I really like these statistics and they give a really great insight into HDD longevity and durability.. 'but' (and it is a little one in the grand scheme of things) to the common 'home' user that turns their computer on daily or 3 times a week.. what I would like to know is which HDD's handle prolonged 'hot and cold cycles' the best. If I bought 2 HGST and put them in basic software mirror and only turned my 'home' PC on sporadically, how long could I realistically trust them not to lose my family photo/video collection? Perhaps they could arrange something when they next decommission some of the superior drives, stick them on a HDD shelf that powers up occasionally, writes a few GB and powers off.. and see if useful life drops off a cliff or they really are bullet proof.

>to be honest their data is not much helpful, because most all their drive is enterprise-drive... not consumer drive you wut? backblaze is well known for using consumer drives rather than enterprise.

12TB drives are not consumer grade and that's what they are migrating to based on this report. Consumer grade are more like 2 and 3TB, maybe 4 at the most. Manufacturer warranty periods are not determined by testing because the products are released before that much test data is acquired. They don't have three and four year product cycles. They are more like one year, maximum. The warranty periods are mostly extrapolations based on previous products and hopes that they can maintain those reliability levels even at higher densities.

Gomez Addams:

12TB drives are not consumer grade and that's what they are migrating to based on this report. Consumer grade are more like 2 and 3TB, maybe 4 at the most. Manufacturer warranty periods are not determined by testing because the products are released before that much test data is acquired. They don't have three and four year product cycles. They are more like one year, maximum. The warranty periods are mostly extrapolations based on previous products and hopes that they can maintain those reliability levels even at higher densities.

You know that the Seagate Drive are mix of Consumer/Enterprise grade drive DM are Consumer, DX and NM are Enterprise You don't see any WDC, HGST and Toshiba Consumer grade drive as it prove just how bad there are in real world test in fact WDC is all ready pulling it self of Backblaze

Damn... those HGST drives still pulling ahead Anyway what happened with Western Digital phasing out HGST brand? They came to their senses it seems...

Noisiv:

Damn... those HGST drives still pulling ahead Anyway what happened with Western Digital phasing out HGST brand? They came to their senses it seems...

That maybe so but you also be pay out nose for them too for HGST brand and is also being phasing out under WDC Ultrastar line. Beware the 4tb that are being listed on internet they are now all used (Renewed) drive and no longer being made some are refurbished as for new one will set you back $230 and there only in consumer grade not enterprise model and be very beware of 3rd party seller.

Gomez Addams:

12TB drives are not consumer grade and that's what they are migrating to based on this report. Consumer grade are more like 2 and 3TB, maybe 4 at the most.

12TB are "consumer grade", you can find them everywhere. I feel like you are mistaking "likely to be in a pre-built computer" and "consumer grade" definitions. As yes, pre-built computers generally have 1TB HDDs in them, MAYBE 2TB, and can usually be customized towards 4TB for the masses, but that is not the definition of "consumer grade" Seagate has their Exos Enterprise HDDs and their Barracuda consumer-grade HDDs (when it comes to 8TB+ HDDs) Barracudas go to 14TB Now, i don't see any consumer-grade 12TB HDDs in this list, i will grant you that, but 12TB, by itself, is not a definition of "consumer grade" or "not consumer grade"

Aura89:

12TB are "consumer grade", you can find them everywhere. Now, i don't see any consumer-grade 12TB HDDs in this list, i will grant you that, but 12TB, by itself, is not a definition of "consumer grade" or "not consumer grade"

How are you defining as consumer grade? Because doing a quick newegg search, 10TB seems to be the point at which I would say drives aren't consumer-grade: https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100167523 4814 601192404 600376738 601322010&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=PRICE&PageSize=36 None of those drives really seems particularly consumer-friendly, because they either: * Use SAS instead of SATA * Marketed/built for things like surveillance, NAS, or enterprise. One of the key features of enterprise hardware is 24/7 reliability. * Are somewhat expensive for the average consumer to consider (especially once you get to 12TB) These drives are kinda the equivalent of Xeons or Quadros - the average consumer has access to them and can use them as though they were generic consumer-grade products without noticing, but that doesn't mean they're consumer-grade.

Hgst Deskstar is consumer Hgst Ultrastar is enteprise

schmidtbag:

How are you defining as consumer grade? Because doing a quick newegg search, 10TB seems to be the point at which I would say drives aren't consumer-grade: https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100167523 4814 601192404 600376738 601322010&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=PRICE&PageSize=36 None of those drives really seems particularly consumer-friendly, because they either: * Use SAS instead of SATA * Marketed/built for things like surveillance, NAS, or enterprise. One of the key features of enterprise hardware is 24/7 reliability. * Are somewhat expensive for the average consumer to consider (especially once you get to 12TB) These drives are kinda the equivalent of Xeons or Quadros - the average consumer has access to them and can use them as though they were generic consumer-grade products without noticing, but that doesn't mean they're consumer-grade.

I feel like that was already answered in the post your quoted. I, you, anyone here does not define consumer grade. The companies do. Expensive does not define consumer grade either. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822172024&ignorebbr=1 That is a Barracuda, as stated above, in my previous post. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16822184763 14TB version too. Sure, you could say "but that's a Barracuda Pro". Ok, fine, do we want to say pro consumer rated then? Create a whole new listing? https://www.ntm.com.vn/content_ntm/upload/Image/O-cung-seagate-datasheet-Nhat-thien-minh.jpg Barracuda and Barracuda Pro are the same, the only difference is seagate deciding to differentiate between their cheap, lower storage capacity drives and their more expensive, higher storage capacity drives. This does not change that they are both still consumer grade. https://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/hdd/barracuda/

slyphnier:

afaik backblaze never really using WDC rather than durability issue, most likely they getting better price with seagate and hitachi back to 2015 report : https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-for-q2-2015/ WDC failure rate 1.5% (=45drives) compared to 3.0% (=17,8k seagate drives) so imo there nothing about real-world-test in context brand comparisson

3TB where bad by both Seagate and WDC

Most my data is on 4TB Seagate drives... monkaS.