Class-Action Lawsuit Against Seagate Built On Questionable Backblaze Reliability Report

[cadder]

I have looked into product feedback for hard drives on newegg.com and amazon.com. In general Seagate drives do not do very well there. Recent large capacity Toshiba and Western Digital drives haven't done very well either, with HGST having the lowest percentage of bad feedback. However there are a few Seagate drives that have done very well, such as the 2TB 2.5" drive. I've bought a couple of those, and my next 3.5" drive will almost surely be an HGST.

 

[Kevin McCormick]

I used to buy Seagate drives all the time, they always worked and never failed. That is until I bought some around 2008, which all of them failed after a year or so of use. Seagate during this time changed the warranty from 5 years to 3 years. Even Seagate knew their drives were now garbage, otherwise they had no reason to change warranties. So for the last 7 years or so I have not bought any Seagate drives.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I hope this guy hired that lawyer on commission cause he's got no case. The Backblaze study is so faulty it should be a headline on Fox news.

Consumer drives are equipped with a feature called "head parking" which the Seagate drives have. Interestingly enough, the Hitachi drives which did well in the study do not. "Head parking" parks the heads when not in use ... a very important feature in consumer drives in PC cases on wobbly desks, floors that "bounce" and people who bump into your desk. When parked, the heads are prevented from damaging the platters when vibration occurs.

Now server drives are intended for server farms which, if designed properly, have rock solid foundations, and proper mounting (as opposed to rubber bands like Backblaze). Because of the farm's inherent resistance to vibration effects, they are generally not equipped with the head parking feature.

Consumer drives may be rated for say 250k - 500k head parking cycles. In a server I/O environment, you can push 50k parking cycles in a month.... so in 5 - 10 months, the drive is shot. On one hand you might say that the bonehead who decided to put consumer drives in a server environment where the very feature that protects them in consumer PCs is what hastens their premature failure should be fired. On the other hand, the cost of server drives is so much higher, that you might expect a rinky-dink outfit (little-known cloud storage company's internal observations of the failure rates of HDDs in its own **unique** environment) like Backblaze to take this route figuring five $50 drives is better than one $250 drive.

Now all Seagate has to do is use readily available long term data for consumer drives when used in a consumer environments to blow this lawsuit away. All they have to do is not come out at the bottom and they are off the hook. But, they actually come out on top and they have done so consistently for the last several years.

The data here is based upon warranty returns of consumer drives in a "consumer environment" within 6 - 12 months of usage:

==============================================

2015-05-30 http://www.hardware.fr/articles/934-6/disques-durs.html

- Seagate 0,68% (contre 0,69%)
- Western 1,09% (contre 0,93%)
- HGST 1,16% (contre 1,01%)
- Toshiba 1,34% (contre 1,29%)

Worse models

- 4,58% WD Red WD60EFRX
- 3,40% Toshiba 3 To DT01ACA300
- 2,93% WD Green 4 To WD40EZRX
- 2,78% WD SE 3 To WD3000F9YZ
- 2,14% Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 1 To

=============================================

2014-06-11 http://www.hardware.fr/articles/927-6/disques-durs.html

- Seagate 0,69% (contre 0,86%)
- Western 0,93 (contre 1,13%)
- HGST 1,01% (contre 1,08%)
- Toshiba 1,29% (contre 1,02%)

While on here lets look at the top models with regard to greatest numbers of failures

- 4,76% WD Black WD4001FAEX
- 4,24% WD Black WD3001FAEX
- 3,83% WD SE WD3000F9YZ
- 2,56% HGST Travelstar 7K1000
- 2,39% Toshiba DT01ACA300

=================================================

2015-04-30 http://www.hardware.fr/articles/920-6/disques-durs.html

- Seagate 0,86% (contre 0,95%)
- Toshiba 1,02% (contre 1,54%)
- Hitachi 1,08% (contre 1,16%)
- Western 1,13% (contre 1,19%)

Lets look now at the failure rates of worse models by size and we see that the larger the drive, the higher the failure rate.:

2 TB :

- 2,64% WD Green WD20EARX
- 2,15% Toshiba DT01ACA200

3 TB :

- 3,75% Toshiba DT01ACA300
- 1,53% WD Green WD30EZRX

4 TB :

- 3,08% WD RE WD4000FYYZ
- 2,54% WD Black WD4001FAEX

=================================
10-30-2013 http://www.hardware.fr/articles/911-6/disques-durs.html

- Seagate 0,95% (contre 1,44%)
- Hitachi 1,16% (contre 2,40%)
- Western 1,19% (contre 1,55%)
- Toshiba 1,54% (contre 1,15%)

================================

Now you can buy any manufacturers server drives that do not come with head parking. Probably not a good idea for backblaze and their rubber band mounting arrangement but if the did build a properly designed server farm, they could avoid drives with the head parking feature. All I learned from the Backblaze study is never trust your data to Backblaze because their facilities fall well below accepted standards.

 

[vaughn2k]

I use to have Seagates on my Internet Cafe Computers (25 out of 28). Well known for their scary "Barracuda" name, with 160gb storage. Then I have 3pcs Western Digital Caviar 120GB, this was 12 years ago. One by one, the Barracuda dies in less than 3 years. I still have the 120gb WD (2pcs) working until now (the other one was accidentally dropped then died a year ago), as a back-up and utility drive.
Now I have all my drives using Western Digital. While on my laptop repair shop, I removed faulty hard drives (guess what?), and replaced it with Scorpio or Hitachi.. Planning to buy the Hybrid but.... will not go back to that brand again..

 

[Dugimodo]

Whatever your own experiences they can't normally be used as evidence for or against a brand, Although anyone would change brands after 2 or 3 personal bad experiences if not at just 1. You need large numbers of comparative data to make a reliable judgement in a case like this however. Backblaze have that data but as pointed out in this article it may well be flawed. With a small sample size you can't rule out a run of bad luck and with a single set of data you can't rule out flawed test methods. Also as someone else pointed out you can't forget to factor in the % of failures as opposed to the total numbers or your data is biased by market share.

 

[Arbie]

Backblaze data or not... My six or so Seagate 3TB units were the most UNRELIABLE drives I have ever bought. Under minimal (static, archival) use they would typically die in six months.

I hope the lawsuit succeeds. Seagate sold junk and they must have known it.

 

[ardoon]

This article reads like an editorial, not a fact based article.

It's because it basically is - PaulAlcorn also writes for tweaktown.com who had a similarly "journalistic" article about Backblaze's data when it first came out about a year and a half ago. It was also just a pile of vitriol with little substance.

What's really sad is that Tom's runs his articles as legitimate press. Pretty low quality from a site I've frequented for almost a decade now.

 

[Darkk]

All hard drives fail, Since 2007 we have used Seagate almost exclusively in all our servers (at times up to 40 servers) and I can say that I sleep way better knowing I have chosen Seagate!
Of course, that said... Every drive we have that fails is a Seagate!

The difference here is the Seagate drives in your servers are Enterprise class drives. They're designed to run 24/7/365 without too much trouble.

This article talks about regular consumer drives that failed too soon. I personally think they gotten their money's worth since they didn't use Enterprise class drives. So it's moot point in this case.

 

[larkspur]

I don't normally call out people who join Tom's just to post a comment, but after I reviewed the data, this one annoyed me a little.

Subsequent reports have dispelled the concerns that their chassis revisions, drive sourcing (drives removed from USB enclosures vs. outright purchased bare), and other anomalies.

No, subsequent reports indicate that the chassis 1.0 is still being used along with every other revision of the case and there is no data that lists each revision of chassis' failure rate. There is no data to indicate which HDDs are being used in which chassis. That means that at present, you have no way of knowing whether the least reliable HDDs in 2015 were actually WD as their data indicates, because you have no way of knowing whether those drives were installed in the version 1.0 chassis(rubber bands dude, rubber bands!) or whatever different chassis version. This creates an uncontrolled environment.

Where a lot of the consternation about the Backblaze reports come from is that people assume the testing is somehow flawed by using the drives in their environment. That's anything but true. The flaw is how people interpret it.

No. If the environment is not controlled then the results will vary. And it is not controlled per backblaze's own admission. I'm not putting this on backblaze - it's great that they share their data and they disclose the weakness of their report. My point is that you are claiming their study is actually a reliable method for choosing a consumer drive - I am pointing out that it is not.

Backblaze's methodologies are not too far out of whack for what gets done with automotive testing. Parts are subjected to the worst scenarios, under 24/7 load, totally outside of their design parameters. Think taking a Toyota Corolla and driving it at maximum speed around a street circuit for 96 hours straight. Way outside of typical usage, and way outside of what it was designed for.

Not a good analogy. What backblaze does is they have both a Toyota Corolla and a Nissan Altima. They mount the engines using only one engine mount to the chassis. Then they try to drive them around indefinitely until one of their engines drops clean off the chassis and then put it in their report. This is no different. Rubber bands, man!

So while the Backblaze data may not equate directly to the hard drive I stick in the next PC I build, it's better than completely blind or anecdotal evidence, as was the world before Backblaze released their data.

JackNaylorPE gave you some solid data but you downvoted his post. Is it that you are opposed to data that doesn't fit your agenda or are you just sore that you've been basing your HDD buying decisions based on a company's data that STILL uses rubber bands to secure the HDDs in their data center? I mean look at that chassis... Jack's right, the lesson learned here is don't use backblaze as a cloud storage provider. Rubber bands!

 

[cadder]

Just remembered another thing- Apple was recalling certain models of Mac computer because of failing hard drives. What brand did these machines use?

I understand that Backblaze was growing at the time that the hard drive factories were underwater so they had to buy any and every hard drive they could get their hands on, no matter the brand or model.

I was also surprised that they didn't later try to concentrate on the drives that they had the best results from but they seemed to do OK by buying the less expensive drives and getting warranty replacements if they failed. In my personal environment I don't want to do that, I prefer the most reliable drive that I can buy.

 

[best74]

I can confirm this.. Seagate 3TB drives have SERIOUS issues, we have had several failures with this crap product, and i am not buying Seagate for many years to come.

 

[wussupi83]

It is important to note - Backblaze did a study of "commercial vs enterprise drives" and for three years they found no discernible difference in failure rates between the two. Backblaze reported these Seagate drives were failing in under 3 years. Although the sample size of enterprise drives was smaller than commercial drives - it still allows us to as least propose that these drives were faulty and it was not the workload they were put under - hence a solid legal arguement. Source: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/enterprise-drive-reliability/

 

[xyriin]

The results of that test have been questioned by multiple sources over the course of years. I have seen no data that lists the enclosures employed on a per-failure basis during the test period. If such is presented, I would be happy to review it. As of my last contact with the company it indicated there is no failure data on a per-chassis level during the period in question.

Actually from https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q3-2015/
"Nearly all of the 1TB and 1.5TB drives were installed in Storage Pod 1.0 chassis. Yet, these two sizes have very different failure rates."
"Nearly all of the 2TB and 3TB drives were installed in 2.0 chassis. Yet, these two drive sizes have very different failure rates."

The only valid complaint about Backblaze's data is that drives are used beyond the recommended usage. However, abuse tests are nothing new and they're often a more accurate indicator of actual product quality than a minimal or short lab test.

I mean think about it. Let's say you know your consumer level product fails after X amount of hours or Y level of vibration. You also know that the normal consumer using your product won't hit that so you simply lie because the few drives that hit those thresholds will mostly be hidden in normal failure rates.You get to sell a shoddy product and no one is the wiser UNTIL someone like Backblaze abuses the drives and discovers disturbing trends.

The other simple fact you seem to be ignoring is that other drives are subjected to the same stresses and there is a distinct difference in failure rates. No matter what way you want to shift the narrative the point remains that some drives are simply more durable and reliable than others. Using your car example, I don't care if the car reliability is almost identical if I'm driving around on a freshly paved street with no traffic. What happens when I hit that pothole, swerve to avoid another car, hit the gas to get across traffic, or have to use it in extreme temperature? If I'm buying a car, I'm sure as hell not going to buy the one that fails just because I exceed the 'recommend' actions on occasion.

No, they have not. They do not have a controlled test environment - drives are subjected to different mounting conditions, some of which are not just questionable, they are downright in violation of every requirement for drive mounting. The company admits its early chassis revisions suffered problems with vibration, thus it redesigned them. If those designs were bad enough to merit a redesign the data should have been redacted.

- Single screws holding the drive in.
- Rail system using loosely fitting rails.
- Tool-free case designs that don't use any mounting screws.
- Case is bumped or jostled.
- Dust buildup that leads to higher temps.
- Improper fan setup for airflow leading to higher temps.

In fact, a torture test is a far more accurate indicator of real life than a pristine bench test in a pure lab environment. Your very stance argues against laptop torture tests for example because what manufacturer recommends drops, spills, or other abuse to their product?

 

[Kewlx25]

I have several friends or relatives that admin datacenters and the universal rule of thumb is don't purchase Seagate.

 

[Kewlx25]

Seagate aquired Maxtor... that should say something about their reliability. Personally I have never had much luck with Seagate nor Maxtor. Now I only buy WesternDigital and have had virtually no problems.

Remember that 5 1/4" harddrive that Maxtor sold? I had one. eewwwwwww

 

[jimmysmitty]

It was almost universally agreed a long time ago that Seagate's excuse of their drives failing due to "not being designed" for these workloads is rubbish. It doesn't matter what tech they allegedly lacked, competitors' drives of the same tier and pricing turned out to be more reliable, and that's all a buyer needs to know.

Backblaze's testing was great precisely because it wasn't aiming to mask the drives' faults by some artificial "workload intentions" - they took the drives, trashed them with heavy workloads and saw which came out in top. Should we also stop paying attention to SSD reliability benchmarks or the Skylake Prime95 bug or proper cooling because "typical consumer workloads" will not trigger any of these issues?

Using a product beyond its intended scope is what many companies use to void warranties. If you went out and bought a set of Henkle knifes and decided to test their durability by using them to open paint cans that would void the warranty. I know, I am going a bit further but it applies to most any company.

For example, you should never use any of the consumer grade HDDs from WD in a RAID. You can use the Blacks but the Green and Blues will cause the RAID to drop drives, if you use a basic RAID controller or a high end one this will happen. Does that mean WD makes bad drives? Nope. It just means that those drives are meant for consumer applications and not enterprise applications.

Using just one point of data is mostly useless because it only shows in a worse case scenario. Prime95 is actually no longer the best way to test a CPU for stability, Intel has tools that are far better, and the Prime95 bug is only applicable to those who use Prime95 just like this is only applicable to those who decide to use Barracudas instead of Constellations in an enterprise setting. To truly know how these react in a consumer environment you need to test them there as well.

I can say that in all my years of buying HDDs I have never had a Seagate fail on me and I have bought a lot of them. I have also never had a WD fail on me. I am somewhat lucky with PC components.

For the article, the suit will have to prove that there was malicious intent and I would like to know what the guy was using these drives for. External HDDs tend to fail more than internal because people tend to drop them or move them while they are in use, a pretty big no-no for HDDs.

 

[quilciri]

Regardless of the reliability of the drives, I don't particularly trust Seagate as a company for how they handled the 7200.11 firmware issue in 08-09.

Not only did they deny it's existence for several months, but after being confronted with incontrovertible evidence, they didn't recall the 7200.11 drives still sitting on store shelves nor did they offer warranty replacements on drives that had failed but dropped out of warranty in the period while they were denying the issue's existence.

I also had a personal issue with them during this time, I had a 7200.11 drive fail, but mine was still under warranty. I sent it in to them for repair/replaced and they sent me a refurbished drive. That was all fine and good until i discovered the drive they sent me also had the 7200.11 firmware!

Seagate's drives may have comparable reliability now, but I will no longer deal with the company.

 

[spartanmk2]

In 2003 I bought a Dell with a 64gb Seagate HDD, failed after 2 years.
In 2006 I bought a Western Digital 250gb HDD, failed after 5 years.
In 2010 I bought a WD 320gb HDD. Still works.
In 2016 I bought a WD 1TB HDD. Will edit this post in 2020+ with further details.

 

[quilciri]

For example, you should never use any of the consumer grade HDDs from WD in a RAID. You can use the Blacks but the Green and Blues will cause the RAID to drop drives, if you use a basic RAID controller or a high end one this will happen. Does that mean WD makes bad drives? Nope. It just means that those drives are meant for consumer applications and not enterprise applications.

From what I've read, this is because WD added a bit of code to intentionally make the green's and blue's unusable in RAID.

 

[jimmysmitty]

In 2003 I bought a Dell with a 64gb Seagate HDD, failed after 2 years.
In 2006 I bought a Western Digital 250gb HDD, failed after 5 years.
In 2010 I bought a WD 320gb HDD. Still works.
In 2016 I bought a WD 1TB HDD. Will edit this post in 2020+ with further details.

I bought two 120GB Seagates in 2003 that I used for 7 years and then sold when they were 10 years old. I ran full read and write tests on them. The shop I sold them to used them to refurbish older systems and they ran great.

Had two 1TBs I used for 5+ years, currently running two 2 TBs I have been using for 4 years.

For example, you should never use any of the consumer grade HDDs from WD in a RAID. You can use the Blacks but the Green and Blues will cause the RAID to drop drives, if you use a basic RAID controller or a high end one this will happen. Does that mean WD makes bad drives? Nope. It just means that those drives are meant for consumer applications and not enterprise applications.

From what I've read, this is because WD added a bit of code to intentionally make the green's and blue's unusable in RAID.

It is not that. Consumer grade drives from WD such as the Greens and Blues have error correcting built in but does not turn off when connected to a RAID like a WD NAS or Red does so it will correct the errors then the RAID controller will freak out and drop the drive. Had a customer ignore my advice on a build with RAID 5 and used 8 4TB Greens and I said to use Blacks. He wanted to save some money. Brought it back multiple times with the RAID saying one or two bad drives (they were not) and finally we got him to swap to Blacks.

 

[Ubrales]

It was almost universally agreed a long time ago that Seagate's excuse of their drives failing due to "not being designed" for these workloads is rubbish. It doesn't matter what tech they allegedly lacked, competitors' drives of the same tier and pricing turned out to be more reliable, and that's all a buyer needs to know.

Backblaze's testing was great precisely because it wasn't aiming to mask the drives' faults by some artificial "workload intentions" - they took the drives, trashed them with heavy workloads and saw which came out in top. Should we also stop paying attention to SSD reliability benchmarks or the Skylake Prime95 bug or proper cooling because "typical consumer workloads" will not trigger any of these issues?

Using a product beyond its intended scope is what many companies use to void warranties. If you went out and bought a set of Henkle knifes and decided to test their durability by using them to open paint cans that would void the warranty. I know, I am going a bit further but it applies to most any company.

For example, you should never use any of the consumer grade HDDs from WD in a RAID. You can use the Blacks but the Green and Blues will cause the RAID to drop drives, if you use a basic RAID controller or a high end one this will happen. Does that mean WD makes bad drives? Nope. It just means that those drives are meant for consumer applications and not enterprise applications.

Using just one point of data is mostly useless because it only shows in a worse case scenario. Prime95 is actually no longer the best way to test a CPU for stability, Intel has tools that are far better, and the Prime95 bug is only applicable to those who use Prime95 just like this is only applicable to those who decide to use Barracudas instead of Constellations in an enterprise setting. To truly know how these react in a consumer environment you need to test them there as well.

I can say that in all my years of buying HDDs I have never had a Seagate fail on me and I have bought a lot of them. I have also never had a WD fail on me. I am somewhat lucky with PC components.

For the article, the suit will have to prove that there was malicious intent and I would like to know what the guy was using these drives for. External HDDs tend to fail more than internal because people tend to drop them or move them while they are in use, a pretty big no-no for HDDs.

Excellent points!

 

[PaulyAlcorn]

"Nearly all of the 1TB and 1.5TB drives were installed in Storage Pod 1.0 chassis. Yet, these two sizes have very different failure rates."
"Nearly all of the 2TB and 3TB drives were installed in 2.0 chassis. Yet, these two drive sizes have very different failure rates."

Note, there is no failure data provided from them as to the failure rates in Pod 3.0 Chassis. Remember, Pod 3.0 is the first version to actually use a mounting scheme. There is surely data on the failure rates in Pod 3.0, but they have not released it – at least not in a form that denotes which pod suffered failures..

What would it tell you if there was a shockingly lower failure rate in Pod 3.0? Would that point to the Pod as the source of the problem? Of course it would.

However, you are given data in a vacuum without comparative data. As with all carefully culled data – proceed with caution. Look for what is not said.

For instance, (it could be many other things), if the problem lies in the connector being subjected to a weight and vibration load beyond its tolerance, observing the data without comparative data does not indicate if the pod is at fault. If the HGST had a more robust SATA connector that can tolerate the weight load better, good on them, but that does not mean that the Pod design is sound – by their own admission it is not. In the Pod 3.0 blog post they specifically say they have lower failure rates, and higher performance, than with previous Pods. I am not saying it – they are. Where is the Pod 3.0 data?

The company has said in the past that it will utilize a "like" drive to replace a failed drive if possible. If the problem is a poor Pod design, that means the company keeps inserting drives repeatedly into the same flawed system, thus magnifying the failure rate.

The only valid complaint about Backblaze's data is that drives are used beyond the recommended usage. However, abuse tests are nothing new and they're often a more accurate indicator of actual product quality than a minimal or short lab test.

Another reader made the comment that it is akin to testing a knife by opening cans of paint, and I find that to be an accurate comparison. We do not test minivans by driving them around at the bottom of a lake (well, at least, we shouldn’t).

"The other simple fact you seem to be ignoring is that other drives are subjected to the same stresses and there is a distinct difference in failure rates. No matter what way you want to shift the narrative the point remains that some drives are simply more durable and reliable than others.
…..
In fact, a torture test is a far more accurate indicator of real life than a pristine bench test in a pure lab environment. Your very stance argues against laptop torture tests for example because what manufacturer recommends drops, spills, or other abuse to their product?

These are not laptop drives that are subject to mobile use-cases. Laptop drives have additional protections built into them.

I agree that some drives are more reliable than others, but I disagree that this is the manner to characterize those differences – the flaws are in plain sight. These results are not applicable outside of this environment.

Yes, tool-free designs do not use fasteners, however, they have “pins” that extend into the fastener holes, thus securing them. Any drive placed into them is not free-floating, and most (but not all) are not vertical. Even on vertical trays, the drive is in a housing that prevents the weight from being supported by the SATA connector. In any case, the housing and pins support the weight of the drive, not the SATA connector.
Sure, cases are bumped all the time, but that does not mean that the SATA connector is absorbing that blow. That is what the fasnter, pin or housing is for. These drives have NO fastners, no pins, and no housings.

You seem well versed in the Backblaze blog. Have you noticed the post where they mention the correlation between drive failures and power cycles? The only time their drives are power cycled intentionally is when they service drives - but drives with higher cycles have much higher failure rates. Backblaze itself opined that this may be due to something occurring during the maintenance window.

HMmm. Sliding a system in and out where the weight of each of the 45 drives is supported by the SATA connector? If you have experience sliding servers in and out you know there is a jerk at each end of the cycle. A jerk that is absorbed by the SATA connector in this case.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

There is a total absence of a legal argument. The drives were not faulty; they were misapplied and the test environment exploited a very important "feature" of consumer drives.

It's like buying US market electronics and then taking them to Europe and suing GE because they failed. Here you essentially have a piece of electronics that comes with a "switch" for either European or US electrical grids ... you purposely set it to the wrong one and then complain that it blew up. Consumer drives are normally equipped with a feature that protects them in a consumer environment. The presence of this feature, which can be removed with firmware, is what inevitably causes the drives to fail.

Like PSUs, relying on brand names if a fool's errand.... Simply put, saying you will use this or that "brand" because of experience with a specific model is foolish..... we have generations of people relying on their granndpa's allegiance to a truck brand and everyone in that family will forever be buying Fords "Cause Dodge and Chevy are unreliable" ... and then there is the hordes of Chevy and Dodge loyalists you ay the other two are unreliable... all without a hint of data to support their bias.. other than "grandpa had one and it broke".

True or false ... "Corsair makes great PSUs" ? The correct answer is yes, the correct answer is no. Some models are very good, some models are garbage.

True or false ... "The Corsair HX series are great PSUs" ? The correct answer is yes, the correct answer is no. The 750 and 850 models were great PSUs. The 1000 / 1050 model were dogs *by comparison*.

Component manufacturers are in business to make make money. If they weren't good at what they do .... if Seagate was the "most unreliable" as was claimed in the lawsuit", they would be gone. The fact that warranty returns show they have the lowest rate of drives returned, and by a large margin, should show the folly of this statement. The fact is that HD manufacturers, like PSU manufacturers, like car manufacturers compete in several market niches:

a) They all have products designed for different market niches. Corsair has the excellent Axi series and they have the crappy CX series. If you are going to buy the CX because of a review you read or experience you had with the AXi, you're being foolish.

b) Manufacturers innovate .... sometimes they hit home runs, sometimes they strike out.

- If you look at the storagereview.com database, you will find that Seagate made the most reliable drive in the history of hard drives.

- If you look at the storagereview.com database, you will find that Seagate made the least reliable drive in the history of hard drives.

The Seagate 7200.10 series was the most common drive supplied in Infant / Netgear NAS's by a large margin. It was a solid reliable drive. The 7200.11 was a bomb and the 7200.12 was very reliable.

If you look at the actual reliability data on the site linked to above, you will see many manufacturers with low overall warranty returns that also managed to produce some stinkers.

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/920-2/cartes-meres.html

Here we see Mobo Manufacturers stacking up as follows on 2014-04-30:

- Gigabyte 2,02% (contre 1,43%)
- ASROCK 2,27% (contre 2,09%)
- ASUS 2,31% (contre 1,86%)
- MSI 2,60% (contre 1,83%)

Notice the swings over a 6 month period.... should you make decisions based upon that ? But wait ? The Asus Rampage IV Extreme had almost 10% failures (-9,65% ). Over half of the MoBos on the worse performing list for Z77/Z87(10/19) were Asus. Do we base our purchase decision on the ASUS CM Z87-K (1,13%) or the Asus Sabertooth (4,95%)

Look at memory
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/920-4/memoires.html

Look at PSUs
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/920-3/alimentations.html

look at GFX cards
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/920-5/cartes-graphiques.html

The only constant is that all manufacturers have models on top of the list and some models on the bottom of the list.

"Seagate's excuse of their drives failing due to "not being designed" for these workloads is rubbish. It doesn't matter what tech they allegedly lacked, competitors' drives of the same tier and pricing turned out to be more reliable, and that's all a buyer needs to know."

That's all the buyer needs to know if the commentator is a technical Rush Limbaugh

The equivalent argument would be to argue that seat belts in a car are a bad move because a man found in the bottom of a lake with a seat belt on might have got out if he wasn't wearing a seat belt. The data that exists on seat belts is unassailable; seat belts save lives. Every time the scientific evidence is clear and obvious to 99.5% of those educated on the subject, there will be naysayers claiming that their grandfather smoked 3 packs a day and lived till he was 95.

It's a simple thing:

a) Most consumer drives are equipped with a protection feature called "head parking".
b) You can buy the exact same drive, mechanically, without head parking (different firmware).
c) Head parking returns the heads to a parked position between data requests. This protects the drive ina consumer environment subject to vibration.
d) In a typical consumer environment... the heads might be expected to park say 150,000 times, well below their design rating.
e) In a server environment, they might be parked 50,000 times in a month which will of course lead to premature failure.

The most ridiculous thing about the "support" for this Backblaze study is that the very drives that did well in the Backblaze study ... the ones without the protective head parking features ....are ill suited to a consumer. One good bump to your desk could result in the heads crashing the platters. You might as well fault an engine for bad performance after putting the wrong fuel or oil grade in.

The Backblaze study is not faulty because it subjected all drives to the same loads, it's faulty because the very protection features some of the drive were equipped with served to accelerate the failure of those drives.

And ... if we were to ignore reality and accept the Backblaze study ignoring how consumer protection features accelerate wear in a server environment, how can you explain the actual market data with how many drives are actually returned and replaced under warranty ? If Seagate is so unreliable and [insert whatever brand here] is so much better then how in the world have they managed to maintain the lowest rate of failed warranty returns for year after year after year ? Personally, I see no reason to avoid any manufacturer based upon overall brand failures.... I could live with 2 %; last test period we saw:

- Seagate 0,68%
- Western 1,09%
- HGST 1,16%
- Toshiba 1,34%

And none of those numbers would affect my decision making process. But the individual model lines, especially among the 3 and 4 TB drives, those I'd avoid.

- 4,58% WD Red WD60EFRX
- 3,40% Toshiba DT01ACA300
- 2,78% WD SE WD3000F9YZ
- 2,93% WD Green WD40EZRX

Its also interesting that where BB liked the WD drives they tested, as it relates to this case ....WD has 3 of the 4 four most failure prone drives. It is worth noting that things are improving...in the previous period...

- 4,76% WD Black WD4001FAEX
- 4,24% WD Black WD3001FAEX
- 3,83% WD SE WD3000F9YZ

In the latest report, the newer, improved WD Black did better

- 1,18% WD Black WD4003FZEX

 

[jimmysmitty]

There is a total absence of a legal argument. The drives were not faulty; they were misapplied and the test environment exploited a very important "feature" of consumer drives.

It's like buying US market electronics and then taking them to Europe and suing GE because they failed. Here you essentially have a piece of electronics that comes with a "switch" for either European or US electrical grids ... you purposely set it to the wrong one and then complain that it blew up. Consumer drives are normally equipped with a feature that protects them in a consumer environment. The presence of this feature, which can be removed with firmware, is what inevitably causes the drives to fail.

Like PSUs, relying on brand names if a fool's errand.... Simply put, saying you will use this or that "brand" because of experience with a specific model is foolish..... we have generations of people relying on their granndpa's allegiance to a truck brand and everyone in that family will forever be buying Fords "Cause Dodge and Chevy are unreliable" ... and then there is the hordes of Chevy and Dodge loyalists you ay the other two are unreliable... all without a hint of data to support their bias.. other than "grandpa had one and it broke".

True or false ... "Corsair makes great PSUs" ? The correct answer is yes, the correct answer is no. Some models are very good, some models are garbage.

True or false ... "The Corsair HX series are great PSUs" ? The correct answer is yes, the correct answer is no. The 750 and 850 models were great PSUs. The 1000 / 1050 model were dogs *by comparison*.

Component manufacturers are in business to make make money. If they weren't good at what they do .... if Seagate was the "most unreliable" as was claimed in the lawsuit", they would be gone. The fact that warranty returns show they have the lowest rate of drives returned, and by a large margin, should show the folly of this statement. The fact is that HD manufacturers, like PSU manufacturers, like car manufacturers compete in several market niches:

a) They all have products designed for different market niches. Corsair has the excellent Axi series and they have the crappy CX series. If you are going to buy the CX because of a review you read or experience you had with the AXi, you're being foolish.

b) Manufacturers innovate .... sometimes they hit home runs, sometimes they strike out.

- If you look at the storagereview.com database, you will find that Seagate made the most reliable drive in the history of hard drives.

- If you look at the storagereview.com database, you will find that Seagate made the least reliable drive in the history of hard drives.

The Seagate 7200.10 series was the most common drive supplied in Infant / Netgear NAS's by a large margin. It was a solid reliable drive. The 7200.11 was a bomb and the 7200.12 was very reliable.

If you look at the actual reliability data on the site linked to above, you will see many manufacturers with low overall warranty returns that also managed to produce some stinkers.

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/920-2/cartes-meres.html

Here we see Mobo Manufacturers stacking up as follows on 2014-04-30:

- Gigabyte 2,02% (contre 1,43%)
- ASROCK 2,27% (contre 2,09%)
- ASUS 2,31% (contre 1,86%)
- MSI 2,60% (contre 1,83%)

Notice the swings over a 6 month period.... should you make decisions based upon that ? But wait ? The Asus Rampage IV Extreme had almost 10% failures (-9,65% ). Over half of the MoBos on the worse performing list for Z77/Z87(10/19) were Asus. Do we base our purchase decision on the ASUS CM Z87-K (1,13%) or the Asus Sabertooth (4,95%)

Look at memory
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/920-4/memoires.html

Look at PSUs
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/920-3/alimentations.html

look at GFX cards
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/920-5/cartes-graphiques.html

The only constant is that all manufacturers have models on top of the list and some models on the bottom of the list.

"Seagate's excuse of their drives failing due to "not being designed" for these workloads is rubbish. It doesn't matter what tech they allegedly lacked, competitors' drives of the same tier and pricing turned out to be more reliable, and that's all a buyer needs to know."

That's all the buyer needs to know if the commentator is a technical Rush Limbaugh

The equivalent argument would be to argue that seat belts in a car are a bad move because a man found in the bottom of a lake with a seat belt on might have got out if he wasn't wearing a seat belt. The data that exists on seat belts is unassailable; seat belts save lives. Every time the scientific evidence is clear and obvious to 99.5% of those educated on the subject, there will be naysayers claiming that their grandfather smoked 3 packs a day and lived till he was 95.

It's a simple thing:

a) Most consumer drives are equipped with a protection feature called "head parking".
b) You can buy the exact same drive, mechanically, without head parking (different firmware).
c) Head parking returns the heads to a parked position between data requests. This protects the drive ina consumer environment subject to vibration.
d) In a typical consumer environment... the heads might be expected to park say 150,000 times, well below their design rating.
e) In a server environment, they might be parked 50,000 times in a month which will of course lead to premature failure.

The most ridiculous thing about the "support" for this Backblaze study is that the very drives that did well in the Backblaze study ... the ones without the protective head parking features ....are ill suited to a consumer. One good bump to your desk could result in the heads crashing the platters. You might as well fault an engine for bad performance after putting the wrong fuel or oil grade in.

The Backblaze study is not faulty because it subjected all drives to the same loads, it's faulty because the very protection features some of the drive were equipped with served to accelerate the failure of those drives.

And ... if we were to ignore reality and accept the Backblaze study ignoring how consumer protection features accelerate wear in a server environment, how can you explain the actual market data with how many drives are actually returned and replaced under warranty ? If Seagate is so unreliable and [insert whatever brand here] is so much better then how in the world have they managed to maintain the lowest rate of failed warranty returns for year after year after year ? Personally, I see no reason to avoid any manufacturer based upon overall brand failures.... I could live with 2 %; last test period we saw:

- Seagate 0,68%
- Western 1,09%
- HGST 1,16%
- Toshiba 1,34%

And none of those numbers would affect my decision making process. But the individual model lines, especially among the 3 and 4 TB drives, those I'd avoid.

- 4,58% WD Red WD60EFRX
- 3,40% Toshiba DT01ACA300
- 2,78% WD SE WD3000F9YZ
- 2,93% WD Green WD40EZRX

Its also interesting that where BB liked the WD drives they tested, as it relates to this case ....WD has 3 of the 4 four most failure prone drives. It is worth noting that things are improving...in the previous period...

- 4,76% WD Black WD4001FAEX
- 4,24% WD Black WD3001FAEX
- 3,83% WD SE WD3000F9YZ

In the latest report, the newer, improved WD Black did better

- 1,18% WD Black WD4003FZEX

The reports you linked do fail to disclose how many of those products of each sold. The more sold the more possibility of failure. Some are listed at 0% and they have low end cheap brands such as Zotec as having lower failure rates than higher quality brands.

The thing is though these are insanely low numbers. 0-5% is great. Most every car sold today has a recall, meaning it fails making cars have a pretty much 100% failure rate in some way.

 

[firefoxx04]

The guy who posted the statistics on consumer environments and warranty returns, you sir had more quality content in one comment than the actual article had. Toms should consider having you on.

Thats the problem with this article. It lacks real content. The problem is not the suit or how backblaze treats drives, its the poor writing that Toms was willing to post. What a joke.