The most reliable hard drives in 2015, according to Backblaze

One day Seagate is facing a class action lawsuit, the next day they're #1. I thought for sure it would be WD.

I still wouldn't trust Seagate, I had the 3TB external one and that failed in a 2 year period as well. I have hitachi's too and those are probably like 10 years old and still going strong.

My theory is all hard drives will fail and it's a matter of when, each is a time bomb. Some just have shorter fuses than others.

I Still agree with most of you guys, I would only buy WD drives, but I only prefer their High end models. I still don't trust Seagate.

TheZeeMan said:

Lol they do all of their drives in colors. The green ones are the environment friendly ones. Actually this is new...I'm almost positive its the green ones now:



I also found their new disclaimer:



These are the exact drives I'm using in it: Amazon.com: WD AV-GP 2 TB AV Video Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA II, 64 MB Cache - WD20EURS: Electronics

not sure if there relation or not
but for one green drive is intended for low power (green power)
WD make it to park-head after 8secs idling, which some people find it rather not good (you can disable it with WDidle)
whether that often park-head causing early wear or not, we cant be sure

the one you bought are AV (audio video) series, rather than normal green drive
but i believe the different most likely just firmware that tuned for AV, while parts wise (hardware) is same to normal green drives

@davidhk
for desktop drive, u want at least BLUE, for faster performance (7200rpm)

but for me, if money not issue/consideration, pick BLACK instead BLUE
longer warranty (5years vs 2years) might not help much, as when hdd fail we lose our data anyway and WD warrranty not cover it
but based my experience, BLACK series seems using better parts compared to BLUE/GREEN series
so far i dont have any issue with BLACK HDD except it a bit warmer

or if you intend for storage purpose (NAS), pick RED series, there is RED PRO if u need better quality one
(RED PRO is replacing WD RE [sata] enterprise series imo)
RED drive specification-wise similar to green drive
but wd claims its ok for 24/7 usage and its been tested for NAS environment also longer warranty (3years)

while i am not sure RED - GREEN drive is not just about firmware+label different
but based review so far, seems RED drive more reliable than GREEN...
i havent hear many failure in RED drive

but again none HDD fail-prove ... more over traditional hdd have/use moving parts
so always backup important data
and for me, replace HDD after 27000hours (3years) of usage

@slyphnier,

I still have no idea what the heck is blue or black.

I have a 1TB WD Passport Ultra.
Is that blue or black ?
I know, it is a cheap model.
Or have I totally misunderstood this whole thread ?

slyphnier said:

not sure if there relation or not
but for one green drive is intended for low power (green power)
WD make it to park-head after 8secs idling, which some people find it rather not good (you can disable it with WDidle)
whether that often park-head causing early wear or not, we cant be sure

the one you bought are AV (audio video) series, rather than normal green drive
but i believe the different most likely just firmware that tuned for AV, while parts wise (hardware) is same to normal green drives

Correct, at the time I bought the storage array, I need 8 of them and WD green were the cheapest. As I work with audio/video I need all the storage. The raid controller I have actually keeps the drives active so I'm not sure if that's why they died, but nevertheless they fall under a 3 yr warranty period.

davidhk said:

@slyphnier,

I still have no idea what the heck is blue or black.

I have a 1TB WD Passport Ultra.
Is that blue or black ?
I know, it is a cheap model.
Or have I totally misunderstood this whole thread ?

LOL No worries! I believe the passport uses the 2.5" blue drive but I'm not sure...it should have a 3 yr warranty? As mentioned, the black series are the top of the line with a 5 year warranty. I now buy hard drives based on warranties. For external drives, I recently went with a Toshiba as they offer a 3 yr warranty while Seagate offers 1 and WD offers 2 years on certain drives.

davidhk said:

@slyphnier,

I still have no idea what the heck is blue or black.

I have a 1TB WD Passport Ultra.
Is that blue or black ?
I know, it is a cheap model.
Or have I totally misunderstood this whole thread ?

BLACK-BLUE-GREEN-RED-PURPLE is just series do differentiate their internal hdd product
you can read more on their web Hard Drives, Network Drives, Media Players | Western Digital (WD)

for their external hdd model, i think mostly using GREEN drive, especially back years ago before RED series come out
EDIT: quick look on internet, passport ultra seems using BLUE drives

you can check what hdd used in your external hdd using hdd-smart-tools like crystaldiskinfo i think
and match the model-code listed to

I would say it's their green ones, I have a storage array I put together that has 8 of them of in it and 3 failed within the past 2 years.

Some not all of them. I still have a 500GB and 2TB one from 2010 and 2014.

This makes me laugh as I remember days when hard disks often failed. Even telatively poor one by modern standars are far more reliable than some years ago.

Any 'old boy' knows to make image backups regularly to protect against hdd failure!

Remember the HGST Deathstar? Now that is what I call one of the baddest Hard Drives I ever seen.