Question seagate firecuda vs western digital black drive - reliability?

[andrepartthree]

Hi guys sorry it's me back yet again with another question .. though there are some sales on newegg if anyone's interested? I guess that depends on if they're good drives or not

So the seagate firecuda is selling for $110 for the 8 TB version, 3.5 sata drive, 7200 rpm

https://www.newegg.com/seagate-firecuda-st8000dx001-8tb/p/N82E16822185036?sdtid=16570832&Item=N82E16822185036&nm_mc=AFC-RAN-COM&cm_mmc=afc-ran-com-_-Slickdeals+LLC&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=afc-ran-com-_-Slickdeals+LLC&utm_source=afc-Slickdeals+LLC&AFFID=208164&AFFNAME=Slickdeals+LLC&ACRID=1&ASUBID=61dac7b0d81011edb81a76a70f53cfb20INT&ASID=&ranMID=44583&ranEAID=208164&ranSiteID=lw9MynSeamY-_io0KKqE72tKqpIZpTvktw

but the Western Digital Black Performance hard drive, 4 TB, also 7200 rpm , is selling for $130

https://www.newegg.com/black-wd4005fzbx-4tb/p/234-000G-000W6?quicklink=true

Both have a 5 year warranty though I can't see myself going through the trouble of mailing the hard drive in to them to be replaced I mention it only because apparently the longer the warranty the more likely it is to be a higher quality drive or so I'm told by my online research


so at first glance you'd think why not get the 8 TB seagate drive for less money ? (also the "ssd" part of the seagate doesn't really matter to me I just see it as a gimmick , I'm more interested in the storage space )



But my online research is turning up conflicting results with some people saying " Eh just get whatever drive is the cheapest, it's a lottery and any drive can be a bad one doesn't matter who the manufacturer is or what type of drive"... others are saying " seagate sucks that's why they're so cheap don't get their drives ! " .. with still others saying " Western Digital Black drives are great they rarely fail ! "



To further complicate matters I have a 5 and a half year old " Seagate SkyHawk 4TB Surveillance Internal Hard Drive HDD – model ST2000XV008 " which I've been using as a desktop drive for file storage for the past 4 years with no issues at all (yep I know it's supposed to be a Surveillance drive, we ditched Direct TV and oddly enough that was the recommended drive for storing TV shows to watch on and I thought why not put this unused desktop drive to use?) ... though from what I've read online it's risky in that if it's not a drive made specifically for desktop use apparently the error correction rate is not as good and there's a higher chance you'll lose your data from it.



I should also point out I keep an exact copy of the exact same files on two sata 3.5 drives installed into my desktop because I'm paranoid and also keep them on a third drive not normally connected to the PC (pop the drive into a sata dock, connect to the PC and copy any new files onto it) so I have an "offline backup" in case the entire PC gets fried, evil hacker locks up all my drives and so forth. I already purchased a Seagate Exos drive for file storage (I know I know it's another Surveillance drive but at the price newegg was offering it at the time I just couldn't pass it up.. and then newegg goes ahead and lists the firecuda 8 TB for $110 AFTER I purchased this one )


https://www.newegg.com/p/1Z4-002P-024F9?Item=1Z4-002P-024F9



to replace the above mentioned seagate 4 TB drive , and the other drive (seagate firecuda or western digital black) drive would replace the other 3.5 drive in my system so I have two bigger hard drives with the old hard drives becoming the new "offline file backup storage" type drives. The seagate is still working well for me but I figure at 7 years old I better replace it before something bad happens



So I guess what I'm wondering is .. do you guys think I should get the 8 TB firecuda drive or the 4 TB western digital drive? Any thoughts as to which would be more reliable and more likely to last as the years go by?



As always my heartfelt thanks to anyone who reads this and replies

 

[Lafong]

Are you buying drives because you are just about out of free space?

Or because your drives have some age on them and you are worried?

Or another reason?

Not sure you can significantly tilt the odds in your favor through anecdotes found online.

 

[andrepartthree]

Are you buying drives because you are just about out of free space?

Or because your drives have some age on them and you are worried?

Or another reason?

Not sure you can significantly tilt the odds in your favor through anecdotes found online.

Wow that was a really quick reply thank you so much Lafong

Age of the seahawk drive is the primary reason to replace it .. I figure at 7 years I'm starting to take my chances on the drive going bad (maybe I'm wrong?)

As far as the free space thing.. yep starting to become an issue ... I should clarify my earlier comment a bit further, before the install of the 8 TB seagate exos drive I already had a 4 TB skyhawk seagate drive and a 2 TB Western Digital Red Plus drive (which is another funny story , amazon shipped me the WD red plus by mistake and I got a super kind amazon rep on the phone who said " You know what ? Just keep it and we'll refund you - free hard drive ! )... the 2 TB drive has my most important files but not all the files that are on the 4 TB drive (the 4 TB drive still has 1.23 TB free drive space but it would be nice to be able to keep an exact copy of all my files on two drives again because I'm paranoid )

I've only had it installed for a few days but the seagate exos 8 TB drive is humming along (literally - I can definitely hear the noise it makes but I was warned it was a "noisy drive" so it doesn't bother me... to me the sounds are quiet enough to not really be that annoying at all and they're very occasional) nicely and I snagged it due to getting 8 TB of space for $115 ....

I would love to get the seagate firecuda for another 8 TB of space to replace the 2 TB WD Red Plus drive, the only thing stopping me is these scary stories about lack of reliability I'm hearing although from what you're saying it sounds like I should take the "seagate sucks!" stories I'm hearing online with a grain of salt? It's just that I hear so many people saying " WD Black is the greatest get that instead it's more reliable ! " that I wonder if it's the "safer" option.. although from what you're saying it sounds like that's also anecdotal and I should take that with a grain of salt too

 

[Lafong]

I have a WD Green 3 TB drive that will be 9 years old in 3 months.

It's my primary backup drive; no OS; it is 78% full.

53,000 hours.

I've been tempted at times to replace it due to age alone, but haven't.

My thinking is that it is a known good drive right now with zero defects shown in SMART or in WD Dashboard tool, so ride with it.

Any replacement is not a known good drive. It may or may not be. A new drive could last 20 years or 20 minutes. As could my existing drive. All speculation and not necessarily an improved situation.

I'm at least as paranoid about data loss as you are. I have 3 or 4 backups of most files.

I've also been telling myself for 3 or 4 years "I'm never going to buy another spinning drive".....

4 TB capacity SSDs have fallen from over $350 to $220 in the last year or so, so if my 3 TB failed tomorrow, I'd probably spring for a 4 TB SSD replacement, not HDD.

If you in fact are banging up against a capacity ceiling, then obviously you can't wait....but I'd be hard pressed to tell you that drive A is more reliable than drive B. If you place a lot of faith in anecdotes or anonymous comments online or specification sheets, then maybe you have another opinion.

 

[andrepartthree]

thanks for that Lafong .. you know that's something I didn't even stop to think about, if it isn't broken why fix it ? ... did some online research which basically seems to say " If your drive is that old replace it ! " ... but that's a great point the new drive could be worse ... I looked up the warranty for the seagate skyhawk, 3 years and it's still working fine 5 and a half years later ..

I did look up customer reviews for the WD Black drive I was considering.. now granted there are a LOT more reviews of it at the 4 TB model I was considering so that increases the number of bad reviews you're going to see due to the bigger "pool" of reviews I imagine but still I was shocked at all the negative "it doesn't work" reviews for what's supposed to be a good hard drive.

And what I've seen online absolutely matches what you are describing too, the SSD is better in terms of being more reliable.. the problem is I've got so many files and will probably continue to add so many files to it in the future that I need the storage space .... so right now the "old school" 3.5 drives are the best bang for the buck though I totally get what you're saying as far as SSD drives being better and how the prices keep falling. It's more than possible as the years go by that I will regret my 3.5 drive purchase (the seagate exos) as SSD prices continue to fall

Something I didn't mention in my original post I use the 3.5 drives for file storage only, any programs go onto my crucial MX500 1 TB ssd drive... eventually I'll probably pop a pci 4.0 speed m2 drive into my motherboard as the "new" C drive when the price for a really good 2 TB version of that drive drops to something crazy cheap (I can wait in the meantime perfectly happy with my crucial boot/programs ssd drive ) and then .. I dunno maybe use the crucial drive for operating system backups or something similar.

Thanks again for the insight .. 9 years on a WD Green drive, man that's a satisfying long time for a drive to last