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The 1.5TB models from Seagate fail far more often than the larger models from the same brand tested by Backblaze, for instance. Note that failure rate varies between models as well as brands. Toshiba beat both of them, but Hitachi held firm at number one with the lowest annual failure rates. In 2016, the latest report, Seagate returned to its position as the hard drive brand with the highest failure rate, followed by Western Digital. HGST was still the most reliable overall. Toshiba scored roughly the same as Seagate. Toshiba results were included in these results despite the relatively small number of drives tested. When new results were published one year later, however, Western Digital surpassed Seagate and failed the most of the brands tested. Seagate had the highest failure rate by far, with 13 percent of Backblaze’s 1.5TB models failing over the course of a year. In short: Hitachi’s failed the least, followed by Western Digital. Long answer: In 2014, cloud backup company Backblaze started posting statistics on the failure rate of over 27,000 hard drives and their respective brands. We don’t have enough definitive data on Samsung or Toshiba to make a conclusion about them. Short answer: HGST (rebranded name for Hitachi) drives generally last longer than Seagate and Western Digital. Which hard drive brands last the longest? All of the discussion below, unless otherwise noted, refers to standard magnetic disk drives, not solid state drives or hybrid drives. These factors and many more can affect the lifespan of a hard drive.
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Many of the hard drives tested do not fail at all. Long answer: A handful of studies on the lifespan of hard drives might give you some clearer indication, but they still aren’t very helpful.
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Short answer: That being said, if you just want a quick rule of thumb for how long you can expect the hard drive in your laptop should last, we’d say you should be prepared for disk failure after three years of use. Hard drive failure is unpredictable, so answering the question of how long hard drives last will inherently comes with a lot of caveats.
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