So to sum up the data, it sounds like:
- WD seems to have the most reliable drives of those tested, with Toshiba being a relatively close second
- Some models of drives are significantly more likely to fail than others, with some having a ~6% annual failure rate vs another model from the same company at 1%
- Seagate had a rough year when it comes to reliability
- It’s hard to tell if capacity affects drive life as the drives being tested have been in use for different lengths of time
Very disappointing that Match Group, being effectively a monopoly, doesn’t give us the one benefit we would get from it being a monopoly: industry-wide bans.
Normally, you’d need a whole bunch of companies to agree on a universal standard for communicating bans between each other and agreements to stick to it (similar to standards like USB) but here they could just do it. They even collect the information, they just don’t act on it.