There are some things I'm not a fan of with the Backblaze Pods. For example:
1. The fact that the drives literally "sit" in the chassis. They aren't bolted to the chassis at all. That could mean that vibrations affect the drive more as the vibrational energy is not passed through to the chassis, and it could be that Seagate's design is more susceptible to vibrational problems than other brands.
2. They are literally sitting on the SATA port (which changes the axis of the vibrational energy in relation to gravity) as well as their relation to gravity as a whole.
3. I don't think I've seen much data on what their disk temperatures are like. It could be they are running hotter than what this community considers acceptable. I know when I had Seagates last they did run a bit hotter than other drives that were supposed to be equivalent in all the other major ways. From my experience, Seagates are particularly sensitive to problems at higher temperatures than other brands.
There's just too many variables. One thing I think we can all agree on though.. if Seagate had a 40%+ failure rate across their entire product line Seagate would be out of business. There's just no way that they could stay competitive with that kind of failure rate. :P