Seagate vs Western digital? Im thinking of buying an external 500gb hard drive (portable) but im not sure which is better? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
629558
I have had two LaCie portable HDs go out on me. One was brand new. Lacie won't respond.
629559
I just had a Western Digital 2TB My Book fail miserably (miserably!!! Dead!) after two months. I've never had any other drive fail (and I've used much smaller capacity WD external drives w/out issue in the past). But i'm now a Seagate (1TB Freeagent) user because I won't trust the larger WD's any longer. Once bitten! ;) Since the failure, many of my colleagues have admitted the same type of failure from their WD's and are using Seagates with good results. If you search online, you'll see very mixed reviews with similar negative views of the Seagates, but I can only speak from my own very frustrating experience with my WD. I just had a Western Digital 2TB My Book fail miserably (miserably!!! Dead!) after two months. I've never had any other drive fail (and I've used much smaller capacity WD external drives w/out issue in the past). But i'm now a Seagate (1TB Freeagent) user because I won't trust the larger WD's any longer. Once bitten! ;) Since the failure, many of my colleagues have admitted the same type of failure from their WD's and are using Seagates with good results. If you search online, you'll see very mixed reviews with similar negative views of the Seagates, but I can only speak from my own very... » Read More I just had a Western Digital 2TB My Book fail miserably (miserably!!! Dead!) after two months. I've never had any other drive fail (and I've used much smaller capacity WD external drives w/out issue in the past). But i'm now a Seagate (1TB Freeagent) user because I won't trust the larger WD's any longer. Once bitten! ;) Since the failure, many of my colleagues have admitted the same type of failure from their WD's and are using Seagates with good results. If you search online, you'll see very mixed reviews with similar negative views of the Seagates, but I can only speak from my own very frustrating experience with my WD. « Show Less
629560
Seagate vs WD. I've used them both over the years, along with Maxtor. For myself and some people Seagate=good and WD=bad, and for others, just the opposite. What's interesting in these comments is that the usage habits are not known, i.e., how intensely is the hard drive being accessed (applications, pro versus consumer, etc), and, in what environment is the hard drive being used (air quality, room temperature, humidity, appropriate case cooling, physical vibration, etc.). Those are the useful comparatives that would help in these reviews. Otherwise, it's just comparing one's FOTD (flavor of the day). Seagate vs WD. I've used them both over the years, along with Maxtor. For myself and some people Seagate=good and WD=bad, and for others, just the opposite. What's interesting in these comments is that the usage habits are not known, i.e., how intensely is the hard drive being accessed (applications, pro versus consumer, etc), and, in what environment is the hard drive being used (air quality, room temperature, humidity, appropriate case cooling, physical vibration, etc.). Those are the useful comparatives that would help in these reviews. Otherwise, it's just comparing one's FOTD (flavor... » Read More Seagate vs WD. I've used them both over the years, along with Maxtor. For myself and some people Seagate=good and WD=bad, and for others, just the opposite. What's interesting in these comments is that the usage habits are not known, i.e., how intensely is the hard drive being accessed (applications, pro versus consumer, etc), and, in what environment is the hard drive being used (air quality, room temperature, humidity, appropriate case cooling, physical vibration, etc.). Those are the useful comparatives that would help in these reviews. Otherwise, it's just comparing one's FOTD (flavor of the day). « Show Less
629561
I've just had my 4th large (>1TB) WD drive failure in less than 2 years. I've had more drives fail in the last 2 years than in the last 20. All of them large WD drives. I'm done with WD. All these failures were with drives less than 3 years old. Just absolutely unacceptable.
629562
Agreed superrabbit, my Passport died after 8 months. Thank god I have backed up everything to my other Seagate drive that I use as a secondary backup to my mac. I am looking to get either Iomega or Seagate 500G drive soon for my primary backup unit.
1102436
Sounds like a warrant problem. If I read the Western Digital warranty policy correctly, it states that the Western Digital Blue hard drives come with a 2 year warranty. Check with Amazon regarding their return/ exchange policy.
94953
External drives are better in quality and durability. I have both and prefer the external.
799929
for everyone this data will be of interest: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/these are big samples, 2014 data, and the models of HGST 4TB drives are outperforming others in terms of reliability as well as price/perf
482507
i agree seagate is not even worth looking at now just taking up shelf space. i have older maxtor, WD and other drives and still running good. I got a seagate from an expensive company that sells decent computers but after 1st power up of a 1tb single disk plugged it in and drive shut down and stopped working. i got a WD for almost the same price.
889570
This is a new drive. However, a recent report indicates that HGST and Western Digital have significantly better reliability than Seagate.
1339935
@Book WitchI should think that it is. You may be able to use Western Digital's software included on the drive to aid you in your backup. If, however, you do not want to use their software, preferring to use another backup program, it is easy to delete the WD software (the easiest way to delete all of it is to merely reformat the drive in NTFS format).
1969631
I would buy a large external drive. The is much faster than standard hard drives
258045
I have found that if I unplugged the hard drive from my computer, and then plug it back in, the files appear on the hard drive again. So now I just leave it unpugged all of the time and only hook it up to my computer when I need to copy something over. I also called Western Digital back last year and they were willing to take it back and send me a new one, so if it's still under warranty you may want to try that.
708152
It's been a while since I ordered this, but I *think* it was the bare drive. Can't be sure, but on another note, I wouldn't recommend Seagate. I own a computer repair shop, and we see more Seagate drives crash than any of the other brands combined. Go with a Western Digital!
482504
That may be true, but I've noticed that Seagate gives you a five-year warranty while Western Digital gives you only one. As long as you don't keep your ONLY copy of something important on the drive, I would go with the Seagate knowing that you'll have at least five years of replacements in case it fails.
259039
I have an older Seagate External HD (1.5TB) and a few 3TB Western Digital HD. I have them hooked to my Window 7 desktop through the Anker USB 3.0 hub; so far I have no issues. When not accessing data on my external HD, the disks do spin down gracefully and go to "sleep"...so far I have not had any issues with this device...hope this helps...
93126
I found that the drives are several years old. I bought a bunch of them (10+) it was a mistake. I tried to get warranty from WD and they did not honor the 5 year warranty and in fact when I returned the drive, they claimed it wasn't manufactured by them. I ended up returning the drive to the seller for a replacement. Don't count on the 5 year warranty, better yet buy it from another manufacturer. I've had too many failures of WD drives in the last year or two. I have switched to Seagate.
1128747
In general , I prefer WD over Seagate. Personally, I have had more Seagate failures . The price is also very fair for the WD blue.
1940546
Hybrid drives are slower. 8GB of Flash, what are you going to do with that. I've tried many Seagates. Dual drive is better but pure SSD why not these days
697990
Thank you for contacting us. I am not sure so I looked at other posts about this. It seems they are very close in performance but this stood out: "The other thing to keep in mind when choosing a drive is that Western Digital?s enterprise drives are meant to be constantly in use, 24/7. The consumer drives are rated for 300,000 load/unload cycles, whereas the enterprise drives are are rated for double that at 600,000 load/unload cycles. This means the enterprise drive is guaranteed to have a longer use-life than a consumer drive under identical conditions." Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.
1824654
I'm not sure why QNAP would suggest Seagate drives, their failure rate is much higher than Western Digital or Hitachi. Just google for it, you'll see what I mean.