Western Digital strips Seagate of number one spot

[Matthew DeCarlo]

In March, iSuppli released hard drive market share figures for the fourth quarter of 2009 which ranked Seagate as the industry's top drive manufacturer, selling 49.9 million units. At the time, Western Digital was right on Seagate's tail with 49.5 million units, but recent numbers suggest the Lake Forest, Calif.-based disk manufacturer has finally mustered up the might to trounce its longtime rival.

During the first quarter of 2010, Western Digital moved a record 51.1 million hard drives, and that 3.2% boost was enough to surpass Seagate's 50.3 million shipments and 0.8% sequential increase. Research outfit iSuppli believes Western Digital might lose revenue with its "low-cost model," but that approach will aid the company in its quest to gain more business and remain perched above Seagate.

Meanwhile, Hitachi clinched third place, growing 13.9% – the strongest among the top 5 HDD makers. Toshiba/Fujitsu and Samsung claimed the fourth and fifth spots, both selling less units than the previous quarter.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/39171-western-digital-strips-seagate-of-number-one-spot.html

 

[Lurker101]

About time too. Seagates quality has gone to **** since they hit the 1TB mark, while Western Digital have become the most reputable mechanical hard drive manufacturer.

 

[Guest]

Does the sales number for Seagate include all of the RMA's and replacements they had to send out due to their failure rates of up to 50% for the first year of operation?

 

[Guest]

While I am a LOYAL Western Digital owner, and have been for many years, posting things like that without any type of proof is just worthless. Nice work.

 

[seefizzle]

I have four hard drives in my computer right now. Two WD's and two Seagates. Does that mean that I'm on the fence? Or, just that I bought all of my hard drives when they were on sale?

 

[windmill007]

Western digital has never let me down and I have used a lot of them for repairs and personal use. Sure they all have problems once in awhile but I see a lot less with WD and there warranty replacement is easy as pie.

 

[Route44]

I have two 250 gig 7200.4 Seagate drives; one for each PC system and they are running very fine. I am no fanboy, however, because I've run WDs in systems as well.

What got Seagate in such hot water was their SATA 7200.11 series that was a MAJOR fail. The 11 series is infamously known for their firmware update that bricked a slew of 11 harddrives.

They lost a ton of customers and WDs Caviar Blacks are a very nice product.

From what I have been reading the 7200.12 series is fine but there are a lot of former customers that are "gun shy" so to speak.

 

[Lurker101]

Unfortunately, everyone I know turns to me to sort their computer issues and every single HDD death has been a Seagate HDD.

 

[TorturedChaos]

As far as hdd failures go I have seen them about evenly in most manufactures. But back when I was buying my first HDD ppl who knew more than me recommended WD, and I have stuck with them ever since. So im kinda happy to see my favorite brand on top .

Right now I own 3 WD HDD's, 2 of which are Caviar Blacks, and I need to buy another to expand my storage space.

 

[BMfan]

I have had two seagate hdd fail on me and on both occasion they were 160gb's in enclosures,when the 1st one went i thought it was the hdd but when the replacement only lasted about 6 months i figured it was over heating in the enclosure.I had two 500gb 7200.11 drives and not one of them failed on me.
WD's in SA aren't worth it,just bought a 750gb seagate yet a 500gb WD is only R50 cheaper.

 

[captaincranky]

The WD Caviar "Blue" 160GB SATA 150Gbs that came with my Emachine T-5026 is in its 6th year now, and doin' fine. It gets heavy use too.

Beyond that., I have a mix of WD Caviar Blacks an Blues, they're actually a twitch noisier than any of my Seagates.

I even have a 640GB Barracuda 7200.11,. It was never involved in the "recall", and works fine.

But as LookinAround said, I'm a little bit afraid to commit to any of the high capacity Seagate drives after the scandal.

I'm using a Barracuda 7200.12 320GB as a system drive in my i3-530 machine. It's quiet, fast, cool, and thin. I suppose time will tell if it stays that way.

 

[Kevone07]

I have to say, not a big fan of WD. Ever since my bad experience with one but I guess thats just my bad luck. I am more of a maxtor fan which I am disappointed thats not up there on the pie chart.

 

[captaincranky]

I have to say, not a big fan of WD. Ever since my bad experience with one but I guess thats just my bad luck. I am more of a maxtor fan which I am disappointed thats not up there on the pie chart.

Maxtor doesn't exist anymore, Seagate bought them. I have to say, you seem to be the one fan of the drives that everybody hates.

 

[Kevone07]

lol, did not know that but go Seagate!!! My 1tb Maxtor is the bomb. I am sure seagate will improve later

 

[BMfan]

What's to improve? they had one faulty batch last year

 

[PanicX]

I love these hard drive brand disputes more than Mac vs PC and Intel vs AMD. Mainly because with the other disputes people often through down real statistics and facts to spin their argument, but here, its 100% anecdotal and bias.

I've used many different brand drives through my career and there's only been a few cases where 1 brand has out shined or left a bad taste in my mouth. Most notably was the Maxtor 40g drives that were liquid bearing and thin compared to standard, had a stock of 40 of those drives which had 100% failures within 4 months.

But even with all my experience here, I defer my selection to the recommendation of a local drive recovery center that has saved my clients data numerous times. Through my reasoning they've seen far more failed drives then I ever will and have a general better distinction on the odds of getting a bad apple from any particular brand. They've recommended the same brand to me consistently for the past 10 years. In fact, I just called them again before responding to this article to see if anything changed recently in their recommendation.

And to my surprise their recommendation is still the same, Seagate. Even in light of the fiasco with the 1.5TB drives Seagate offered that had really high failure rates. They said they still get fewer Seagates in then any other brand. The only addition this time was that for laptop drives Samsungs are on par with Seagate in terms of reliability.

Alas, more anecdotal evidence for you guys, enjoy!

 

[Burty117]

Strangely I have found seagates to be more reliable in laptops and WD more reliable in desktops? I've only been with my IT company 3 years and that's what I have found.

Although I wish seagate had an equal challenger to the raptor drives? Or am I being stupid and just haven't looked properly?

 

[Appzalien]

I was always a Maxtor fan myself and when Seagate bought them out I was still able to get them for a while. I have had a few bad experiences with WD and always out of warranty. The first failure was with what I found out was "the click of death" and that drive will never run again. I have had a few issues with Seagate but always within warranty so I guess I vote for Seagate until someone comes out with better. I like my samsung opticals, maybe they can make a good HDD too.