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I bought 4 of these yesterday. 3 were fine. One was dead with a grinding noise. These are part of a new generation that just came out.

My question is from a general perspective. Although my experience is anecdotal, am I skating too close to the bleeding edge? These 4TB cost $120. The last generation is still available with 3TB for $10 less. Do you think I would be increasing the likely reliability of the drives by buying 3TB drives for backup, since there is less density, or does the fact that this is a newer (and presumably more reliable) generation outweigh that, and so on balance it makes little difference?

Second, would sticking with the regular large rectangular WD boxes Increase reliability significantly? I'd hate to do that since they are so much bigger. Thanks

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    Besides giving the data freely available such as Tetsujin's Backblaze info, this question cannot be meaningfully answered without resorting to opinion.
    – music2myear
    Commented Jan 27, 2017 at 0:37

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MTTF is just that... Mean Time To Failure.
One will die in a week, another will last 20 years, most will last roughly the claimed MTTF.
You never know which you'll get.

The only people who publish real-world results are Backblaze, who blog their test results a couple of times a year, based on their own backup server analysis. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/?s=hard+drive+stats will find some of the recent ones.

Historically, [I've been watching their posts for a few years now], some WD drives have had incredible fail-rates, prompting me to never dream of buying one ever again.

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  • So overall do you believe another brand would be recommended for the smaller form factor?
    – user47383
    Commented Jan 18, 2017 at 11:51
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    I can only post my [or Backblaze's] findings & my personal opinion on them. I'm not going to recommend a drive or manufacturer.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jan 18, 2017 at 11:53
  • HGST hard drives are quite reliable. They used to be from Hitachi. and back then Hitachi manufactured high reliable hard disks. Older segate hard disks have a poor reputation, but newer ones are okay. Western Digital is in okay range for average users.Anyway if you want high reliability, better purchase multiple hard drives, and install them in RAID6.
    – Don Dilanga
    Commented Dec 8, 2018 at 13:07
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It really depends on what exact HDD is inside that case. Generally, WD drives are very reliable and usually when I have returns for them is due to physical damage (transport accidents). However, if the drive inside is a WD green, of course it is statistically more likely to fail compared to a WD red or black.

You should stick with the current model, since no model of that size is know to have excessive failures, but you should find out the exact drives inside the cases.

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  • I thought the green models were low power requirement not cheap low quality.
    – adammendoza
    Commented May 12, 2019 at 21:50
  • They are not low quality, but they are not premium like blacks and REs either. By such a logic I could consider all segeates until 2016 as low quality.
    – Overmind
    Commented May 13, 2019 at 5:23
  • What I mean is that I thought the meaning of green models is that they sacrifice performance for energy efficiency. I would have thought this would make them less prone to failure as typically pushing speed or capacity puts more stress on the drive. That's why I'm surprised that in terms of reliability they are not be better. It's good to know though. Regardless of expectation or advertising. Thanks for the information.
    – adammendoza
    Commented May 14, 2019 at 5:04
  • There are some other factors involved. Greens are mostly used as occasional backups, not as main drives. Being lower speeds, you don't need to use super-high-quality platings like are needed for black/RE. That does not mean the drives are not good for the intended purpose but I would not use RAID 0 out of greens as intensive use will wear them down faster compared to others. As backups I use greens for years and I'm satisifed with them; there is no need for anything else. the only difference is I don't used boxed/external ones but either connect them directly on SATA or via USB3+ adapter.
    – Overmind
    Commented May 14, 2019 at 5:14
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i have checked WD 4TB Mypassport, it uses WD Blue and on arrival there was a small noise moving it around, makes me scared as hell :( i have other drivers which i have lugged around quite a bit ... 4TB WD Mypassport (uses WD Blue) using it for last 2 days only so lets see 2TB Transcend Jetdrive (Uses a WD Blue 2TB) using it for last 2 yrs 1TB Seagate backup plus 1TB usin git for last 4 years and Samsung 1TB spinpoint (mfg by Seagate) using for last 4 yrs also

so both brands have worked fine for me this is my first 4tb external HDD so im scared and worried as hell ... 4Tb n higher have more failure rate ...

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