Seagate
Reddit take
AI summary of the Reddit excerpts below — not a quote
Seagate is a dominant brand in the storage market, but it faces significant criticism from Reddit's enthusiast communities, particularly regarding reliability and supply chain integrity. While some users find their high-capacity drives (18-24TB) effective for large-scale backups, a substantial number of reports highlight premature failures and instances of used or mislabeled drives being sold as new through various retailers.
Pros
- Offers very high capacity options (up to 24TB) suitable for large-scale data hoarding
- Some users report Seagate drives are quieter than competitors, making them preferable for gaming builds
- Widely available and often competitively priced for bulk storage
Cons
- Frequent reports of high failure rates, with some drives reportedly dying within 18 to 90 days
- Significant concerns regarding supply chain fraud, including used drives being sold as new and firmware mismatches
- External 5TB models are noted for slow speeds and reliability issues
- Warranty claims can be difficult, and 'shucking' external drives immediately voids the warranty
Caveats
- Enthusiasts have reported receiving drives with non-standard packaging and mismatched firmware (e.g., EXOS firmware on standard labels)
- Using HDDs for modern gaming can lead to asset loading stutters and occasional OS lag compared to SSDs
- Historical brand distrust remains high among long-term users who experienced failures decades ago
Best for
- Large-scale redundant backups (e.g., RAID or Backblaze) where individual drive failure is accounted for
- Budget-conscious storage expansion for media libraries
- Users who prioritize lower acoustic noise in mechanical drives
Avoid if
- You require high out-of-the-box reliability for a single-drive backup solution
- You are purchasing from unverified third-party sellers where 'used as new' fraud is reported
- You intend to 'shuck' the drive but still want to maintain a manufacturer warranty
This summary uses balanced time weighting with about a 18-month half-life. The evidence is drawn from 22 mentions across a window with a median age of 311 days, reflecting a mix of recent and slightly older enthusiast feedback.
Sentiment
5 positive (23%) · 4 mixed (18%) · 13 negative (59%)
Trust + time weighted score: -39% · raw score -36%
What redditors said (10 of 22)
Seagate is shady... like a couple years ago when they continued selling drives to China/Huawei even though there was an embargo.
I’ve seen *a ton* of mixed reviews on 5 TB externals from **Seagate and WD**, mostly complaining about slow speeds and a high failure rate.
where Seagate has a form on their website.
The last 4 new drives I've purchased, have all died under 60 days power on time. (2x seagate, 1 WD, 1 toshiba) The worst being both seagates, one died at 18 days, one at 31.
Not sure why anyone told you to stay away from Seagate. They’re one of the biggest brands in storage.
Oh yes. I only got Seagate because WD weren't available, or else it would've been all WDs.
the last HDD's i bought from them failed 4 in a row and they wouldn't warranty it.
Storage: 9.10 TB HDD Western digital, 1.82 TB HDD Seagate, SanDisk SSD PLUS 240GB
I got my regular games on SSDs and my full steam library on a similar 4TB Hdd from Seagate. On most titles this made no issues, except longer loading times. Newer games can stutter somtimes when loading in to many assets from an hdd, so this has to be tried. I ran into some bug though, where windows froze for some ms every 20-30s when the HDD was not actively in use but it did something in this interval that lagged windows.
I prefer WD, but I haven't had issues with Seagate.