I bought a new hard disk yesterday as my 3 yr old Seagate is dying.
During my research I came across an article from blackblaze, which listed the failure rates of the drives they use.
Hitachi is by far, their most reliable drive. This also happens to be the most expensive on the market.
Now, previously, Seagate were the least reliable drives, however, in the last few months, that (dis)honour has passed onto the WD RED drives.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/
Western Digital Red 3 TB
(WDC WD30EFRX) 3TB 1045 0.9 12.87% (failures, so far)
Now, my own take on things is that if you can afford it, buy Hitachi. However, if money is a consideration, buy the hard disk with the cheapest £/GB. All HDs have the potential to fail. And sometimes its just the luck of the draw.
I'd certainly like to know what Boogieman_WD's opinion is of this.
WD certainly need to address this issue, as potential customers will look at Blackblaze's numbers as an approximate guide of which drives are the most/least reliable.
10-15 years ago IBM got a very bad reputation when their 75GXP range of drives had a high failure rate. It took them years to get over this. IIRC they even sold their HD division to Hitachi as they just couldnt shake their tarnished reputation. I think WD need to deal with this head on.