If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
Notes for future OT posters:
1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.
2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)
3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.
4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
Consensus is that modern HDD's from reputable manufacturers have approximately equal low failure rates, especially after the first year. You should still back up important data (low != 0), but the differences failure rates in consumer space is small enough to not really sway purchasing decisions.
Their methodology probably doesn't extrapolate well because they're testing the drives in what amounts to a NAS and the WD reds (which did well) are NAS drives, and therefore designed to operate 24/7 with vibration and nongreat cooling, whereas the Seagate Barracudas are just absolutely not NAS drives (unlike, say, the Seagate NAS drives). So, it's not really surprising they had a much higher failure rate, but it'd also be incorrect to conclude that you should avoid them. If I'm building a rig for work, internet use, or gaming {1}, then my HDD's going to be in a well-cooled, non-vibrating environment, and not used in use 24/7, so I'm essentially throwing away 15% price premium for the WD Red's (or 60% for the HGST Deskstar's). OTOH, if you're backing up your data locally on a NAS, pay the gorram premium.
{1} Again, though, SSD's are increasingly likely the way to go. You can get a sufficiently good 256 GB SSD for about the price of a 3 GB HDD and if you're never going to use more than 250 GB (which, I'm guessing is at least 80% of people reading this who don't already know whether an SSD or HDD better meets their needs), you're essentially getting substantially better performance (up to an order of magnitude), more reliability, and less noise for free. I harp on this because SSD's come in a 2.5-inch form factor and the more the standard storage option is SSD, the more cases won't have a whole bunch of room taken up with 3.5-inch bays I don't use. More importantly, there'll finally be budget laptops that I don't have to immediately take apart, clone the OS onto an SSD, reassemble, and figure out what to do with the HDD it came with just to get a decent experience. Gah! SSD's are the right choice for most people and there's externalities when they get HDD's instead because "more gigabytes".
I am sorry, the link shows hard data which disproves that statement and not in a gentle way, either.
Didn't your first sentence state that all failure rates are "approximately equal"? Make up your mind.
Assumption not in evidence. I've seen a LOT of computers totally taken ove... (read more)