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The reason is trust. How-To Geek author Sydney Butler says a past controversy involving Seagate’s 3TB Barracuda ST3000DM001—and the company’s response to reported failures—changed how Butler views the brand. That is a personal buying decision, not evidence that every Seagate drive is unreliable.
Why Butler avoids Seagate
“The simple reason? It’s trust,” Butler writes in the original article. The choice is rooted in Butler’s interpretation of a specific model controversy and Seagate’s response, rather than a claim that all Seagate products fail at a high rate.
Butler says their collection totals 20TB of hard-drive storage and includes one Seagate 8TB Expansion drive. It is used for Plex media that can be replaced, rather than mission-critical files. That inventory and use case are Butler’s own account and have not been independently verified.
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What the historical failure figures show
The article cites Backblaze fleet data for two particular Seagate models: a 43.1% annualized failure rate for the 3TB Barracuda ST3000DM001 in Backblaze’s 2015 report, and 2.6% for new Seagate 4TB ST4000DM000 drives installed by Backblaze. The cited article does not independently specify the report year for the second figure.
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Those numbers are not current Seagate-wide failure rates. They describe different models in a particular fleet context; they should not be treated as a forecast for an individual drive or as a direct comparison of every Seagate model.
What the lawsuit did—and did not—establish
The litigation involved allegations about the ST3000DM001. The court record discusses claims of high failure rates, while the article notes that renewed class certification was denied because determining class-wide claims would require individualized analysis. That procedural outcome is not a finding that Seagate drives as a whole were defective.
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How newer fleet analysis compares manufacturers
A 2026 analysis of Backblaze data adjusted for drive age, capacity, form factor, and temperature. As summarized in Butler’s article, HGST was the most reliable group in the study’s dataset; WD’s estimated failure rate was 52% of Seagate’s, while Toshiba’s was 107% of Seagate’s. These are relative estimates for the analyzed data and period, not probabilities for a current retail drive.
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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →The study and article caution against using fleet results to predict one buyer’s experience. Backblaze’s Q2 2026 report, for example, gives a fleet-wide quarterly annualized failure rate of 1.73%, but that figure reflects Backblaze’s own drive fleet and operating conditions—not a consumer-wide or brand-wide rate.
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Is it fair to avoid an entire brand?
It can be reasonable to choose based on trust, especially when the buyer is comfortable paying for another option. But a brand preference is not the same as evidence that every drive from that manufacturer is a poor choice. The cited evidence does not compare all currently sold consumer HDDs under controlled, equivalent conditions.
For a purchase decision, compare the exact models and the conditions that matter to your use:
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- Peace-of-mind: Comes with two-year limited warranty and Rescue Data Recovery Services.
- Drive class and workload: Match the drive to desktop, NAS, surveillance, or other intended use rather than relying on the brand name alone.
- Reliability sample: Check the age and size of the data and whether it comes from consumer systems or a data-center fleet.
- Capacity, form factor, and temperature: These affect how comparable published fleet results are to the drive you plan to use.
- Warranty and price per terabyte: Compare the terms and current cost for the exact models under consideration.
If you want to investigate Butler’s preferred alternative, search for a Western Digital 20TB internal hard drive and verify the specific model, seller, specifications, availability, and warranty before buying. The cited reliability analysis does not establish a particular current 20TB model or listing, and it does not test that product.
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