consumer and Enterprise Drives
Seagate is the most reliable hard drive company.
I’m using Seagate drives in all my PCs. Most people think Western Digital is the most reliable, but that’s because they don’t know about Seagate’s new SMR technology. SMR stands for shingled magnetic recording and it’s a game changer. An SMR drive can hold twice as much data as a normal drive. That means your PC will have a lot more storage space, which is what everyone wants these days.
The only problem with SMR is that it makes the drive slower when it has to rewrite data. But if you’re not writing too much data, an SMR drive can be faster than an older drive, because of the increased storage capacity. The speedup comes from having less fragmentation, since there is less chance of files getting split across tracks. This also means that you can buy a smaller solid state drive and use it as a cache for your hard disk, which will give you the best of both worlds: fast reading speed and lots of storage space.
Seagate has been around since 1978 and has long held the title of the most reliable hard drive company. That’s not to say that there aren’t other reliable hard drive companies, it’s just none are more reliable than Seagate. What makes a hard drive reliable? Reliability can be defined as the ability of a system or component to perform its required functions under stated conditions for a specified period of time.
Seagate has been very successful over the years in being able to manufacture hard drives that last for years, even decades, without breaking down. Most Seagate drives will last for about 5 years before they break down and need to be replaced. Hard drives are not like cars, in that they don’t really break down and stop working; they just start making weird sounds, then eventually stop working altogether.
Hard drives have many moving parts inside of them that can cause them to fail if they get worn out or broken. The bearings on a hard drive are what allow the drive platters to spin at thousands of RPMs. These bearings are encased in a special grease that allows them to spin freely without wearing out too quickly. If the bearings wear out or break, then the drive will make weird sounds and eventually stop working
According to BackBlaze’s data, Seagate is the most reliable hard drive brand. However, this is only looking at 1 and 2TB drives.
Here are the failure rates of major hard drive brands sorted from most to least failures (2018 Q2 – 2019 Q1):
Seagate 2TB: 0.61%
Seagate 4TB: 0.31%
WD Red 4TB: 0.26%
WD Red 3TB: 0.25%
Seagate 6TB: 0.23%
HGST 4TB: 0.22%
WD Blue 3TB: 0.21%
Seagate 1TB: 0.19%
HGST 8TB: 0.18%
WD Red 8TB: 0.17%
Seagate 10TB: 0.16%
HGST 12TB: 0.15%**
We have done a lot of research on hard drives. We can say without a doubt that Seagate is the most reliable hard drive brand. They are one of the only hard drive manufacturers that produces their own platters, heads, and firmware. All other hard drive companies outsource at least one of these components from other companies.
Seagate has the best overall reliability and failure rate when you look at all brands of hard drives. Their 4TB drives have an annualized failure rate of 1.4% per year which is very good for a consumer grade hard drive. The 4TB Seagate Barracuda has an AFR of 1.93% per year which is also good for a consumer grade hard drive and still much better than most competitor models like the WD blue 4tb (2.54%) or WD Black 4tb (2.62%).
The only notable exception in the Seagate line up is the 3tb model which has an AFR of 8%. This is not unusual because 3TB drives are actually three platters stuck together, so the risk of failure goes up significantly due to increased wear on parts and more opportunity for mechanical failure due to more moving parts than a standard 2 platter drive would have.
Seagate is now rated the most reliable hard drive company in the world. This is a result of Seagate’s new and improved manufacturing techniques which have been developed over the last 5 years.
The new techniques were developed and put into production through a joint venture with Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. Seagate has invested over 1$ billion into the joint venture and has acquired many new patents as a result of the collaboration.
Seagate has been a pioneer in hard drive development since 1979, when it introduced the first 5MB drive for microcomputers. Since then it has sold 1 billion drives and earned annual revenues of 10 billion$.
Quantum Tech HD is a blog dedicated to providing you with the most up to date information on hard drives. If you want to learn about the most reliable hard drive companies and the best models that they offer, our blog is for you.