- Hello, Seagate and WD both are the established hard drive brands and you can choose any of them according to your budget and requirement. However, you can check the comparison of both hard drive brands, Seagate hard drive has numerous make and mod.
- Western Digital Red Credit: Seagate Western Digital Red Hard Drive. Capacities: 1TB-14TB. Expect to pay: $100-$800. Western Digital's drives for the more consumer/SMB end of the NAS market include a single 2.5 inch model at 1TB, and a variety of sizes for more standard 3.5 inch drives.
- Seagate VS Western Digital Whats the BIG difference between the two and what do you prefer. I've heard some hate on the Seagate drives and that they are unreliable but the same thing happens with WD drives just as often.
- As part of our surveillance hard drive showdown, we're matching the Western Digital Purple against Seagate's Surveillance HDD. Both drives sport almost identical specifications and target markets.
- Using Seagate External Hard Drive
- Seagate Vs Wd External Hard Drive
- Western Digital Versus Seagate External Drive
- Western Digital Vs Seagate External Hard Drive Review Top Ten
When we store data on the cloud, we hardly stop to think where exactly it goes. All the devices we use, online shoppers, and IOT (Internet of things) generate massive amounts of data, which has to be stored somewhere. HDD (Hard Disk Drives are the devices that store all this information, whether actively powered or not.
On the drag-and-drop test, the Backup Plus took 12 seconds, which is better than average for a USB 3.0-equipped drive. The Seagate Backup Plus Fast, the Toshiba Canvio Connect II, and the Western.
This leads us to the question, who are the main storage manufacturers? You may or may not have heard about Seagate and Western Digital. Wd and Seagate are competitors, and their main products are Laptop HDD, Desktop HDD, SSD, Archive HDD, Enterprise HDD, etc. We shall examine the two companies and see what their differences are and which one of the two makes hard drives with more reliability.
About Seagate
Seagate Technology PLC is a data storage company first founded in 1978 in the USA as Shugart Technology. The company was incorporated in the year 2010 in Dublin, Ireland, and headquartered in Cupertino, California. In 1980, Seagate was the first company to develop the 5.25-inch HDD (Hard Disk Drive). In the same year, they became the main microcomputer supplier.
Seagate’s growth was driven by acquiring competitor companies. In 1989, Seagate bought off the Imprimis division of the Control Data Corporation, which is a dedicated manufacturer of HDD products. In 1996, Seagate bought Conner Peripherals, in 2006 acquired Maxtor, and in 2011, a hard disk business owned by Samsung. Seagate is a leader in the manufacture of Data Storage solutions that are used by homes and businesses to create, share and store crucial and sensitive data.
About Western Digital
Western Digital Corporation, which is also called WD or Western Digital, is a well-known manufacturer of computer hard disks and provides varying data storage solutions to homes and businesses. The American company is into developing, manufacturing, and provision of data center systems, cloud storage services, and storage devices to the IT industry.
Western Digital is not new to the electronic industry. Western Digital was founded in 1970 by Alvin Phillips, headquartered in Irvine, California, which later changed to San Jose, California. Just like Seagate, Western Digital is among the large computer hard disk manufacturers. This is a direct result of acquiring other companies. In 2012, Western Digital acquired Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST). This acquisition catapulted Western Digital into the largest manufacturer of hard disks globally.
In 2016, Western Digital acquired San Disk, a manufacturer of storage chips, for $19 billion. In 2017, a cloud storage provider-Upthere was acquired by Western Digital to improve cloud storage features. In 2017, a flash storage manufacturer, Tegile system, was acquired by Western Digital.
Is Seagate better than Western Digital?
Western Digital and Seagate’s core business is HDD manufacturing. Here is the best comparison of Seagate Vs. Western Digital.
Reliability
When upgrading hard drives, you need to choose a hard drive with top reliability and high-performance. All drives fail eventually, but a reliable drive lasts longer. Western Digital is the top option for most people for conventional platter drives. They assume they are the best models because, for them, they have a low rate of crashing and report they have good reliability.
A search on the internet will tell you that most people hold hard drives from Western Digital to high esteem than Seagate drives. Many people who have used both brands also say that HDD models from Western Digital fail less than those from Seagate. However, all hard drives are not created the same in terms of reliability, and you can get a disappointment from Seagate drives or Western Digital drives. The best way to protect data is to have a backup.
Speed
Seagate’s hard disks’ speed is faster than those of Western Digital, according to most users. Despite their read-write speed being faster, their failure rate is higher than HDDs from Western Digital. While Western Digital’s HDDs models are slower in speed than Seagate’s, but they are the best models for storage because they are durable and stable.
Capacity
Western Digital’s HDDs have an impressive capacity as they were the first to roll out a 2 TB SATA HDD. Their hard dives’ capacity is always going up, and in 2017, they introduced the 14 TB HDD model, the first of its kind in the world-the helium-filled HGST Ultrastar Hs14.
Seagate’s desktop-class HDD has an up to 10 TB capacity. Its internal HDD, the Seagate Barracuda Pro model, has a 14 TB capacity. Both companies can give you what you need capacity-wise.
SSDs
Both companies were slow on the uptake towards investing in SSDs, which are mostly found in laptops, but now, both offer fast SSDs. Seagate is faster and has large internal storage, but by a small margin, and Western Digital has a market in the middle and lower-tier market.
Pros and Cons of Hard Drives vs. SDDs
There are two types of hard drives used in a computer- hard disk drive or solid-state drive. Both drives store your data and also contain the code used to launch systems and perform other tasks. These crucial functions mean you need to get a quality drive, but you must know the pros and cons of each.
Pro of HDDs
An HDD is more cost-effective than solid-state drives in regards to the dollar pricing for every gigabit. A solid-state drive with the same storage capacity as an HDD is often twice as costly; computers fitted with SSDs are generally more expensive than those with HDD.
Larger Storage
A larger storage capacity is another advantage of using a hard drive instead of an SSD. Most of the HDDs sold today have a larger storage capacity of at least 500Gb, while SSD has a starting capacity of 128GB.
More Accessible
Hard drives are more available in the market. There are numerous internal and external hard drives in the market from various companies. SSDs are also becoming more available, but it is more convenient to use a hard drive in terms of accessibility, larger storage capacity, and affordability.
Better read-Write Cycles
A hard drive has more longevity because of its higher and impressive read-write cycles. Data can only be retrieved a limited number of times from an SSD. This is because an SSD’s flash memory has a limited number of writes. An SSD needs to delete and rewrite huge data blocks at a time before writing more data. The flash memory’s cycle is shortened by repetitive read-write cycles.
Cons of HDD
Slower Read-Write Speed
One of the cons of hard drives is the speed of reading and writing data. An SSD has more speed, and depending on the Rotation Per Minute (RPM)specification; hard disk drives have various speeds. In a hard disk, data is fragmented because of its rotary recording surface. A computer with a hard disk boosts more slowly and operates slower than its SSD counterpart.
No Energy Efficiency
An HDD consumes a lot more power in comparison to an SSD. The hard drive needs more energy to power its moving parts like the rotating metal platter and the magnetic head. This is why laptops are equipped with SSD for the best energy efficiency and battery life extension.
Noise
The hard drive’s metallic platter rotation and the magnetic head back and forth movement make noises and low-key vibrations when the HDD is working. These noises are mostly heard when the computer is booting or when it reads and writes a lot of data. An SSD makes no noise.
Shorter Longevity
Using Seagate External Hard Drive
An HDD’s susceptibility to data loss and failure rate from physical weaknesses is one of its biggest disadvantages. The HDD’s moving parts make it susceptible to damage from shudders and drops. This is why an SSD is most suited for laptops. An internal SSD is less vulnerable compared to an external SSD because moving about with a device makes it vulnerable to physical damage.
Size
The hard drive is a lot bulkier than a solid-state drive. It is impossible to reduce the HDD size because of the operation and placement of the moving parts. This physical aspect makes the hard drive only suitable for tasks that do not require movement. Smartphones, tablets, and ultra-thin laptops are equipped with a silent state drive.
Is Seagate Really that bad?
Most customer reviews online show that most people prefer using Western Digital HDDs over Seagate. However, according to a study by a cloud backup company called BackBlaze, Western Digital’s HDDs were the least in reliability among Seagate, Toshiba, and HGST.
This is not necessarily true because HDD crashing varies from brand to brand, model to model, and capacity. The assumption that a manufacturer has poor products only comes in when a hard drive’s failure rate is blanketed, regardless of model or capacity.
Seagate is not as bad as it is thought to be, and every mechanical hardware will at some point fail, regardless of brand, so backup is crucial. The reason products have at least a one-year warranty for compensating for any defects that may have passed the quality control checks, and reliability is relative and subjective. The best way to find out which is better is to buy one of each, and use them.
Are Western Digital external hard drives reliable?
Digital External Storage
For users who need to back up their internal drives, external storage is necessary. External hard drives are still an excellent option for people or firms that require storing massive amounts of images and data backup. Most laptops have limited space, are portable, and have at least 500 Gb. External hard drives provide an easy and portable way to backup or store data, especially videos and photos. The three types of external drives include:
Portable drive
Both Seagate and Western Digital manufacture portable external hard drives with varying connectivity and capacities. My Passport series from Western Digital and Backup Plus from Seagate are popular, portable external drives, and portable drives from either company serve the purpose. Most specifically:
- WD My Passport Ultra 4 TB
- WD 3 TB My Passport Wireless Pro
- Seagate’s Backup Plus Slim 2 TB
Desktop Hard Drives
If you need a lot of storage for movies or video editing, you need a desktop-class external hard drive with more terabytes of space for storing media, though not easily portable. You can go for the My Book Duo Desktop drive from Western Digital.
This external hard drive contains an up to 28TB storage capacity with configurations of either RAID 0 or RAID 1. Seagate provides 10TB storage capacity from an Expansion Desktop or single drive Backup Plus Hub. Western Digital has better desktop drives that support 4K or 8K video edits.
NAS Devices
Seagate does not prioritize NAS devices. Western Digital has a first-party NAS server, while Seagate does not. Seagate instead chose to do with drives with NAS design. My cloud offers Plex Media Server build-in support, which is a library organizer, allowing you to stream to any device such as PS4, Chromecast, a smartphone, etc.
While you can merge a Seagate drive into a NAS server and use it similarly, it does not have a high-capacity server capable of doing the same. In this instance, Western Digital is your go-to when you want cloud or wireless storage products, rather than Seagate.
FAQS
Are Seagate drives any Good?
Most people ask if Seagate drivers are any good, and from the discussed aspects above, it is safe to say that they are good. Everybody has a personal experience with a product, and no two disks are the same. One might be new and crash after a few days, and another may be in use for years without an issue.
If a hard one buys a hard disk, it comes with a one-year warranty on the device. The warranty period is to rule out any overlooked flaw during the quality assessment. The quality of the products is also evident in the company’s shares, which are on an upward trajectory.
Are Seagate and Western Digital the Same Company?
Some people wrongly assume they are one company. They are different companies in competition for the same market, and with almost similar products.
What is Hard Drive failure?
Hard drive issues can either be physical or logical. In physical hard drive failures, the hard disk or one of its parts is physically damaged or completely fails to work, leading to data loss and Windows booting issues.
Logical hard drive crashes have no technical issues, but the hard drive’s crashing is from damage in the hard drive software or file structure. When this happens, your files may disappear or become inaccessible and the operating system corrupted.
Typically, a hard drive software is reliable for three to five years. The most susceptible drives are aged electromechanical devices that save your data on a fast-spinning disk. A hard drive software can crash with no explanation, regardless of how long you have used it.
Solid-state drives fail, but not as often, and with luck, most hard drives will warn you before they crash fully. Some of the indications of failure include:
Frequent computer crashes and freezes
If your computer software keeps crashing or freezing, the most likely culprit is your drive. If these issues occur after a new installation, it is possibly due to corrupt hardware and most likely an impending hard drive failure, and you need a reliable data backup immediately.
Taking Too Long to Access Files and Folders
Taking too long to access files and folders may mean your hard drive software is on its way out, and it needs several read attempts before it can access files. It could be a sign of a different issue, but it is a typical hard drive failure sign.
Strange Sounds
Strange sounds like grinding or clicking noises are a sign of a failing hard drive, and you need to do a data backup because it could crash any time.
Conclusion
WD and Seagate are still diversifying with the current shifts in software technology. HDDs have been in use for many years, and while SSDs are becoming more popular, hard drives will be around for quite a long while before they go the floppy disk way and die a natural death. Seagate Vs. Western Digital is a longstanding discussion, with people debating whether one is better than the other.
Summary :
When talking about storage manufacturers, you must have heard of Seagate and Western Digital. What the differences between the two companies’ storage devices? Who makes the most reliable hard drives? If you don't know, this article from MiniTool will show you the answers.
Quick Navigation :
Most of you have heard of Seagate and Western Digital, but how much do you really know about them? Before I show you the comparison of Seagate vs Western Digital from several aspects, I’d like to show you some basic information about the two companies. Now let’s have a look together.
About Seagate
Seagate Technology PLC is an American data storage company. It was founded in 1978 as Shugart technology. Since 2010, the company has been incorporated in Dublin, Ireland, with its operating headquarters in Cupertino, California, USA.
In 1980, Seagate developed the first 5.25-inch hard disk drive (HDD). In the 1980s, they became the main suppliers of microcomputers. Today, Seagate and its competitor Western Digital dominate the hard disk market. And their main products include Desktop HDD, Laptop HDD, Enterprise HDD, Archive HDD, SSD and so on.
The growth of Seagate was largely achieved by acquiring competitors. In 1989, Seagate acquired the Control Data Corporation’s Imprimis division which is devoted to making HDD products. In 1996, Seagate acquired Conner Peripherals. Then Seagate acquired Maxtor in 2006 and Samsung's hard disk business in 2011.
Now, Seagate is a global leader in data storage solutions. It develops amazing storage products that enable home and business users around the world to create, share and save their most critical data.
About Western Digital
Western Digital Corporation, also known as Western Digital and WD, is a famous American computer hard disk manufacturer and provider of various data storage solutions. It develops, manufactures and provides storage devices, data center systems, and cloud storage services to solve the evolving needs of the information technology industry.
Western Digital has a long history in the electronic industry. The company was founded by Alvin B. Phillips in 1970 and was headquartered in Irvine, California. Now they have moved its headquarters to San Jose, California.
Like Seagate, Western Digital becomes one of the manufacturers of large computer hard disks, which is the result of successful acquisition of other enterprises. In March 2012, Western Digital acquired HGST (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies). The acquisition had a great influence on the hard disk industry, as it made WD become the world's largest hard disk manufacturer after the acquisition.
In May 2016, Western Digital acquired the storage chip manufacturer SanDisk. In August 2017, Western Digital acquired cloud storage provider Upthere to build better cloud storage features. In September 2017, Western Digital acquired Tegile Systems, a flash storage array manufacturer.
Now the main hard disk manufacturers are only WD and Seagate, indicating that the hard disk industry has entered the era of oligarchy. And many users will compare the two brands when choosing a storage device such as SSD, HDD. So today, I will show you the differences of Seagate vs Western Digital on storage devices.
Seagate vs Western Digital HDD
As is known to all, HDD is the main business of Seagate Technology and Western Digital Corporation. What's the difference between their HDD products? The following will give you a comparison of Seagate vs Western Digital HDD, which introduces the differences on reliability, speed, capacity of the two HDD brands.
Reliability
When you want to upgrade hard drive, choosing a high-performance and reliable hard drive is essential. Any drive you buy today will fail eventually, but the more reliable your drive is, the longer you should be able to use it. So the reliability is an essential factor.
Western Digital is the hard drive manufacturer that many users prefer for traditional platter drives. Many people have been using WD hard drives for years. And they assume WD hard drives have terrific reliability with very low failure rate.
However, according to a study from BackBlaze, it shows that Western Digital’s drives were overall the least reliable among HGST, Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital. Is that true? Well, hard disk drive failures vary by brand, model, and capacity. These numbers are found only when the manufacturer is considered regardless of the model and capacity. So these numbers are not 100% percent accurate.
After searching on the internet, you will find many people hold the opinion that Western Digital’s hard drives are more reliable than that of Seagate. And many users report that Western Digital HDDs fail less than any from Seagate.
Whatever the reliability, you may occasionally encounter WD or Seagate hard drive failure as not all hard drives are created equal. You can have drive failure from any manufacturer. So, no matter what drive you are using, the best way to protect your valuable data is to make a backup.
Are you looking for a free backup software? The partition manager MiniTool Partition Wizard is able to backup partition or backup disk in just a few clicks.
Speed
As for the HDD speed, I see such an analogy on the Internet: Seagate and the Western Digital are like two people of completely different character. Seagate is a young man in pursuit of superior performance. While the Western Digital is more like an old man with rich experience who does not pursue speed but pursue the reliability.
What does this mean? It means that Seagate's hard disk speed will be faster than that of the Western Digital. But despite of the faster read-write speed, its failure rate is also higher than that of the Western Digital.
The read-write speed of Western Digital HDDs is a little slower compared with Seagate, but it is more suitable for storage due to its good stability and durability.
In conclusion, Seagate hard disk drives are generally fast, fluent in reading and writing, and generally light. The HDD of Western Digital is relatively stable with low hard drive failure rate.
If you want to test their read write speed, a free disk benchmarking tool is recommended – MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition, which can help you test hard drive sequential and random read/write speeds. If you want to perform Seagate/Western Digital HDD benchmark, download one now.
Easiest guide for free hard drive/SSD speed test in Windows 10/8/7. Utilize best free disk benchmark software for Windows (10) to test hard drive, SSD, external hard drive speed for free.
Capacity
When talking about capacity, Western Digital impressed us, as it was the first one who introduced 2TB SATA hard drives to us. And its capacity of hard drives is ever increasing. In October 2017, Western Digital shipped the world’s first 14 TB HDD, the helium-filled HGST Ultrastar Hs14.
As for Seagate, it has desktop-class drives with a capacity up to 10TB. And the capacity of this drive is not the largest. Its internal hard drive Seagate BarraCuda’s Pro version has a capacity of 14TB, which enables you to store more games, movies, and music than ever before.
Both Western Digital and Seagate can satisfy your need on hard drive capacity. In this case, when picking up a hard drive from the two companies, you can focus on other critical factors such as price, performance, reliability and so on.
Seagate vs Western Digital SSD
Both Western Digital and Seagate were initially reluctant to invest in SSDs, but now they all offer speedy solid-state drives.
In the new NVMe series, Firecuda 510 is the one that makes Seagate stand out in the competition. Western Digital Black 3D NVME is not as fast as Firecuda 510, but its price is higher.
Seagate is currently leading the way in larger internal storage and speed competition, although the gap is small. Western Digital still has a place in the middle and low-end market.
Seagate vs Western Digital External Storage
External storage is important and necessary for users who want to backup internal drives. The following will show you three kinds of external storages.
Portable Drive
Both Seagate and Western Digital offer pocket external hard drives with different capacities and connectivity. Among those external drives, Western Digital's My Passport series and Seagate's Backup Plus portable drives are popular. If you are considering purchasing an external hard drive, the following Seagate/Western Digital is worth buying.
- Seagate Backup Plus Slim 2 TB
- WD 3 TB My Passport Wireless Pro
- WD My Passport Ultra 4 TB
This article will show you the specifications, excellent features of the gaming dirve WD My Passport X 2TB Portable Hard Drive. Check out this post now.
Desktop Drive
If you are a photo or video editor, or a movie buff, a portable drive may not satisfy you, as you will need several terabytes of space to store large media collections. In this case, you can consider a desktop-class drive.
If you want to choose a desktop-class drive, WD My Book Duo Desktop drive is a good choice. The desktop drive has up to 28TB capacity in RAID 0 or RAID 1 configurations. As for Seagate, they can provide 10TB of storage from a single-drive Backup Plus Hub or Expansion Desktop.
Both desktop drives have mass storage for photos, videos, music and document backups. However, if you want to do 4K or even 8K video editing, or backup other massive media collection, Western Digital is your best choice.
NAS Devices
NAS devices seem to be an afterthought for Seagate. Why? Because Western Digital offers the My Cloud Pro and Expert lines in up to 40 TB but Seagate currently does not have a first-party NAS server. Instead, they choose to produce NAS-designed drives, with the IronWolf range in up to 14TB.
Nowadays, My Cloud offers build-in support for Plex Media Server. This organizes your library and allows streaming to any enabled device - smartphones, Chromecast, PlayStation 4 and more, which is very convenient. While Seagate drives can be merged into NAS servers and used in the same way, they do not have high-capacity servers with similar capabilities.
In this case, Western Digital is your best choice when you want to choose wireless storage products or use cloud storage.
The Best Disk Cloning Software for Seagate/Western Digital
After reading this post, you should know the pros and cons of Western Digital vs Seagate in terms of storage. Both of them are very good HDD brands. If you need to upgrade your HDD/SSD or backup your disk to an external device, you need to utilize a piece of disk cloning software. And MiniTool Partition Wizard can be your best choice.
MiniTool Partition Wizard is a reputable partition manager & disk cloning software. It can help you to migrate OS to SSD/HD, backup disk or partition, move/resize partition, convert MBR disk to GPT, and convert FAT to NTFS and so on. All of these operations can be performed with extremely simple procedures, so you don't need to worry about how to use.
And the following will show you the detailed steps on how to upgrade SSD/HDD without data loss or backup hard drive with the help of MiniTool Partition Wizard. Note that if you want to backup system related partitions or upgrade system disk, MiniTool Parition Wizard Pro Ultimate is required. After connecting the target disk to your computer, you can follow the steps below:
Step 1. Get MiniTool Partition Wizard by clicking the following button. Install it on your computer, launch it and get the main interface.
Step 2. Select the disk you want to copy and choose Copy Disk from the left panel.
Step 3. Select a target disk to copy content to and click Next. When you click Next, it will remind you all the data on the target disk will be deleted, click OK if there are no important files on the target disk.
Step 4. Review the changes you are going to make and click Next to go on.
Step 5. Read the note about how to boot from the destination drive. Then click Finish.
Step 6. At last, click Apply to allow the pending operations.
You see, it is very convenient to upgrade SSD or HDD with MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro Ultimate. With only a few clicks, all the files on the old drive will be transferred to the new one. If you need to backup hard drive or upgrade HDD to SSD, try using the best disk cloning software MiniTool Partition Wizard now.
Bottom Line
Now, do you have a better understanding of Seagate vs Western Digital on storage? If you have different opinion on Seagate vs Western Digital external hard drive, SSD, cloud storage and other aspects, please don't hesitate to share it with us.
If you have encountered any issue when using MiniTool Partition Wizard, you can leave a message on the following comment zone and we will reply as soon as possible. If you need any help when using MiniTool software, you may contact us via [email protected].
Seagate vs Western Digital FAQ
Western Digital is not Seagate. Seagate and Western Digital (WD) are both well-known American computer hard disk manufacturers and data storage solution providers. They are two giants that dominate the hard disk market. Western Digital does not belong to Seagate, and vice versa.
Seagate Vs Wd External Hard Drive
Many users report that Western Digital HDDs are more reliable than Seagate hard drives. But, regardless of reliability, you may occasionally encounter WD or Seagate hard disk drive failure because there are many factors that can cause disk failure. (Here Are 6 Signs Indicating Hard Drive Failure, Check out Now)
Western Digital Versus Seagate External Drive
As one of the global leader in data storage field, Seagate is a very good and reliable hard disk brand. Now the products of Seagate technology mainly includes Desktop/Laptop HDD, Enterprise HDD, Archive HDD, SSD and so on.
Western Digital Vs Seagate External Hard Drive Review Top Ten
Seagate acquired Samsung's hard disk business in the year of 2011, so Seagate is not owned by Samsung. On the contrary, Samsung's HDD business is owned by Seagate.