I would never trust Seagate after having two 1TB 7200rpm HD's fail within months of each other after only a couple years of use. Have an old WD 1TB Passport that has had zero issues and works great, same with all my WD HD's. I use the Passport for Photo backup as well as also storing them in the Cloud.....
Yes it was moronic comment placement, but my 4TB 2.5" Seagate disk failed also, and it was SO much data to lose... I guess it is his pain that is coming out.
Same, I've had terrible luck with WD. They die on me within about 1 year after purchase. I've been using the same Seagate for going on 8 years with no issues.
I've got a total of 6 of these previous-gen WD MyBook 8TB model here and guess what: I took them all apart to see what's actually in them. In two of them there is actually a HGST Helium drive installed with a HGST sticker on it. The other 4 have an identical drive (same exteriour, same electronics, same name) but an updated sticker, which says WD instead of HGST. They look nearly identical to the HGST He8 drives, despite they are only 5400rpm. So I guess they are infact HGST drives, which is a good thing.
Maybe buying them sooner rather then later might be a good idea, assuming WD will change the design in the future to bring costs down (the external WD 8TB drives cost ~$250, while the bare drives without external enclosures in the form of the WD Red costs around $300-350 for whatever reason).
I see mostly Seagate 3.5" failures especially in the 7200.10-7200.12 series, and tons of WD Black and WD Blue 2.5" failures. I've only seen ONE WD Blue 3.5" desktop drive fail.
The other point to note is Seagate drives fail catastrophically. My friend Mitchell works for a data recovery service in Chicago, and backs this up whenever we talk. Seagate drives they receive have a very low recovery rate compared to all other brands because many failures result in the platters being physically scratched (radial surface scratch) which nobody can recover because the media is ruined and there just isn't enough error correction to recover from surface defects on this scale.
He is particularly fond of...you guessed it, Hitachi-designed drives. Most failures are controller related and are turned around 100% satisfactory using a donor drive.
Hitachi Coolspins are as good as people rave about. It's ridiculous to trust your data on anything else if you can cope with the 4TB max capacity before the design changed to the joint Hitachi-WD developed Deskstar/Ultrastar models that come in larger capacities. The original Hitachi developed designed ended at 4TB, but are still sold at retailers because they are actually still in production.
Hard drives are useful as infrequently used backup drives since modern SSDs have problems with long-term data retention. For instance, if you stick your backup drive at a relative's house like I do (~45 mins drive from my home) and forget about it, a modern SSD may not be the best solution based on what I've been reading about TLC.
Anecdotal experience is worth nothing when we're talking about statistics with single-digit yearly failure rates (as most normal HDDs have, server grade units score better). And you should not TRUST any single storage device, no matter how reliable you think it is.
This. Backup backup backup. Cloud backup services are $50 a year for unlimited storage and protect you from every form of data failure (fire flood theft surge malware infections accidental deletion mechanical failure etc)
NEVER trust your backup data to the cloud unless you are cool with ALL the government agencies snooping through your stuff and potentially having hackers in your stuff. Time after time we learn about terrible security practices of online companies that are supposed to know better. Have multiple backups stored in different locations (home and work, home and family members house, etc.).
My old 500Gb WD Green died on me some time ago. Other than that, I have no complaints. I have replaced it with Seagate ST2000DM001 which has, shall we say, questionable reputation, of which I only learned postfactum. It has worked well for three years now, but boy is it LOUD.
On DAS side, my old 1Tb WD has somehow lost all of the data, probably had to do with FAT failure. And one of my new 8Tb Seagate`s has a concerning habit of going unresponsive sometimes after I copy something big to it. Somehow it always coincides with torrent client running(it doesn`t have to download anything, just running is enough).
Books are incredibly useful, as I learned in my last year in college. When I still had to pass exams, I had to write material on one book, I did not read it at all, but I found an example at https://samplius.com/free-essay-examples/death-pen... which helped me understand how to do it correctly and what to do. Thanks to this, everything turned out as elegantly as possible, and I also gained an awareness of high-quality work, use the link, I am sure that it will be useful to you as well as to me.
I actually like the chassis. What bothers me is, like Seagate chassis, they are a bitch to open and shuck. As Ganesh said, the 2.5" isn't even shuckable because it has a USB bridge on the PCB (there is no SATA connection) and the 3.5" drive has a nerfed firmware, not uncommon on Seagate drives.
Years ago I received legal threats from Seagate for posting firmware dump \ flash instructions in the AT forums to "hack" shucked external drives to operate on SATA with the full AHCI command set. I'm sure this is still business as usual for these companies, but less relevant as they make custom PCB's for their external drives that remove the physical SATA interface all together.
Backblaze operates about 12% of their data center on shucked drives according to their purchase reports from 2011-2012, due to the global disk shortage during that period due to floods in Thailand...they literally drove store to store buying every retail drive they could, including external drives, in order to meet their expansion demands during that period.
Unfortunately the consequences of this led storage companies to do everything they reasonable could to prevent shucking; they had previously ignored shucking when it was a hobbyist niche, but the sheer scale of backblaze doing this (we are talking thousands of drives in a matter of months during a global crisis) this act alone was enough to hit their bottom line as external drives were sold at a lower price.
Personally, I don't feel Backblaze did anything wrong, they found a creative way to survive.
The thing I hate about WD is that they started the bad habit of integrating the USB<->SATA bridge into the HDD board it self without any physical way to bypass it ( direct SATA connection )... they said that to be able to make the drives smaller and smaller, but the other reason they don't want to give is to cut costs and when any drive fail ( duo to USB connector or bridge failure ) then 90% of customers will just go and buy another one !!
I'm very happy you made note of the fact that you cannot use this WD 2.5" disk in a normal manner outside of its USB enclosure - as I just purchased the 3TB version just for that purpose, and was CRUSHED to find the USB-SATA controller as part of the drives' mainboard also.
I appreciated Ganesh pointing that out too. Photos next round Ganesh? Also perhaps check if the 3.5" variant can be used internally on an AHCI SATA controller.
Hmm... I find the new enclosures more clunky. At least the My Passport 2.5" one. Only upside I see is that they are somewhat more stackable. Not sure that's the intention, though.
Adding my two cents. WDC 2.5" drives are utter garbage. Seagate 7200 3TB+ models, especially the Chinese manufactured models are utter garbage. The rest is a lottery.
When it comes to external hard disk, I always choose western digital. I find the performance better and is compatible with most of the popular platforms. Though I have faced a lot of data loss issue from my HDD. This is very common anyway. I use a Dell laptop. Having installed a <a href="https://www.f2help.com/">Laptop data recovery tool </a> or a software is necessary. HDD is used for backup but users need to think of restoring too.
Interestingly, when I used a frequency analyzer app on my mobile to measure the Hertz value for my WD My Book 8 TB (WDC WD80EZAZ-11TDBA0 according to CrystalDiskInfo) it returned a value of 120 Hertz. Which points to a rotation speed of 7200 rpm (7200 rotations per minute / 60 = 120 rotations per second = 120 Hertz).
Other 5400 rpm drives show a value of the expected 90 Hertz, which indicate that they indeed rotate with "true" 5400 rpm. CrystalDiskInfo also shows a rotation speed of 5400 rpm for the My Book in its info, but somehow this doesn't seem to be the case.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
35 Comments
Back to Article
JETninja - Sunday, October 16, 2016 - link
I would never trust Seagate after having two 1TB 7200rpm HD's fail within months of each other after only a couple years of use. Have an old WD 1TB Passport that has had zero issues and works great, same with all my WD HD's. I use the Passport for Photo backup as well as also storing them in the Cloud.....negusp - Sunday, October 16, 2016 - link
This article is about WD...Notmyusualid - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
Yes it was moronic comment placement, but my 4TB 2.5" Seagate disk failed also, and it was SO much data to lose... I guess it is his pain that is coming out.fangdahai - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
Same here. 2 hard disks died in months. Seagate is terrible.Zak - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
But surely you had backups, no? How could you possibly lose "so much data"?Ro_Ja - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link
Maybe because he ignored the increasing errors his Hard Drive had.StormyParis - Sunday, October 16, 2016 - link
Anecdote is funny that way, I've had way more WD drives die on me than Seagate, to the point I'm strongly leaning the other way.Token2k8 - Sunday, October 16, 2016 - link
Same, I've had terrible luck with WD. They die on me within about 1 year after purchase. I've been using the same Seagate for going on 8 years with no issues.Token2k8 - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
I know people that have terrible luck with Seagate as well. Always found that odd.valinor89 - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
The seagate 7200.11 firmware brick got me once, the replacement lasted one year... I have gone with WD since then and no problems...fazalmajid - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
WD and Seagate both suck. The drives to get are HGST (formerly Hitachi, formerly-er IBM), despite the fact HGST is now owned by WDC.piroroadkill - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
Correct.Breit - Tuesday, October 18, 2016 - link
I've got a total of 6 of these previous-gen WD MyBook 8TB model here and guess what: I took them all apart to see what's actually in them. In two of them there is actually a HGST Helium drive installed with a HGST sticker on it. The other 4 have an identical drive (same exteriour, same electronics, same name) but an updated sticker, which says WD instead of HGST. They look nearly identical to the HGST He8 drives, despite they are only 5400rpm. So I guess they are infact HGST drives, which is a good thing.Maybe buying them sooner rather then later might be a good idea, assuming WD will change the design in the future to bring costs down (the external WD 8TB drives cost ~$250, while the bare drives without external enclosures in the form of the WD Red costs around $300-350 for whatever reason).
Samus - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
I see mostly Seagate 3.5" failures especially in the 7200.10-7200.12 series, and tons of WD Black and WD Blue 2.5" failures. I've only seen ONE WD Blue 3.5" desktop drive fail.The other point to note is Seagate drives fail catastrophically. My friend Mitchell works for a data recovery service in Chicago, and backs this up whenever we talk. Seagate drives they receive have a very low recovery rate compared to all other brands because many failures result in the platters being physically scratched (radial surface scratch) which nobody can recover because the media is ruined and there just isn't enough error correction to recover from surface defects on this scale.
He is particularly fond of...you guessed it, Hitachi-designed drives. Most failures are controller related and are turned around 100% satisfactory using a donor drive.
Hitachi Coolspins are as good as people rave about. It's ridiculous to trust your data on anything else if you can cope with the 4TB max capacity before the design changed to the joint Hitachi-WD developed Deskstar/Ultrastar models that come in larger capacities. The original Hitachi developed designed ended at 4TB, but are still sold at retailers because they are actually still in production.
Wardrop - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
Interesting. Thanks for sharing.fanofanand - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
Count me in the camp that had a 7200.10 fail on me after 18 months of use. I won't buy a spinning platter again.BrokenCrayons - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
Hard drives are useful as infrequently used backup drives since modern SSDs have problems with long-term data retention. For instance, if you stick your backup drive at a relative's house like I do (~45 mins drive from my home) and forget about it, a modern SSD may not be the best solution based on what I've been reading about TLC.Michael Bay - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
But are they quiet? Price is indeed good.MrSpadge - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
Anecdotal experience is worth nothing when we're talking about statistics with single-digit yearly failure rates (as most normal HDDs have, server grade units score better). And you should not TRUST any single storage device, no matter how reliable you think it is.Samus - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
This. Backup backup backup. Cloud backup services are $50 a year for unlimited storage and protect you from every form of data failure (fire flood theft surge malware infections accidental deletion mechanical failure etc)BoloMKXXVIII - Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - link
NEVER trust your backup data to the cloud unless you are cool with ALL the government agencies snooping through your stuff and potentially having hackers in your stuff. Time after time we learn about terrible security practices of online companies that are supposed to know better. Have multiple backups stored in different locations (home and work, home and family members house, etc.).Michael Bay - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
My old 500Gb WD Green died on me some time ago. Other than that, I have no complaints.I have replaced it with Seagate ST2000DM001 which has, shall we say, questionable reputation, of which I only learned postfactum. It has worked well for three years now, but boy is it LOUD.
On DAS side, my old 1Tb WD has somehow lost all of the data, probably had to do with FAT failure. And one of my new 8Tb Seagate`s has a concerning habit of going unresponsive sometimes after I copy something big to it. Somehow it always coincides with torrent client running(it doesn`t have to download anything, just running is enough).
Point is, it`s a goddamn lottery.
jackhorizon8 - Sunday, August 30, 2020 - link
Books are incredibly useful, as I learned in my last year in college. When I still had to pass exams, I had to write material on one book, I did not read it at all, but I found an example at https://samplius.com/free-essay-examples/death-pen... which helped me understand how to do it correctly and what to do. Thanks to this, everything turned out as elegantly as possible, and I also gained an awareness of high-quality work, use the link, I am sure that it will be useful to you as well as to me.StevoLincolnite - Sunday, October 16, 2016 - link
The Chassis looks like an Xbox One.Samus - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
I actually like the chassis. What bothers me is, like Seagate chassis, they are a bitch to open and shuck. As Ganesh said, the 2.5" isn't even shuckable because it has a USB bridge on the PCB (there is no SATA connection) and the 3.5" drive has a nerfed firmware, not uncommon on Seagate drives.Years ago I received legal threats from Seagate for posting firmware dump \ flash instructions in the AT forums to "hack" shucked external drives to operate on SATA with the full AHCI command set. I'm sure this is still business as usual for these companies, but less relevant as they make custom PCB's for their external drives that remove the physical SATA interface all together.
Backblaze operates about 12% of their data center on shucked drives according to their purchase reports from 2011-2012, due to the global disk shortage during that period due to floods in Thailand...they literally drove store to store buying every retail drive they could, including external drives, in order to meet their expansion demands during that period.
Unfortunately the consequences of this led storage companies to do everything they reasonable could to prevent shucking; they had previously ignored shucking when it was a hobbyist niche, but the sheer scale of backblaze doing this (we are talking thousands of drives in a matter of months during a global crisis) this act alone was enough to hit their bottom line as external drives were sold at a lower price.
Personally, I don't feel Backblaze did anything wrong, they found a creative way to survive.
Xajel - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
The thing I hate about WD is that they started the bad habit of integrating the USB<->SATA bridge into the HDD board it self without any physical way to bypass it ( direct SATA connection )... they said that to be able to make the drives smaller and smaller, but the other reason they don't want to give is to cut costs and when any drive fail ( duo to USB connector or bridge failure ) then 90% of customers will just go and buy another one !!damianrobertjones - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
" then 90% of customers will just go and buy another one !!"Hopefully from another company.
Michael Bay - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
There is only one another company though.valinor89 - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
Seems that consumer ping pong is a game played between companies nowadays instead of trying for retention....Notmyusualid - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
I'm very happy you made note of the fact that you cannot use this WD 2.5" disk in a normal manner outside of its USB enclosure - as I just purchased the 3TB version just for that purpose, and was CRUSHED to find the USB-SATA controller as part of the drives' mainboard also.And that wasn't a cheap mistake to make.
Samus - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
I appreciated Ganesh pointing that out too. Photos next round Ganesh? Also perhaps check if the 3.5" variant can be used internally on an AHCI SATA controller.azrael- - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
Hmm... I find the new enclosures more clunky. At least the My Passport 2.5" one. Only upside I see is that they are somewhat more stackable. Not sure that's the intention, though.coburn_c - Tuesday, October 18, 2016 - link
Adding my two cents. WDC 2.5" drives are utter garbage. Seagate 7200 3TB+ models, especially the Chinese manufactured models are utter garbage. The rest is a lottery.leo321 - Wednesday, July 25, 2018 - link
When it comes to external hard disk, I always choose western digital. I find the performance better and is compatible with most of the popular platforms. Though I have faced a lot of data loss issue from my HDD. This is very common anyway. I use a Dell laptop. Having installed a <a href="https://www.f2help.com/">Laptop data recovery tool </a> or a software is necessary. HDD is used for backup but users need to think of restoring too.sp00n82 - Saturday, July 20, 2019 - link
Interestingly, when I used a frequency analyzer app on my mobile to measure the Hertz value for my WD My Book 8 TB (WDC WD80EZAZ-11TDBA0 according to CrystalDiskInfo) it returned a value of 120 Hertz. Which points to a rotation speed of 7200 rpm (7200 rotations per minute / 60 = 120 rotations per second = 120 Hertz).Other 5400 rpm drives show a value of the expected 90 Hertz, which indicate that they indeed rotate with "true" 5400 rpm.
CrystalDiskInfo also shows a rotation speed of 5400 rpm for the My Book in its info, but somehow this doesn't seem to be the case.