Why are 3TB hdd less reliable than 2TB hdd

[liwee]

Hi,

I have a question which has been puzzling me. Looking at newegg, the feedback for almost all 3 TB is worse than its 2 TB counterparts.

For instance, last 6 months feedback

1. ST2000DM001 2TB
54% - 12% - 7% - 6& - 21%

2. ST3000DM001 3TB
43% - 14% - 9% - 13% - 21%

3. WD RED 2TB
46% - 9% - 12% - 10% - 23%

4. WD RED 3TB
41% - 10% - 9% - 14% - 25%


Is there a particular reason for this? 3TB technology is not mature enough as compared to 2TB?

Thanks


2 TB List
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007603%20600003269%20600003300&IsNodeId=1&name=2TB

3 TB List
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007603%20600361769%20600083978&IsNodeId=1&name=3TB

 

[4745454b]

Did you read the neg reviews to see why people didn't like them? I know there is a "2TB" limit so some people might have had issues getting it to work right.

Other things that can change drive reliabilty are number of platters used and firmware. The more platters used then the more points of failure you have. So at best a 3TB drive will have one more platter then a 2TB. Though not always.

 

[Supermuncher85]

As 4745454b said they aren't necessarily less reliable, but if you have to support older computers, you will have a lot less headaches using 2TB harddrives.

Then of course there was for a long time the price issue where HDD prices where just insane after the floods in Thailand so the cost/performance ratio between SSD/HDD really started to inch together. At the end of the day a lot of people realized they don't need an huge amount of storage on their computers anymore thanks to cloud storage and streaming services.

Saying that, I've switched to 4 tb drives for storage now without issues. As long as you don't use the 2+tb drives as boot drives, chances are they will work just fine even on older machines.

 

[liwee]

Did you read the neg reviews to see why people didn't like them? I know there is a "2TB" limit so some people might have had issues getting it to work right.

Other things that can change drive reliabilty are number of platters used and firmware. The more platters used then the more points of failure you have. So at best a 3TB drive will have one more platter then a 2TB. Though not always.

Didnt read all the neg reviews, just had a quick glance through ... seems to be mix of cases of sudden death after a period of usage and DOA

More platter = more points of failure seems like a plausible reason. For reference, I also looked at the last 6 months feed back for ST1000DM003 1TB
65% 12% 6% 3% 15%

From a price / GB point of view, 3 TB is slighter better but 2 TB is more than sufficient storage for my needs. Think I will stick with 2 TB for now. Thanks for all the replies