Hardware.fr published an article giving the failure rates of many components used in computing by analysing the database of a large French retailer. The chapter which interests us most is that devoted to the hard drives.
As always, there are large differences not only between the manufacturers, but also between the various models. Without surprise, Seagate is fallen due to the problems encountered with the firmware a few months ago, this marque, and her little sister in the same group remains at the bottom with nearly 2,8% of returns. Samsung with its SpinPoint T of 500 GB wins the prize of the least reliable disc with 12,9% of returns, which is colossal. At the opposite end, Western Digital win for the most reliable disk with its models 1 TB (Green or Black models)where no model has been brought back to after sales service.
However things can change very quickly in this industry where each model is the occasion to set the counter at zero. Hitachi, for example, had problems of reliability a few years ago but is now in the first place with the most reliable disks.
