Best Hard Drive on the Planet According to a Backblaze Research Report

Of all computer components, the most critical is the hard drive. You have your OS, application programs, and work files stored. The latter is the most important. Spreadsheets, word processor files, emails, photos, homework, announcements, work related files, and anything important are saved on this device. When the hard drive crashes and there is no backup, everything is lost - many are not replaceable and some represent hours of work. Not as important is the boot drive containing your operating system and application programs. When they are gone, time is needed to reinstall the software. For these reasons, common sense dictates the purchase of a reliable storage unit. . So, which brand is the best and what is to be avoided? . The definitive research on the longevity of hard drives was published in EXTREMTECH on April 10, 2015. BackBlaze tested 41,000 units in a three year period. The results were very informative. The best was HGST with 1.4% failures. Hitachi followed with 2.0%. Western Digital had a respectable 7.6%. The worse was Seagate with 40%. . For your information, HGST, Hitachi, and IBM products are identical. IBM sold its hard drive division to Hitachi. In turn, the department was sold to HGST years later. HGST is a subsidiary of Western Digital. . From personal experiences in the past two years, I concur with the study. My 3TB HGST DeskStar has lasted six years and still works. My six 2TB Seagate Barracudas have expired between one month to 1.1 years. My four WD Enterprise Grade HDs have died between one month to 2.1 years. Three replacement hard drives from Western Digital and Seagate also malfunctioned within this time period. . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ . . UPDATE . The latest Backblaze report came on December 11, 2015. It detailed the failure rate among hard drives purchased on three years. Seagate had the highest. Among 1TB hard drives, this brand had the following failure rates: 2013 - 129.88%, 2014 - 66.01%, and 2015 - 222.77%. Among 2TB drives, the failure rates were better: 2013 - 43.08%, 2014 - 30.94%, and 2015 - 28.46%. . As a comparison, the highest failure rate for its 1TB competitors is much lower. Western Digital Green had the following: 2013 - 4.29%, 2014 - 3.90%, and 2015 - 9.91%. Toshiba claimed the record for competing 2TB drives: 2013 - 6.93%, 2014 - 3.68%, and 2015 - 2.80%.Read full review

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