The Most (and Least) Reliable Hard Drive Brands

Lifehacker by Melanie Pinola

Videogyus Note: G-Technology uses Hitachi drives, the top rated drives for reliability. G-tech does NOT use the least reliable Seagate drives. Lacie on the other hand, is owned by Seagate and only uses the least reliable Seagate drives. Videoguys recommends G-Tech exernal hard drives for all your digital content creation, photographic and video editing needs. They combine tremndous performance with rock solid reliability and the best warranty in the business.

Backblaze uses 25,000 hard drives for its online backup service. This has provided some interesting information, such as how long hard drives are likely to last and the difference in reliability between enterprise and consumer drives. Today, Backblaze has spilled the beans on which drive manufacturers are the most reliable.

The comparison is between Seagate, Hitachi, and Western Digital. (The company has a few Toshiba and Samsung drives, but not enough for analysis.) Backblaze says they buy the least expensive drives that perform well, based on stress tests and a few weeks in production. P

As with the previous analyses, Backblaze measured the reliability of the drives by looking at the annual failure rate, the average number of failures while running a drive for one year. Here is a pretty telling chart:P

The company has also broken it down by drive model on their blog. The Hitachi GST Deskstar (7K2000, 5K3000, and 7K3000) had the lowest annual failure rates, from 0.9% to 1.1%. Meanwhile, the Seagate Barracuda Green had a whopping 120% annual failure rate (an average age of 0.8 years). While those were warranty replacement drives—likely refurbished ones already used—the other Seagate drives had failure rates between 3.8% and 25.4%. read more...

You can read the full article on Blackblaze blog here: What Hard Drive Should I Buy?

New Low Prices on G-Technology Thunderbolt & USB3 Storage Solutions! Save 5%

Now through January 31, 2014 - Save 5% Off Any
G-Technology Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 Storage Solution
when you enter coupon GTECH5

Plus, We'll also include a FREE 2m Thunderbolt Cable ($29.95 value)
with any Thunderbolt Solution purchase!