Recent report claims Seagate and Hitachi HDDs are most likely to fail

In context: While the popularity of SSDs continues to increase, some users still prefer to have a trusted hard drive for their affordable costs and high storage capacities. However, a recent study shows buyers may not always pick the most reliable HDDs.

Recently, the typical usage of a hard disk drive (HDD) has shifted drastically. As solid-state drives (SSDs) have become the primary storage device, HDDs are the go-to for games, file backups, or cheap additional storage. Hard drive prices have dipped significantly in the last few years, leading some buyers to include one in their computers just in case. So finding a reliable one is just as important.

Timothy Burlee from Secure Data Recovery wanted to find out why HDDs fail and which manufacturers are the most reliable. So he tested 2,007 broken HDDs from six manufacturers--Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi, Toshiba, Samsung, and Maxtor. Capacities ranged from 40 ...