Seagate IronWolf Pro NAS. Capacity: 4 – 18TB Interface: SATA 6 Gb/s Cache: Up to 256MB. When it comes to hard drives, Seagate and Western Digital are among the best-selling brands on the market today. However, at the end of the day, we still need to choose between the two. In 1980, Seagate developed the first 5.25-inch hard disk drive (HDD). In the 1980s, they became the main suppliers of microcomputers. Today, Seagate and its competitor Western Digital dominate the hard disk market. And their main products include Desktop HDD, Laptop HDD, Enterprise HDD, Archive HDD, SSD and so on. When it comes to hard drives, Seagate and Western Digital are among the best-selling brands on the market today. However, at the end of the day, we still need to choose between the two. Now, to be honest the clear answer to this question is depend.
Backblaze has released its data set for the full year 2018 and there are some surprises in it this time around. Annual failure rates for drives have fallen sharply in comparison with previous years as smaller-capacity HDDs have been replaced by higher-capacity counterparts. This isn't automatically what you'd expect.
Seagate External Hard Drive Reviews
The Annualized Failure Rate (AFR) has fallen every year since 2016, from 1.95 percent to 1.25 percent. That's a significant decline. Premiere pro 2017. Free blackjack poker. Importantly, while this trend doesn't hold true for every drive family, there are multiple HDDs that show lower AFRs in 2018 than in 2016. Seagate's 10TB drive family has been particularly good, with a 0.33 percent AFR for 2018, improving on the already-low 0.89 percent AFR for 2017.
For those of you wanting an AFR comparison that stretches back farther than 2016, Backblaze has provided that data as well. The following is the AFR rating for HDDs from 4/20/2013 through 12/31/2018 for all drives still active as of 12/31/2018.
HGST drives continue to impress as far as overall AFR rates and this isn't the first year that's been true. Overall, these are some of the most reliable drives over time that Backblaze has tested. https://torrent-ratemy.mystrikingly.com/blog/www-rarlab-com-download-html-free. The complete AFR rate over all five years is 1.68 percent — higher than the 2018 data alone, but still within a very reasonable window.
The Caveats
I've written a version of this for every Backblaze post we do, so here's the latest. Backblaze's data set is not perfect. The company uses consumer drives in a decidedly enterprise context, which doesn't remotely reflect the usage patterns these drives would receive if they were being used by an ordinary customer. It constructs and maintains its own storage pods and has iterated on these designs over time, often with improvements intended to reduce vibration or noise. This could also theoretically have an impact on drive reliability. Rar archive software. As the video below illustrates, hard drives don't like it when you scream at them. Always make certain to communicate with your spinning media in a thoughtful, calm voice.
Adobe premiere elements portable. The reason we continue to discuss and feature Backblaze's data set is the same reason we refer to the Steam Hardware Survey. We know the data sets are imperfect — the SHS's list of video cards doesn't include multiple AMD GPUs like Vega 56 or 64 and only added the RX 570 last month. The total number of 'Other' GPUs listed is 10.92 percent — more than enough to meaningfully impact the AMD versus Nvidia split listed at the top level of the page. But while these data sets are imperfect, they're also the best window we have into an important question. HDD manufacturers do not release the kind of reliability information that HDD consumers often want and the handful of third-party studies on the topic frequently don't identify drive vendors or models.
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SMR where you least expect it
View more storiesSeagate Corporate Communications lead Greg Belloni reached out to us today in the wake of our earlier coverage of SMR disks showing up unannounced and in unexpected places. Free software to edit pictures in windows 7.
Belloni confirmed that Seagate is using SMR technology in some desktop hard drives but stressed that the company is not 'submarining' SMR disks into NAS (Network Attached Storage) channels.
Seagate confirms that we do not utilize Shingled Magnetic Recording technology (SMR) in any IronWolf or IronWolf Pro drives—purpose-built for NAS solutions. Seagate always recommends to use the right drive for the right application.
We spoke to Belloni at some length on the topic. He did not object to allegations of SMR disks showing up unexpectedly in Seagate's desktop channels but wanted to make very clear that Seagate has no SMR IronWolf or IronWolf Pro drives and no plans to release any.
Seagate only produces NAS drives that are CMR. We do not have any SMR drives in our IronWolf and IronWolf Pro drives, which are NAS solutions. As Jason mentioned in his email to you, we don't recommend SMR for NAS [.] I was just hoping that we could correct that, to make it a little more clear that Seagate is not producing NAS drives with SMR technology. [.] Seagate will always recommend the correct drive technology for the right application.
There is a bit of wiggle room, here. When we pushed Belloni on the issue of SMR drives in Seagate's desktop channel, he told us that Seagate didn't feel the need to 'break it out' in that channel, since the company believes that SMR's low and bursty performance profile is appropriate for desktop use.
AdvertisementThis sounds almost identical to Western Digital's justification for surprising NAS users with SMR drives in the Red line—a statement that the slower disks are 'appropriate for the application.' Belloni acknowledged the similarity but reiterated Seagate's position on IronWolf and NAS disks—and pointed out that both its Exos and Archive SMR disks have always been clearly marked as such.
We do not agree with Seagate that SMR drives are appropriate in desktop builds—or that it's OK to sneak them in there without the company's usual warnings about the technology's performance profile.
Seagate Vs Western Digital External
Screenshot on windows 10 computer. With that said, we are happy to see Seagate make serious, on-the-record statements about keeping its entire NAS drive lineup SMR-free.
