Most reliable hard drive?

Would somebody be able to recommend what they believe is the most-reliable hard drive? I wish to put 2, 3 or 4 of these in a RAID.

I keep reading HGST (Hitachi) is the best manufacturer but I am unsure which exact model to buy?

I don't think there's any one manufacturer who you can claim to be the most reliable.

I used to swear by Hitachi but then in the space of a week, had a 640GB 2.5" drive get a load of bad sectors and a 1TB 3.5" drive had its controller fail.

Now I tend to stick to WD. My 2 3TB WD Red drives have a decent warranty, expensive though.

Would you be running RAID10, 5 or 6?

agw_01 said:

I don't think there's any one manufacturer who you can claim to be the most reliable.

I used to swear by Hitachi but then in the space of a week, had a 640GB 2.5" drive get a load of bad sectors and a 1TB 3.5" drive had its controller fail.

Now I tend to stick to WD. My 2 3TB WD Red drives have a decent warranty, expensive though.

Would you be running RAID10, 5 or 6?

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The one which duplicates one drive across all of them (forgotten which one that is, RAID1?)

RAID1 mirrors across all disks, you only have the same available space as 1 disk.

Is the data really that critical?

I would think having copy of the data stored off site would be better than entrusting one computer to store that data. What happens if the computer is stolen, or fire, or other natural disastor?

Echo what hornetstinger said.

RAID is not a replacement for backups.

In 30 years of building & general PC usage I've only ever had one hard drive failure & that was a Hitachi.
My goto drives are Samsung for SSDs & Western Digital for mechanical.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-rates-q2-2016/

This is the best resource I know of for consumer HDD failure rates, if anyone knows better please share.

If you are using this for long term storage, you also want to consider bit rot. Use something like MS mirrored storage spaces with REFS, there are other solutions out there that accomplish the same thing but this comes with windows.

RAID is intended for up time reliability not backup, if the data is precious you also need a cold offline backup fyi. I would also avoid raid 5, not safe nowadays given drive sizes and non recoverable read error rates.

I like Western Digital for HDD, I've had plenty of them from new and no failures yet, my black caviar is 5 years old and fine atm. Have 2 Hitachi but they are under 6000 rpm but have no issues although I only use them for backups.

stewski said:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-rates-q2-2016/

This is the best resource I know of for consumer HDD failure rates, if anyone knows better please share.

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Only really valid if you use the disks in the same way. Not aware of any usable HDD reliability data.

Robzere31 said:

In 30 years of building & general PC usage I've only ever had one hard drive failure & that was a Hitachi.
My goto drives are Samsung for SSDs & Western Digital for mechanical.

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This ^ 100% , Stay away from Hitachi drives.


Bitten 5 times with Hitachi drives and never again and one set were all purchased at the same time and they failed one after the other in a matter of 3 months, Hitachi replaced them and they seemed fine but of course I was not going to trust them again and replaced them all with WD blacks, A WD Black has never let me down yet even after hammering them hard at work with a work load that they were never designed for. Hitachi (IBM Before) drives to me still to this day after the Deathstar range are just as bad... I think they dislike being used in a environment that lets them sit and idle then spin up again and the spin ups kill them in the end with either the click of death or many bad sectors..

I keep reading all these amazing reviews about them but in the long term they have always let me down while in their warranty period. I promised myself after the Deathstar range of headaches I would never again but a few years ago I gave them another chance as Hitachi took over and the reviews were all positive and found no real failures by customers and around the time I started having problems googled again for problems and the internet was full of the same issues again of the same problems I was seeing.. but of course Back Blaze kept stating they were most reliable... LOL... never again really.



So far had 2 seagates fail, one needed a fix with a nokia modem hack to make it work again, which worked and got my data back and other click of death.


5 Hitachi fails from the click of death to a massive amount of bad sectors building up like crazy.


WD none so far


Samsung 1 drive started to get bad sectors in a laptop, but I rate their drives and I have had many of their laptop drives and that was only one ever to fail so they are still in my good books for laptop drives.

Personally I've had the opposite experience. I've never had a Hitachi drive fail at all (my current one is 5 1/2 years old and no issues at all), but over the years I've RMA'd at least 5 WD drives, and a couple of Seagates.

To be fair I've not used any WD drives recently so I don't know what they are like now, but I always used to have a whole ton of problem with them. I think I ended up RMA'ing every single one I ever bought over a 8 year period.

To those recommending WD, link to the specific model? Are the NAS drives suitable for a home desktop PC?

stewski said:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-rates-q2-2016/

This is the best resource I know of for consumer HDD failure rates, if anyone knows better please share.

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I don't know a better source, but as already said, it is only representative of the environment they run them in (i.e. running consumer grade drives in servers, when they are not rated as such)

Random Guy said:

To those recommending WD, link to the specific model? Are the NAS drives suitable for a home desktop PC?

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NAS Drives are fine for use in a normal PC, although you will pay slightly more, due to their features that aren't required for normal use (TLER, 24/7 rated, better dampening against vibration etc)

It mostly seems to be luck with what batch you get imo and how they are delivered.

I have been running this system with a Samsung Pro SSD and HGST 4tb drive since the motherboard was released. No issues so far. Gaming drive is a Sandisk, other PC's use Samsung and Sandisk SSD's with Sammy F3's.

My back up is a portable Seagate 4tb drive, just for stuff I dont want to lose. Chosen because of it's price and a review, I have WD and Verbatim exernal drives too, WD Passports are not that reliable and get given to the kids for xbox storage.

I think the OP needs to understand that all he has here are individuals opinions based on their experience, and no matter what drive he buys, HGST, WD, Seagate, Toshiba, there is an inherent risk he will suffer a failure of a drive. Then possibly one day be on a thread like this, quoting he prefers Seagate because he once had a WD drive fail.

I will stick to HGST because it is regarded as a reliable drive, sure the server data stats linked are not a real life domestic scenario, if I remember correctly they sit in specific performance parameters, but thats not the point, it's just another point towards HGST being regarded as the most reliable with lowest failure rates within the server industry, therefor reliable drives full stop. Yet if you review the Hitachi/Verbatim 1tb external 7200rpm drives, people have had issues.

If I was not using HGST I would use WD or Seagate.

I have had no hard drive failures since IDE, and I have used a fair amount of drives for domestic use, SSD and HDD, with a family of 5 and three PC's currently, I still have faultless Samsung F3's and WD Greens too.
Actually I had an issue once with a Hitachi 1tb drive in a Verbatim once, I think it turned out to have a stuck head that resolved itself as it still sits here working.

sastusbulbas said:

I will stick to HGST

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Had loads of these fail at work.

I think it's just a lottery whichever one you get, although like many I tend to stick to Samsung for SSDs and WD for mechanical drives.

I've always had IBM/Toshiba drives and I haven't lost data on a harddrive for some time now - the last time I nearly lost my data but got very lucky and backed up the complete drive in one go while I had the chance.

WD seem to be slipping in the direction of Segate, but I'd certainly use WD rather than Seagate if I was forced to decide.

I do agree that Hitachi drives dislike being constantly powered on and off - but I'd imagine that this is probably the most likely time to fail with any harddrive. This is why my drives are never allowed to power down, unless I need to. They literally twist away 24/7.

The most reliable hard drive is two (or more) hard drives.