If your drive fails, Western Digital makes it a nightmare to get a warranty replacement. Every conceivable obstacle is used to make you give up. Seagate, on the other hand, goes out of their way to make their warranty process painless. Also some (maybe all?) Seagate drives include free data recovery under their warranty. The data that they recover will be placed on a drive and shipped to you. That drive is in addition to them replacing your failed drive. And you get to keep both drives. Western Digital drives cost a bit less. If you never have an issue with the drive (and you probably will not have any issues), then go with them. But you are rolling the dice. If you need to open a warranty claim, their site delivers error messages, their phone support (which takes a long time to reach someone and to navigate their phone-button ecosystem)... their phone support personnel will also tell you that their systems are having issues and cannot create an RMA, followed by you calling a dozen times for a month or more and finally getting an RMA, followed by them not shipping you a replacement drive for a month or more. And to add insult to injury, Western Digital offers a Convenience Fee service. For $25, they will expedite replacing your failed drive. "Convenience"? They expect you to pay them $25 to honor their contract. If they can expedite your replacement for $25, then why can't they do so without the $25 fee? How does that $25 make them work harder or more efficiently? They should have their act together and simply replace qualified drives, and not drag their feet if you do not want to pay them to honor their warranty. All of this cannot be by accident. It is by design. They make good drives, and that is where it ends.
Thanks for detailed info! I'll pin your comment, so more people can see that. But to tell the truth, that wasn't an issue in Ukraine, as for both drives warranty was provided by local stores. And RMA process relies on the seller, not the manufacturer (most of the times). That's why I haven't mentioned this aspect in the video. Thank you for filling the gaps!
@@DoggyDaddy2009 When I had a Seagate drive go bad, I was easily able to reach a support person. They gave me an RMA number, as well as a pre-paid shipping label. So it cost me zero to ship them the failed drive, and they charged nothing to ship me back my replacement drive. Also, Seagate offers cross-shipping. As long as you give them a credit card where they can put through an authorization (not a charge -- just a reserve on your card that they can turn into a charge if you never send them the failed drive), then with that authorization on your credit card, they do not wait to receive your failed drive before they ship you your replacement drive. And unlike Western Digital, they charge no fee. And they also provided free data recovery, which was part of the warranty. Ten days ago, I had another Western Digital drive fail. It was the replacement drive that they had sent me when I had my original drive failure. So their replacement drive failed. Reaching Western Digital was still a headache with their phone system, with press this and press that and everything geared to keep you from reaching a live person. But once I figured out which phone choices to press, someone answered in 30 seconds. Figuring out which phone buttons to press took me 3 calls. Each one dragged on, because you are forced to listen to blah, blah, blah that has nothing to do with the reason you are calling. It took them longer than it should have, to pull up my information, even though they have it all, especially since they sent me the drive that failed. Eventually, they gave me an RMA number and a shipping label. But unlike Seagate, the Western Digital shipping label was not pre-paid. So it cost me $24 to ship it from NJ to CA. Also, they offered no data recovery service. It took 1 week for the failed drive to reach them. Knowing that they drag their feet and screw things up, I called them to confirm that they have the failed drive. I gave them both my RMA number and my incident number (which they e-mailed to me). Yet, they told me they have no record of either. Argh! They asked me for the tracking number. I gave that to them, and they claimed that they have the drive. Now what would have happened if I did not have the tracking number? It seems that my drive would be deemed as never received by them. This has to be intentional. Western Digital must be using that tactic to have excuses to not replace thousands of drives. There are undoubtedly thousands of people that will rely on their RMA number and incident number, and not have a tracking number. Western Digital knows that, and so they pull the "We have no record of your incident", unless you have a shipper's tracking number as evidence that they received your shipment. They can't deny the shipment when the shipping company has a record of the shipment. Now I am hoping that they do not lose the drive, or come up with more BS. Let's see how long they drag their feet to finally slap a shipping label on a drive and send it to me.
Never had a drive fail other than Seagate. I didn't even bother sending it back because people said that they did send theirs back and the new one failed during break in also. This was 15 years ago.@@NoEgg4u
I hope Western Digital is watching. I have used their drives for years without issues. I am upgrading capacity and just bought 2 Seagate specifically because of this comment. Thank you for sharing.
@@sleddy01 If you want excellent pricing on either Western Digital or Seagate drives (even a few Toshiba drives), then check out Server Part Deals. Filter the SATA drives by re-certified (or it might be refurbished?). I own dozens of them. They look and work like brand new drives. No extra noise, or anything else. You cannot tell the difference. I have no idea what is entailed in the "refurbishing" process, or from where the drives are sourced. I just know that they seem identical, in every way, to new drives. They come with a two year warranty, from Tech On Tech (that is the seller). I did have a drive failure. I called them up, and they e-mailed me a shipping label. On the day that they received my return, they shipped me my replacement. It was as smooth as it could be. They are in Florida. I am elsewhere in the USA. I am mentioning this, because they charged no sale's tax. However, I know someone in Florida who was charged sale's tax. So it is my assumption that they charge sale's tax only for addresses in Florida. On top of having the lowest prices I have ever seen, by far, you save on the taxes, and also free shipping. If you live outside of the USA, there will likely be other fees. If you buy in quantity, they will drop another $5 off each drive (perhaps more, if you purchase 50 or 100 drives). Right now, they have 18TB drives for $169.69.
The internal drive inside the WD has a native USB port soldered onto the PCB,, so it's useless if you want to open it up to use inside a laptop/PC or Playstation, for instance. The Seagate has a SATA internal drive with a separate SATA to USB controller board.
Thanks for the info! Pinned Your comment. I knew, that WDs 2.5" external drives are not shuckable, and it's really good to know Seagates are different. One more selling point for Seagate.
True, but i have 2 wd 4tb drives and 3 1tb-5tb seagate drives, but only the seagate drives have failed. so while i can and have repurposed the seagate drives, I'd much rather have the more reliable wd drives that I don't have to repurpose because they still work.
Chapters are still not working for my channel, so here are the time codes: 00:00 - Into 01:05 - Options and prices 01:29 - Bundled software 02:23 - What's in the box 03:23 - Size and design 05:24 - Benchmarks 07:42 - 4K video editing test P.S. Sorry for low voice audio level at 05:28.
Is the seagate 5 TB more reliable than the Western Digital elements in the long term because I see a lot of recertified on sale on this model. ( Elements ) Thanks
If You have an iPad Pro with usb-c or iPad iPhone with ios 13+ and lightning to usb adapter - file transfer will be possible. If You plan on using the drive with lightning-usb adapter it's better to pick one with power input, as the portable hdd may not have enough power from lightning port. And in order to move files both ways portable drive has to be formatted in APFS, FAT or exFAT. iOS 15+ will let you read files from NTFS formatted drive (default for Windows), but writing files to the drive will be prohibited.
thanks for the comparison! i found the WD very noisy and returned it. can you say anything about the noise level of the seagate? i own an older 4gb version and it is absolutely silent.
Thanks for stopping by 😉 Both drives are quiet imo (though, WD starts are just a bit more noticeable compared to Seagate). No change in loudness compared to eariler models I used. Maybe they've sent you the defective unit?
Hm, it worked properly and didn't sound "broken". The spinning sound was noticable tho, like a small fan. I've just ordered the Seagate 5GB and gonna check that one out as soon as it arrives. Maybe it has something to do with the size, 5GB being louder than 4GB?
No excessive clicks or grinding sounds? I mean, the sound of the drive starting, spinning and the head parking, etc. are definitely there, but not to the point to bother that much. At least comparing to some 3.5" Toshiba drives, that are way too loud. I didn't find any noticeable difference in terms of noise between older 1Tb WD my passport and the newer one mentioned in the video. Let me know, if Seagate is less noisy. Would be one more thing to prefer Seagate in future.
@@NickBorodenko I have received my "Seagate Expansion" 2,5" 5GB portable HDD by now. Its spinning sound is noticable, but only in a quiet room. Thus, it is louder than the 4GB version, which is almost absolutely silent, but it is by far not as "fanny" (the white noise the spinning discs generate) as the 5GB WD. I'm gonna stick with Seagate. :)
WD seems to be getting more consumer complaints. In my case both work fine. And they are really close to each other in terms of performance. My advice - pick whichever is priced better. P.S. Sry for not answering in time. As I am situated in Kharkiv - we are caught in the middle of war actions.
@@NickBorodenko I have both and I use Mac, both are fine never had any issues. If price is the same I'll go for WD because its more compact and stronger built
You can never say for sure, which exact drive will be inside. But considering the size and price - most likely SMR drive inside rather than CMR. It is actually not that critical if you plan on using this drive mainly for backups. For performance it's better to go with SSDs or CMR professional HDDs in RAID.
@@NickBorodenko I checked further and apparently all these drives are SMR. What happens is the transfer rates become very very slow when the drive fills up above 50% or 66% of capacity. Maybe you could test again, but with a few TB of data to make it realistic?
I have around 600 Gb free on WD. Tested speeds using type-c cable. Empty drive showed ~108 mb write and ~113 mb read speads. With 600 Gb free space the speeds are: ~82 mb write and ~111 mb read. That equals about 25% loss in write speed.
@@NickBorodenko Thx cool. Maybe this would be worth a video, looking at the drive performance in depth. Or questions like the drive needing idle time to re-organize the shingled recording, and not really being 100% portable. What happens when it's almost full, etc.🙂
A very good thorough test! I wonder if Seagate & WD should put some air vents in those plastic cases? Especially on their high capacity 4 and 5 tb portable drives.
Thank you for the comment! 2.5" drives don't heat up as much as 3.5". I assume air vents are not added to keep the size small (3.5" external HDD enclosures are that big mainly because of ventilation).
I have both, I use the WD for 4K movies and the Seagate for ps5. Both work perfectly but I prefer the WD for being smaller and has a nicer feel to it. With that said, I've had both WD and seagate drives in the past, 2tb and both still work perfectly, from 2010.
@@calle4273 My 2tb seagate gave out after 2 years of minimal use. Bought it in 2021, warranty expired in March, and drive failed in Nov. So that's barely 2.5 years of usage. Such a disappointment.
Generally, they are pretty similar in terms of reliability. I do not own any seagate drives for 8+ years, but I have WD and Toshiba drives 10+ years old. My first 2.5" portable drives from WD and Toshiba are around 6 years old and are running with no issues (I still use them for additional backups). Unless You run into manufacturing defects or physical drive damage, the drives mentioned in video should last many years. In any case it's better to have multiple backups of important files. In terms of warranty WD offers 3 years and Seagate - 1 year.
I live In India And we get two options One from Seagate One Touch And other one is WD passport so reading speed will be constant with both right or should I go for WD?
Seagate OneTouch, if I remember correctly, is a 'premium' option for Seagate portable drives. It may be as fast or even a bit faster than WD in benchmarks, but that's a difference You won't notice in real life. OneTouch also features metal enclosure (with overall better design) and 4 month of Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan. In my opinion, if that are important features for You - consider Seagate, if not - just look for a better priced option.
I had a brand new Western Digital fail 33 days after receiving it. The RMA is not settled after 2 months. I had to fight with them only to get sent a slower refurbished drive. Still waiting for the correct speed drive but don't expect them to ever send it. All I got was a phone call saying they would send a correct drive but no drive.
It's possible for any hard drive to experience this issue. Unsafe ejections, excessive movement while plugged in, and other factors can cause bad blocks to appear more quickly. This is actually what happened with my wife's Seagate external HDD. If you've noticed bad sectors, it's typically an indication that the drive is nearing failure. As a precaution, it's a good idea to back up your data and avoid using the drive for anything important. And, as always, it's best to keep backups of your data.
I was searching for the comparison video for these 2 HDD's (WD & Seagate). This is the best one I'll recommend to any one. Thank you for the review. Plz Keep up the good work.............👏
@@NickBorodenko I have One Touch 5tb on the way and once I'm getting it, I will format it to NTFS. I don't own a game console or a Mac, so exFAT is kinda pointless for me. I've always regarded exFAT as a flash drive or a memory card format, so i keep all of my disks as NTFS and removable storage media as exFAT. I also beleive that data recovery from exFAT would be harder in case of disk failure.
Yes, exFAT is far more vulnerable to data corruption compared to NTFS, as exFAT does not support journaling. Should you need to use your drive with mac at any point - they do read NTFS drives out of the box and write capabilities can be added through 3rd party driver (Paragon/Tuxera/etc.). P.S. Congrats on your purchase 🎉
I use the WD drive as extra storage for my ps4 and it works perfectly fine. I happened to get it during the black friday sale back in 2021 and I don't have problems with it. Starting it up there's a tiny noise (which I assume is the fan inside) but that's the least of my worries. I'm thinking about getting the seagate hard drive for my pc since I've been playing pc games recently.
Thank you for sharing! For larger modern games I would suggest picking SSD over HDD, as this will make the load times much faster. By the way, there's no fan inside, it is the sound of drive spinning.
I intended no offense in the previous reply. My apologies if that sounded harsh. In most cases that noise is a pretty good indication of drive health. If you start hearing unusual sounds - it may mean that the drive is about to fail soon.
@@NickBorodenko No you're fine. You didn't come off as harsh at all. I just assumed that usually electronics have fans in them and now I know it's not the case for all of them. So if I hear any unusual sounds, I kinda wonder if I can transfer my storage somewhere safely.
Well, data rescue option is still there, that's why I mentioned it. You're definitely right about people skipping that service because of the sensitive data. Yeah, as all of these drives have more or less same speeds, reliability is crucial. Alas, there's not enough statistics (like for 3.5" drives from Backblaze) to exactly tell, which drive is preferable. And manufacturers can change drives used inside whenever they want.
Hi! Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, my bad: recorded that part with another mic in another room with worse acoustics. Understood that only when had watched the uploaded video on RUclips myself 😅
Been using Seagate 1tb, 2tb and 4tb for many years and never failed ..i travel often with them and they can handle a bump or two...to me they are reliable...in the end you never know...out of the thousands from the production line you might have bought a bad apple.... 🤷🏻 I still got drives dating back 10 years ago all working fine...in my past use i found WD less reliable
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! Generally Seagate drives seem to be more reliable than WDs. However, I'm currently experiencing issues with my relatively new Seagate drive, while my older WDs are still functioning well. As you mentioned, it's hard to predict the reliability of these drives, so it's essential to back up important data.
I have both Seagate & wd 5tb. My Seagate is much faster. Around 130 MBPS on the benchs. Also these drives run HOT. So I put a USB fan on them for longer Backups.
True. Heard many positive reviews about these drives from people using them LaCie's rugged series provide additional protection. General ones are stylish and feature usb c/thunderbolt port. But those drives from LaCie cost 40-60$ more than WD/Seagate. And in this video I wanted to show the cheapest options available.
It's like toyota making toyota and Lexus. Seagate drives are crap, but my first external drive: a 500gb Lacie Lego brick that I bought in 2008 still works.
Thank you. Was wondering whether to retry WD as for the first time ever I had a Seagate 8tb die on me. I have 5tb Seagates that still run fine (PC and Series X). I think I will stick with Seagate as over the decades every failure 2.5 and 3.5 has been WD They seem to have an autodestruct date built in?! Hope all is well for you in Ukraine, keep up the fight
Thank you for your comment and concerns about WD and Seagate hard drives. Both brands have their pros and cons. Recently, WD has been facing some financial issues. This may lead to some noticeable discounts and support/service issues on the other hand. It seems that generally WDs aren't as reliable as Seagates, however I've had a rather new Seagate die on me recently while WDs are going strong - so that's a question of luck. Thank you for your kind words!
If your drive fails, Western Digital makes it a nightmare to get a warranty replacement.
Every conceivable obstacle is used to make you give up.
Seagate, on the other hand, goes out of their way to make their warranty process painless.
Also some (maybe all?) Seagate drives include free data recovery under their warranty.
The data that they recover will be placed on a drive and shipped to you. That drive is in addition to them replacing your failed drive. And you get to keep both drives.
Western Digital drives cost a bit less. If you never have an issue with the drive (and you probably will not have any issues), then go with them. But you are rolling the dice. If you need to open a warranty claim, their site delivers error messages, their phone support (which takes a long time to reach someone and to navigate their phone-button ecosystem)... their phone support personnel will also tell you that their systems are having issues and cannot create an RMA, followed by you calling a dozen times for a month or more and finally getting an RMA, followed by them not shipping you a replacement drive for a month or more.
And to add insult to injury, Western Digital offers a Convenience Fee service.
For $25, they will expedite replacing your failed drive.
"Convenience"?
They expect you to pay them $25 to honor their contract. If they can expedite your replacement for $25, then why can't they do so without the $25 fee? How does that $25 make them work harder or more efficiently?
They should have their act together and simply replace qualified drives, and not drag their feet if you do not want to pay them to honor their warranty.
All of this cannot be by accident. It is by design.
They make good drives, and that is where it ends.
Thanks for detailed info! I'll pin your comment, so more people can see that.
But to tell the truth, that wasn't an issue in Ukraine, as for both drives warranty was provided by local stores. And RMA process relies on the seller, not the manufacturer (most of the times).
That's why I haven't mentioned this aspect in the video. Thank you for filling the gaps!
@@DoggyDaddy2009 When I had a Seagate drive go bad, I was easily able to reach a support person. They gave me an RMA number, as well as a pre-paid shipping label.
So it cost me zero to ship them the failed drive, and they charged nothing to ship me back my replacement drive.
Also, Seagate offers cross-shipping.
As long as you give them a credit card where they can put through an authorization (not a charge -- just a reserve on your card that they can turn into a charge if you never send them the failed drive), then with that authorization on your credit card, they do not wait to receive your failed drive before they ship you your replacement drive. And unlike Western Digital, they charge no fee.
And they also provided free data recovery, which was part of the warranty.
Ten days ago, I had another Western Digital drive fail. It was the replacement drive that they had sent me when I had my original drive failure. So their replacement drive failed.
Reaching Western Digital was still a headache with their phone system, with press this and press that and everything geared to keep you from reaching a live person.
But once I figured out which phone choices to press, someone answered in 30 seconds.
Figuring out which phone buttons to press took me 3 calls. Each one dragged on, because you are forced to listen to blah, blah, blah that has nothing to do with the reason you are calling.
It took them longer than it should have, to pull up my information, even though they have it all, especially since they sent me the drive that failed.
Eventually, they gave me an RMA number and a shipping label. But unlike Seagate, the Western Digital shipping label was not pre-paid. So it cost me $24 to ship it from NJ to CA.
Also, they offered no data recovery service.
It took 1 week for the failed drive to reach them. Knowing that they drag their feet and screw things up, I called them to confirm that they have the failed drive.
I gave them both my RMA number and my incident number (which they e-mailed to me). Yet, they told me they have no record of either. Argh!
They asked me for the tracking number. I gave that to them, and they claimed that they have the drive.
Now what would have happened if I did not have the tracking number?
It seems that my drive would be deemed as never received by them.
This has to be intentional. Western Digital must be using that tactic to have excuses to not replace thousands of drives. There are undoubtedly thousands of people that will rely on their RMA number and incident number, and not have a tracking number. Western Digital knows that, and so they pull the "We have no record of your incident", unless you have a shipper's tracking number as evidence that they received your shipment.
They can't deny the shipment when the shipping company has a record of the shipment.
Now I am hoping that they do not lose the drive, or come up with more BS.
Let's see how long they drag their feet to finally slap a shipping label on a drive and send it to me.
Never had a drive fail other than Seagate. I didn't even bother sending it back because people said that they did send theirs back and the new one failed during break in also. This was 15 years ago.@@NoEgg4u
I hope Western Digital is watching. I have used their drives for years without issues. I am upgrading capacity and just bought 2 Seagate specifically because of this comment. Thank you for sharing.
@@sleddy01 If you want excellent pricing on either Western Digital or Seagate drives (even a few Toshiba drives), then check out Server Part Deals.
Filter the SATA drives by re-certified (or it might be refurbished?).
I own dozens of them. They look and work like brand new drives. No extra noise, or anything else. You cannot tell the difference. I have no idea what is entailed in the "refurbishing" process, or from where the drives are sourced. I just know that they seem identical, in every way, to new drives.
They come with a two year warranty, from Tech On Tech (that is the seller).
I did have a drive failure. I called them up, and they e-mailed me a shipping label. On the day that they received my return, they shipped me my replacement. It was as smooth as it could be.
They are in Florida. I am elsewhere in the USA. I am mentioning this, because they charged no sale's tax. However, I know someone in Florida who was charged sale's tax. So it is my assumption that they charge sale's tax only for addresses in Florida.
On top of having the lowest prices I have ever seen, by far, you save on the taxes, and also free shipping.
If you live outside of the USA, there will likely be other fees.
If you buy in quantity, they will drop another $5 off each drive (perhaps more, if you purchase 50 or 100 drives).
Right now, they have 18TB drives for $169.69.
The internal drive inside the WD has a native USB port soldered onto the PCB,, so it's useless if you want to open it up to use inside a laptop/PC or Playstation, for instance. The Seagate has a SATA internal drive with a separate SATA to USB controller board.
Thanks for the info! Pinned Your comment.
I knew, that WDs 2.5" external drives are not shuckable, and it's really good to know Seagates are different.
One more selling point for Seagate.
@@NickBorodenko are these drives 15 mm in height? Thanks for the info @troubadour
Nope, they are a bit taller: WD - 19mm, Seagate - 20mm (that's manufacturer's info, I somehow measured 17 and 19 mm respectively).
@@NickBorodenko thanks!!
True, but i have 2 wd 4tb drives and 3 1tb-5tb seagate drives, but only the seagate drives have failed. so while i can and have repurposed the seagate drives, I'd much rather have the more reliable wd drives that I don't have to repurpose because they still work.
Chapters are still not working for my channel, so here are the time codes:
00:00 - Into
01:05 - Options and prices
01:29 - Bundled software
02:23 - What's in the box
03:23 - Size and design
05:24 - Benchmarks
07:42 - 4K video editing test
P.S. Sorry for low voice audio level at 05:28.
Is the seagate 5 TB more reliable than the Western Digital elements in the long term because I see a lot of recertified on sale on this model. ( Elements ) Thanks
One of the best videos put there for 5tb jard drives. The video quality is at par with the top RUclipsrs. Keep up the nice work!
Many thanks for your support!
the directly porting files from phone to drive, is that also possible for iOS?
if you have a cable
If You have an iPad Pro with usb-c or iPad iPhone with ios 13+ and lightning to usb adapter - file transfer will be possible.
If You plan on using the drive with lightning-usb adapter it's better to pick one with power input, as the portable hdd may not have enough power from lightning port.
And in order to move files both ways portable drive has to be formatted in APFS, FAT or exFAT.
iOS 15+ will let you read files from NTFS formatted drive (default for Windows), but writing files to the drive will be prohibited.
thanks for the comparison! i found the WD very noisy and returned it. can you say anything about the noise level of the seagate? i own an older 4gb version and it is absolutely silent.
Thanks for stopping by 😉
Both drives are quiet imo (though, WD starts are just a bit more noticeable compared to Seagate). No change in loudness compared to eariler models I used.
Maybe they've sent you the defective unit?
Hm, it worked properly and didn't sound "broken". The spinning sound was noticable tho, like a small fan. I've just ordered the Seagate 5GB and gonna check that one out as soon as it arrives. Maybe it has something to do with the size, 5GB being louder than 4GB?
No excessive clicks or grinding sounds?
I mean, the sound of the drive starting, spinning and the head parking, etc. are definitely there, but not to the point to bother that much. At least comparing to some 3.5" Toshiba drives, that are way too loud.
I didn't find any noticeable difference in terms of noise between older 1Tb WD my passport and the newer one mentioned in the video.
Let me know, if Seagate is less noisy. Would be one more thing to prefer Seagate in future.
@@NickBorodenko I have received my "Seagate Expansion" 2,5" 5GB portable HDD by now. Its spinning sound is noticable, but only in a quiet room. Thus, it is louder than the 4GB version, which is almost absolutely silent, but it is by far not as "fanny" (the white noise the spinning discs generate) as the 5GB WD. I'm gonna stick with Seagate. :)
Thanks for an update and congrats on new purchase!
Which would you suggest for a MacBook air M1. Mainly for storage
WD seems to be getting more consumer complaints. In my case both work fine. And they are really close to each other in terms of performance. My advice - pick whichever is priced better.
P.S. Sry for not answering in time. As I am situated in Kharkiv - we are caught in the middle of war actions.
@@NickBorodenko hope you're doing well bro
@@NickBorodenko I have both and I use Mac, both are fine never had any issues. If price is the same I'll go for WD because its more compact and stronger built
subscribed to your channel...great video!
Thanks for Your support!
Have recently moved out of war zone with my family. As soon as we get to safer place I'll be able to make videos again.
I heard that some of these drives are SMR (shingled magnetic recording) and have horrible write speeds?
You can never say for sure, which exact drive will be inside. But considering the size and price - most likely SMR drive inside rather than CMR.
It is actually not that critical if you plan on using this drive mainly for backups.
For performance it's better to go with SSDs or CMR professional HDDs in RAID.
@@NickBorodenko I checked further and apparently all these drives are SMR. What happens is the transfer rates become very very slow when the drive fills up above 50% or 66% of capacity. Maybe you could test again, but with a few TB of data to make it realistic?
I have around 600 Gb free on WD. Tested speeds using type-c cable. Empty drive showed ~108 mb write and ~113 mb read speads. With 600 Gb free space the speeds are: ~82 mb write and ~111 mb read. That equals about 25% loss in write speed.
@@NickBorodenko Thx cool. Maybe this would be worth a video, looking at the drive performance in depth. Or questions like the drive needing idle time to re-organize the shingled recording, and not really being 100% portable. What happens when it's almost full, etc.🙂
Thanks for a video idea 👍
A very good thorough test! I wonder if Seagate & WD should put some air vents in those plastic cases? Especially on their high capacity 4 and 5 tb portable drives.
Thank you for the comment!
2.5" drives don't heat up as much as 3.5". I assume air vents are not added to keep the size small (3.5" external HDD enclosures are that big mainly because of ventilation).
I have both, I use the WD for 4K movies and the Seagate for ps5. Both work perfectly but I prefer the WD for being smaller and has a nicer feel to it.
With that said, I've had both WD and seagate drives in the past, 2tb and both still work perfectly, from 2010.
Lucky mines give out after 1 year
@@RubenLopez-zs9nk wich brand did give out for u??
Why do people say that external hard drives has a longevity of 3-5years? most people have had their external HDD working for 10years
@@calle4273 My 2tb seagate gave out after 2 years of minimal use. Bought it in 2021, warranty expired in March, and drive failed in Nov. So that's barely 2.5 years of usage. Such a disappointment.
Which is reliable I want a long term hdd that can store my important data and run minimum of 8+ years many are saying segatte is crashing very often
Generally, they are pretty similar in terms of reliability. I do not own any seagate drives for 8+ years, but I have WD and Toshiba drives 10+ years old. My first 2.5" portable drives from WD and Toshiba are around 6 years old and are running with no issues (I still use them for additional backups).
Unless You run into manufacturing defects or physical drive damage, the drives mentioned in video should last many years.
In any case it's better to have multiple backups of important files.
In terms of warranty WD offers 3 years and Seagate - 1 year.
@@NickBorodenko Oh Thanks a lot for reply!😄
I live In India And we get two options One from Seagate One Touch And other one is WD passport so reading speed will be constant with both right or should I go for WD?
Seagate OneTouch, if I remember correctly, is a 'premium' option for Seagate portable drives.
It may be as fast or even a bit faster than WD in benchmarks, but that's a difference You won't notice in real life.
OneTouch also features metal enclosure (with overall better design) and 4 month of Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan. In my opinion, if that are important features for You - consider Seagate, if not - just look for a better priced option.
I had a brand new Western Digital fail 33 days after receiving it. The RMA is not settled after 2 months. I had to fight with them only to get sent a slower refurbished drive. Still waiting for the correct speed drive but don't expect them to ever send it. All I got was a phone call saying they would send a correct drive but no drive.
I have had some bad experiences with seagate; mostly bad blocks. Any info on this?
It's possible for any hard drive to experience this issue.
Unsafe ejections, excessive movement while plugged in, and other factors can cause bad blocks to appear more quickly. This is actually what happened with my wife's Seagate external HDD.
If you've noticed bad sectors, it's typically an indication that the drive is nearing failure. As a precaution, it's a good idea to back up your data and avoid using the drive for anything important. And, as always, it's best to keep backups of your data.
I was searching for the comparison video for these 2 HDD's (WD & Seagate). This is the best one I'll recommend to any one. Thank you for the review. Plz Keep up the good work.............👏
Thank You for support! I am honored You found the video that useful.
I heard formatting the seagate drive to ntfs will speed it up. It should reach 145 mbps on average, but I guess it also depends on the pc specs.
Both drives in the video were formatted to NTFS.
I think results with something like exFAT could be a bit slower.
@@NickBorodenko I have One Touch 5tb on the way and once I'm getting it, I will format it to NTFS. I don't own a game console or a Mac, so exFAT is kinda pointless for me. I've always regarded exFAT as a flash drive or a memory card format, so i keep all of my disks as NTFS and removable storage media as exFAT. I also beleive that data recovery from exFAT would be harder in case of disk failure.
Yes, exFAT is far more vulnerable to data corruption compared to NTFS, as exFAT does not support journaling.
Should you need to use your drive with mac at any point - they do read NTFS drives out of the box and write capabilities can be added through 3rd party driver (Paragon/Tuxera/etc.).
P.S. Congrats on your purchase 🎉
I use the WD drive as extra storage for my ps4 and it works perfectly fine. I happened to get it during the black friday sale back in 2021 and I don't have problems with it. Starting it up there's a tiny noise (which I assume is the fan inside) but that's the least of my worries. I'm thinking about getting the seagate hard drive for my pc since I've been playing pc games recently.
Thank you for sharing!
For larger modern games I would suggest picking SSD over HDD, as this will make the load times much faster.
By the way, there's no fan inside, it is the sound of drive spinning.
@@NickBorodenko Oh okay. Sorry I assumed that there was a fan in the drive. Anyways, thanks for the advice Nick!
I intended no offense in the previous reply. My apologies if that sounded harsh.
In most cases that noise is a pretty good indication of drive health. If you start hearing unusual sounds - it may mean that the drive is about to fail soon.
@@NickBorodenko No you're fine. You didn't come off as harsh at all. I just assumed that usually electronics have fans in them and now I know it's not the case for all of them. So if I hear any unusual sounds, I kinda wonder if I can transfer my storage somewhere safely.
thanks. what about warranty ?
Depends on the drive You buy. In my case WD came with 3-year warranty and Seagate with 1-year warranty and 1-year data rescue service plan.
There seems to be more and more negative feedback on Western Digital lately. It's sad to see how they are loosing consumers' trust.
Well, data rescue option is still there, that's why I mentioned it.
You're definitely right about people skipping that service because of the sensitive data.
Yeah, as all of these drives have more or less same speeds, reliability is crucial. Alas, there's not enough statistics (like for 3.5" drives from Backblaze) to exactly tell, which drive is preferable. And manufacturers can change drives used inside whenever they want.
Excellent test!
However; you must have noticed the massive-reverb in the section 'Benchmarks'? Also; that background-music is not necessary. Cheers.
Hi!
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, my bad: recorded that part with another mic in another room with worse acoustics. Understood that only when had watched the uploaded video on RUclips myself 😅
Been using Seagate 1tb, 2tb and 4tb for many years and never failed ..i travel often with them and they can handle a bump or two...to me they are reliable...in the end you never know...out of the thousands from the production line you might have bought a bad apple.... 🤷🏻 I still got drives dating back 10 years ago all working fine...in my past use i found WD less reliable
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! Generally Seagate drives seem to be more reliable than WDs. However, I'm currently experiencing issues with my relatively new Seagate drive, while my older WDs are still functioning well.
As you mentioned, it's hard to predict the reliability of these drives, so it's essential to back up important data.
keep going, SUB count is irrelevant, Intention of helping Matters. thankyou for the video
Thanks for Your support!
I have both Seagate & wd 5tb. My Seagate is much faster. Around 130 MBPS on the benchs.
Also these drives run HOT. So I put a USB fan on them for longer Backups.
Thanks for the info! Your Seagate sounds fast 🚀
Smart move cooling your drives with a USB fan - heat isn't good for HDDs in the long run.
I don't get it. Lacie is made by Seagate and they are one of the best.
True. Heard many positive reviews about these drives from people using them LaCie's rugged series provide additional protection. General ones are stylish and feature usb c/thunderbolt port.
But those drives from LaCie cost 40-60$ more than WD/Seagate.
And in this video I wanted to show the cheapest options available.
It's like toyota making toyota and Lexus. Seagate drives are crap, but my first external drive: a 500gb Lacie Lego brick that I bought in 2008 still works.
Thank you. Was wondering whether to retry WD as for the first time ever I had a Seagate 8tb die on me. I have 5tb Seagates that still run fine (PC and Series X). I think I will stick with Seagate as over the decades every failure 2.5 and 3.5 has been WD They seem to have an autodestruct date built in?! Hope all is well for you in Ukraine, keep up the fight
Thank you for your comment and concerns about WD and Seagate hard drives. Both brands have their pros and cons. Recently, WD has been facing some financial issues. This may lead to some noticeable discounts and support/service issues on the other hand. It seems that generally WDs aren't as reliable as Seagates, however I've had a rather new Seagate die on me recently while WDs are going strong - so that's a question of luck.
Thank you for your kind words!
needlessly boring video. could be much more concise, 1min max
Why would you put a shingled drive into your computer?
Try getting a 5TB 2.5" USB HDD that isn't SMR!
@@marcse7en Important is the why put such a thing in your computer.