Yev from Backblaze -> We love Hitachi drives. They make us really happy. Unfortunately they are also more expensive than WD and Seagates, and since our #1 factor in drive purchasing is price, we don't get them very often :(
While operating under the same corporate umbrella, the engineering divisions of WDC and HGST are being kept separate for now as part of an agreement with the Chinese to get their approval for the acquisition. The upshot of this is that HGST drives are going to be a completely separate product line for at least the next few years.
Technically yes, especially from a manpower perspective (Takes folks to replace the drives), and it gets factored in to our "what are we willing to pay" model, so far, cheaper drive still win out over longevity. Now, this is different from other people with large data farms, we operate a bit differently, but thus far cheaper drives make more business sense. If that ever changes, we'll switch to the good stuff :)
http://venturebeat.com/2011/03/07/western-digital-buys-hitac...