Toshiba VS WD Blue

[pcmad]

intrested in purchasing new hdd and stuck between these 2 (please note not interested in seagate or ssd) Toshiba P300 3.5" SATA III Desktop HDD/Hard Drive 7200rpm or WD Blue 1TB 3.5" SATA 3 Desktop HDD/Hard Drive 7200rpm
please let me know your experience on both wd blue vs Toshiba i very intrested in lifespan and reliability

[Halcyon]

Both have identical specs so go with the cheapest one. Neither brand is "better" than the other.

[bingo600]

For mechanical (slow storage) disks, i have preferred Toshiba or HGST for a loong time.
And i still have a 3TB P300 that has been running as systemdisk since Oct 2019, and have no issues.

I have begun to use Toshiba N300 (Nas) disks for most of my "slow storage", they're made for 24/7 deployment, and are not much more expensive...
Mostly because my slow storage disks, usually will be running 24/7 ... Aka. installed in servers.
But these days i usually get 4TB+ disks for slow storage, and I think the smallest N300 is 4TB.

I also try to avoid disks made with SMR technology, and go for disks using CMR.
Older SMR drive list
https://www.truenas.com/community/resources/list-of-known-smr-drives.141/

WD
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wd-lists-all-drives-slower-smr-techNOLOGY

Tosh
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/toshiba-hard-drives-smr-list-slower

For 1TB - It seems like both WD-Blue and Tosh-P300 uses SMR technology

For 1TB 24/7 - There seems to only be WD-Red (NAS/CMR)


/Bingo

[DiTBho]

I recently bought qty=6+1 WD Red Pro, 2TB HDD for a new multi node multi service NAS
("new design" compared to what I said here on the forum, made with modern >=2019 parts)

They seem the best from what I can tell you 

I chose WD red pro, also for the excellent SMART support, for which I wrote myself a special monitoring tool.

[LateLesley]

I chose the Toshiba, since they seem to have a better reliability rate over WD drives.

What I usually do, is look at BackBlaze's Drive reliability data. I try and find the models i'm interested in, and see what their data is on the drives. It gives a good idea of % failure rates for different models. Only downside is they don't test all models. For lower capacity drives, you'll probably have to go back a good few years, like 2015 has data on 2TB/3TB/4TB drives, where as the latest year has like 8TB/12TB/14TB/16TB or larger.

https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/resources/hard-drive-test-data

[rdl]

Not knowing what you're going to put it in or how you plan to use it makes it difficult to recommend either of the two disk drives. Personally, for reliability and durability I'd probably go for an SSD of some kind. If you have to settle for some kind of HDD, I'd say a WD Red Pro is a good choice. I wouldn't buy a Blue HDD based on my own limited experiences with them (though I do have some Blue SSDs that are working out very well). Also, SMR drives may be fine for basic consumer use, but I wouldn't buy one.

[Halcyon]

Also, SMR drives may be fine for basic consumer use, but I wouldn't buy one.

Neither of the 1TB drives the OP mentioned uses SMR. But yes, I wouldn't personally use any SMR drives either.

[magic]

I have "accidentally" bought an SMR disk and it turned out OK for its purpose, which is storing a growing set of read-only files.

The increased random write throughput (for the first XX GB) is actually an improvement over CMR. That being said, I would still prefer CMR on the basis of simpler firmware and fewer things to go wrong.


My least problematic disks were Seagates, most problematic were WDs (one simply head crashed for no reason whatsoever). Never owned Toshiba, one Hitachi was OK.

The next guy will tell you the opposite, such threads are mostly pointless

[DiTBho]

one simply head crashed for no reason whatsoever

heads don't crash for no reason, heads may crash for
- overtemperature
- vibrations
- shock

the first two degrades thin layer of special grease on the plates, which acts as a bearing
the last one happens with a collision with a momentum that exceeds the elastic capacity of the grease-bearing

[DiTBho]

I wouldn't personally use any SMR drives either.

PMR 4ever 

[Infraviolet]

I have a suspicion that thesedays the Toshiba and WD drives are infact made on the same production line? Storage manufacturers now all seem to own each other, WD, Toshiba's storage, SanDisk, PNY, Seagate... I think for HDD's they are all the same company behind the scenes? Or was that for Flash storage?

[nightfire]

From personal experience with both of the drives, I would go in this size category for Toshiba. Attention: The 2TB models had some samples with SMR, so look closely what you are buying.
In that era, the <2TB drives were basically heritage of a Hitachi design, so very solid, but in the performance version a bit hoarse sounding when moving the heads. (I have several of 2TB Toshiba in my homebuilt NAS system).
At work I had several 1TB WD Blue as boot disk for some PCs- not bad, but nothing to write home about. Later versions really looked and felt "cost-maximized", so i really would not recommend them in a todays system build.

[SiliconWizard]

I chose the Toshiba, since they seem to have a better reliability rate over WD drives.

What I usually do, is look at BackBlaze's Drive reliability data. I try and find the models i'm interested in, and see what their data is on the drives. It gives a good idea of % failure rates for different models. Only downside is they don't test all models. For lower capacity drives, you'll probably have to go back a good few years, like 2015 has data on 2TB/3TB/4TB drives, where as the latest year has like 8TB/12TB/14TB/16TB or larger.

https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/resources/hard-drive-test-data

From these figures - looked at the latest - Segate appears to have the worst failure rates of all, which tends to back up my impression and unfortunately, after all these years, still seems to hold true. I can't say direct experience, as I haven't bought a single Seagate drive in ages (and the last I bought went poop.)

I haven't seen any really significant difference between WD and Toshiba at first sight, which is also backed up by my experience.

[Halcyon]

The next guy will tell you the opposite, such threads are mostly pointless

Indeed. It's kind of like people who swear by a particular brand of fuel (Shell, BP, Caltex/Ampol etc...). It means nothing. It all comes from the same place and is all subject to the same quality standards in their respective countries.

Sure there are different manufacturers of hard disk drives, but the quality is pretty much standard across the board (with few exceptions). Buy any reputable brand, with the specs and support you require in your country, and you'll be fine. If a failure was to occur, ensure you have the resources near you to have it swapped out quickly and easily.

[DiTBho]

Sure there are different manufacturers of hard disk drives, but the quality is pretty much standard across the board

My opion? Only the QA is different: how they test, how much money they invest in testing products, for how long, and with how many staff and technology.

[wraper]

The next guy will tell you the opposite, such threads are mostly pointless

Indeed. It's kind of like people who swear by a particular brand of fuel (Shell, BP, Caltex/Ampol etc...). It means nothing. It all comes from the same place and is all subject to the same quality standards in their respective countries.

Sure there are different manufacturers of hard disk drives, but the quality is pretty much standard across the board (with few exceptions). Buy any reputable brand, with the specs and support you require in your country, and you'll be fine. If a failure was to occur, ensure you have the resources near you to have it swapped out quickly and easily.

Seagate produced a lot of utter shit sometime around 2010 (7200.11, DiamondMax 22, ES2 and 7200.12 series) that died like cockroaches. Other manufacturers had bad models too but none even close to that extent. In more recent years according to Backblaze statistics Seagate usually stands out in percentage of failures too.

[Halcyon]

The next guy will tell you the opposite, such threads are mostly pointless

Indeed. It's kind of like people who swear by a particular brand of fuel (Shell, BP, Caltex/Ampol etc...). It means nothing. It all comes from the same place and is all subject to the same quality standards in their respective countries.

Sure there are different manufacturers of hard disk drives, but the quality is pretty much standard across the board (with few exceptions). Buy any reputable brand, with the specs and support you require in your country, and you'll be fine. If a failure was to occur, ensure you have the resources near you to have it swapped out quickly and easily.

Seagate produced a lot of utter shit sometime around 2010 (7200.11, DiamondMax 22, ES2 and 7200.12 series) that died like cockroaches. Other manufacturers had bad models too but none even close to that extent. In more recent years according to Backblaze statistics Seagate usually stands out in percentage of failures too.

Indeed, which is why I mentioned "with few exceptions".

There are always going to be certain models or manufacturers that are known to be bad for various reasons. Look at Intel and their bad batch of dodgy SSD firmware. But does that make Intel a bad choice for SSDs? Absolutely not.

[wraper]

Indeed, which is why I mentioned "with few exceptions".

There are only 3 HDD manufacturers left though and one of them had more problems for more than a decade.

[Halcyon]

Indeed, which is why I mentioned "with few exceptions".

There are only 3 HDD manufacturers left though and one of them had more problems for more than a decade.

My point is, a handful of issues isn't enough for me to distrust an entire brand. Seagate make some very good hard drives. Should we consider AMD a terrible brand because of their issues with some of their models?

[nightfire]

The question also is how a brand/company handles issues with their products- do they honor some warranty and try to proactively address problems, or do they try to keep things on a "hush-hush" and sweep issues under a carpet? WD actually is having some issues with Sandisk SSDs, and still sells them in bulk...

[rsjsouza]

Indeed, which is why I mentioned "with few exceptions".

There are only 3 HDD manufacturers left though and one of them had more problems for more than a decade.

Indeed. 33% of the market is hardly an exception. Seagate used to be my go-to manufacturer for 20~30 years before the 2010s flawed HDD series.

[Halcyon]

The question also is how a brand/company handles issues with their products- do they honor some warranty and try to proactively address problems, or do they try to keep things on a "hush-hush" and sweep issues under a carpet? WD actually is having some issues with Sandisk SSDs, and still sells them in bulk...

I think product quality (however you want to quantify that) and warranty/out-of-warranty replacements are two entirely different things. The latter largely depends where you live.

I've mentioned consumer laws (mainly from an Australian perspective) several times on this forum but it's worth repeating here. In Australia, if you sell a product that is not of acceptable quality or experiences a major failure, then the consumer is entitled to a replacement or full refund. This is irrespective of the terms or length of manufacturer supplied warranty and manufacturers can't exclude those protections through some carefully worded clause (that's illegal).

This law applies regardless of where the manufacturer is based in the world.

Of course "acceptable quality" is judged on a case by case basis here. e.g.: If you buy a $10 toaster from China and it fails in 12 months, then it's probably "acceptable". If you buy a $1000 vacuum cleaner and it fails after three or four years, I'd suggest that it's not of acceptable quality at all.

[nightfire]

This is only one part of that story. A Product has as a property the designed usage life- depending on which product we talk about, this can be a coffee machine where the manufacturer says that they guarantee 15.000 cups (Once bought such one from Bosch for my employer), or it is a thing where you can assume XY hours of operation, like in a vacuum cleaner before it es expected to break.
And here I am okay with a certain design for tear and wear and such.

In the example I mentioned, the Sandisk SSDs are of crappy manufacture with non-fitting parts, where the solder points are subjected therefore to too much stress and break.
Austrian company Attingo discovered the root cause: https://www.attingo.at/ssd/sandisk/
https://www.zdnet.com/article/check-your-ssds-what-to-know-about-the-sandiskwestern-digital-data-loss-disaster/

So there is a difference between a product where I can see that it is obviously of low quality, like a 10$ chinese coffee machine, or a company that tries to remedy hardware issues that originate in bad design and manufacturing with firmware updates...
In my opinion, if you were REALLY invested in your product, as a company it is your responsibility to get at least the affected products out of your inventory BEFORE selling them to unsuspecting customers and junk them or rework them.
But offloading inventory with known issues to customers in big sales is nothing I like.

[wraper]

In my opinion, if you were REALLY invested in your product, as a company it is your responsibility to get at least the affected products out of your inventory BEFORE selling them to unsuspecting customers and junk them or rework them.
But offloading inventory with known issues to customers in big sales is nothing I like.

That's some bold claim. They appear to have some issues, however it's not clear what is actual percentage of failures. Secondly it's not a safety issue. Thirdly, it's not easy to get the products back once they have got into retail.

[DavidAlfa]

Why no Seagate?
Seagate EXO line seems to be pretty good, TDMR heads, 2.5million MTBF, 256MB cache, filled with helium...

Havinng to choose between these two, I'd go with WD.

For mechanical (slow storage) disks, i have preferred Toshiba or HGST for a loong time.

In 7 years working in repairing computers all day, I replaced so much more Toshibas/HGST (They're the same thing) than seagate or wd, but could simply be that those were more commonly used.
My ancient Seagate 40, 80 and 160GB HDDs were ok when replaced by the now 12-year old 2TB WD green, no issues either.