Is Seagate really less reliable than WD?

Ask this in any forum and you will get certainty in both directions. The published data from Backblaze's 341,000-drive fleet gives a clearer answer: the question itself is wrong. Brand explains very little. The specific model explains almost everything.

The example that settles it

In Q1 2026 Backblaze ran two Western Digital 16TB models whose part numbers differ by a single character:

Model	Drives	AFR
WDC WUH721816ALE6L4	26,801	0.97%
WDC WUH721816ALE6L0	2,994	3.27%

Same manufacturer, same capacity, same generation — and a 3.4× difference in failure rate. No brand-level statement survives that.

Seagate's range is the widest, in both directions

Seagate has the worst individual results in the fleet: the ST14000NM0138 at 4.9%, the ST10000NM0086 at 4.63%, the ST12000NM0007 at 4.59%. That is where the reputation comes from, and those numbers are real.

But Seagate also has one of the strongest large populations Backblaze operates: the ST16000NM001G at 0.52% across 34,729 drives, better than most Western Digital and Toshiba models. The ST16000NM002J recorded zero failures across 466 drives in the quarter, having also managed a zero-failure year in 2025.

The pattern is that Seagate's poor results cluster in a handful of older 10TB, 12TB and 14TB models now reaching end of life, while its current large-capacity drives perform well.

Where Toshiba sits

Toshiba is the most consistent brand in the current fleet: every Toshiba model in Q1 2026 landed roughly between 0.2% and 2.2%, with no catastrophic outliers, and the 24TB MG11ACA24TE was the single best drive Backblaze runs at 0.22%. Consistency is not the same as cheapest or fastest, but if you want the fewest nasty surprises, Toshiba's spread is the tightest.

So how should you actually choose?

Ignore the badge. All three major manufacturers ship both excellent and poor models.
Buy on warranty and price per terabyte, which are knowable at purchase time — unlike the failure rate of a drive that has not shipped long enough to be measured.
Spread the risk. In a multi-drive array, mix batches and ideally models, so one bad production run cannot take out everything at once.
Assume any drive can fail. Even the best model here fails sometimes, and RAID is not a backup.

Figures from Backblaze Drive Stats, Q1 2026. Backblaze publishes per-model data only; it does not publish manufacturer-level averages, and the comparison above is drawn from its model-level table.

Full failure-rate data Compare drives by £/TB

Frequently asked questions

Is Seagate or Western Digital more reliable?

Neither, as a brand. Backblaze's Q1 2026 data shows Seagate models ranging from 0.52% to 4.9% annualised failure rate, while two Western Digital 16TB models from the same generation differ by 3.4 times (0.97% against 3.27%). Reliability tracks the specific model and production batch rather than the manufacturer, so choose on model, warranty and price per terabyte.

Why do Seagate drives have a bad reputation?

Because a small number of Seagate models genuinely did fail at high rates, and those figures were widely shared. In Backblaze's current data the worst performers are still Seagate units, but they are older 10TB to 14TB models nearing end of life. Seagate's current large-capacity drives perform well: the ST16000NM001G runs at 0.52% across nearly 35,000 drives.