What Drive Should I Get? A Guide to the Mechanical HD Market

[Dogway]

What consumer grade model do you think is best for cold storage? I was thinking green but after reading a bit probably red? I'm not sure what makes (technically) WD Ae more geared to this purpose.

 

edit: mmmmm reading around a bit, maybe hitachi?

[IdeaStormer]

Something missing from the guide is the basic spec's which are sometimes used by vendors to hide or disguise a particular range of drives from you because they either don't sell it, don't have it, or are trying to offload drives and selling them as something they are not.

 

Need to list out RPM, SATA/SAS version, Cache size (something that is often hidden). Those are the headline features vendors list or hide but include part of the name.

 

Agree with including Hitachi, those things rock and even Fujitsu, we have a couple storage servers chock fully of those and running great.

[Dogway]

Question is what is Hitachi (HSGT) now? WD bought Hitachi's 2.5" department, and Toshiba their 3.5" (stronger) department...

I read good things about the Deskstar 5K4000, where is that one now?

[TheProfosist]

Question is what is Hitachi (HSGT) now? WD bought Hitachi's 2.5" department, and Toshiba their 3.5" (stronger) department...

I read good things about the Deskstar 5K4000, where is that one now?

Desk = 3.5in so it's with Toshiba though idk the model...

[-TesseracT-]

I just wanted to say, you should abbreviate harddrive HDD and not HD.

[-MOBIUS-]

What about Hitachi?

[TheProfosist]

What about Hitachi?

They are dead and we're split up between Toshiba (3.5) and WD (2.5).

[Blade of Grass]

Something missing from the guide is the basic spec's which are sometimes used by vendors to hide or disguise a particular range of drives from you because they either don't sell it, don't have it, or are trying to offload drives and selling them as something they are not.

Need to list out RPM, SATA/SAS version, Cache size (something that is often hidden). Those are the headline features vendors list or hide but include part of the name.

Agree with including Hitachi, those things rock and even Fujitsu, we have a couple storage servers chock fully of those and running great.

Some of the individual things (specifically RPM and storage sizes) are listed in the "Information at a Glance" section, the rest can be found by clicking on the "More Info" link beside each drive series. Sadly, there are just too many possible combinations of RPM, cache, and SATA for me to list them all.

Although having a guide for HGST or Toshiba drives would be useful, I do not have the experience/knowledge to do a write up of their line ups. If you would like to (following the same/similar format), I'd be more than happy to add it to the OP.

What consumer grade model do you think is best for cold storage? I was thinking green but after reading a bit probably red? I'm not sure what makes (technically) WD Ae more geared to this purpose.

edit: mmmmm reading around a bit, maybe hitachi?

To be quite honest, I don't know. I've never had to deal with cold storage personally, but I would think that all drives should be relatively similar?

[fritzgoesrawr]

I'm planning to get a WD Caviar Green for storage purposes only. I've read all around the internet that the Green one has a head parking issue which degrades the drives lifespan. How about the newer WD Green (EZRX), does it still have the same issue or they already applied a permanent fix for that without using the wdidle utility?

 

Thanks!  :lol:

[IdeaStormer]

I'm planning to get a WD Caviar Green for storage purposes only. I've read all around the internet that the Green one has a head parking issue which degrades the drives lifespan. How about the newer WD Green (EZRX), does it still have the same issue or they already applied a permanent fix for that without using the wdidle utility?

 

Thanks!  :lol:

 

Stay away from Green drives unless you like to wait. Sure you may not access it much but when you do, just think about it do you want to wait? (wait more than a regular drive).

 

Want to be Green, unplug the drive when its not in use, uses Zero watts when not plugged in. That's for a regular drive I'm talking about (7200 RPM), stick with the standard it works.

[han_han08]

a very good read.. i was planning on putting my 320gb blue WD on raid..it seems it is not suggested..
i was thinking i could prolong it's life thru raid...*sigh*

[han_han08]

Question is what is Hitachi (HSGT) now? WD bought Hitachi's 2.5" department, and Toshiba their 3.5" (stronger) department...

I read good things about the Deskstar 5K4000, where is that one now?

i thought WD bought the entire HGST.lol

late news for me

[TheProfosist]

i thought WD bought the entire HGST.lol

late news for me

Oh they tried but I believe it was the EU that invalidated it because they would have too much of the 3.5in drive market.

[JTB123]

I don't have the room or budget to put together a NAS yet so in the mean time would a WD red or green be best to just back up my data? These drives would be housed in my regular tower as well, I'm thinking of just getting a single 4TB one for now. 

 

Price wise there isn't much between the red and greens so I would assume red would be ideal but curious what you guys would recommend. 

[asusfan]

to add to this interesting topic there is also to factor in 2.5" drives vs 3.5" drives. as you know most standard 3.5" drives run at 7200rpm and the 2.5" run at 5400rpm, however there is also some 2.5" drives that run at 7200rpm which is something i am looking to get for my new build as there is only room for 2x 2.5" drives and i got a SSD for windows on order and need to find out if a 2.5" 7200rpm drive is as fast as a 3.5" 7200rpm drive?

then there is also faster speed drives at 10,000rpm and more.

plus Seagate make SSHD (hybrid drives) something to look into as there are apparenly faster than a simular HDD.

that brings me to my second question is a Seagate 2.5" SSHD at 5400rpm faster than a 2.5" HDD at 7200rpm?

 

so many options.

[TheProfosist]

to add to this interesting topic there is also to factor in 2.5" drives vs 3.5" drives. as you know most standard 3.5" drives run at 7200rpm and the 2.5" run at 5400rpm, however there is also some 2.5" drives that run at 7200rpm which is something i am looking to get for my new build as there is only room for 2x 2.5" drives and i got a SSD for windows on order and need to find out if a 2.5" 7200rpm drive is as fast as a 3.5" 7200rpm drive?

then there is also faster speed drives at 10,000rpm and more.

plus Seagate make SSHD (hybrid drives) something to look into as there are apparenly faster than a simular HDD.

that brings me to my second question is a Seagate 2.5" SSHD at 5400rpm faster than a 2.5" HDD at 7200rpm?

 

so many options.

I have 4 WD Scorpio Black 750GB drives in my Chibi PC builds. The 1TB SSHD drives are quicker but significantly more expensive. Velociraptors without the heatsink should fit in my hotswap so maybe ill get those someday.

[MaxBunny]

plus Seagate make SSHD (hybrid drives) something to look into as there are apparenly faster than a simular HDD.

that brings me to my second question is a Seagate 2.5" SSHD at 5400rpm faster than a 2.5" HDD at 7200rpm?

 

so many options.

An SSHD apparently uses a special cache which will learn your most used apps and have them set for faster execution, but you need to use them during multiple startups and shutdowns before the SSHD will make them faster. Other than that it's supposed to be the same as a regular HDD for everything else.

[TheProfosist]

An SSHD apparently uses a special cache which will learn your most used apps and have them set for faster execution, but you need to use them during multiple startups and shutdowns before the SSHD will make them faster. Other than that it's supposed to be the same as a regular HDD for everything else.

It should cache reads and writes to a certain extent as well. either way they likely would work well in the use case I have due to raid.

[ace mckane]

I don't have the room or budget to put together a NAS yet so in the mean time would a WD red or green be best to just back up my data? These drives would be housed in my regular tower as well, I'm thinking of just getting a single 4TB one for now. 

 

Price wise there isn't much between the red and greens so I would assume red would be ideal but curious what you guys would recommend. 

 

If you want to put it into a NAS in the future, get a Red. If not, a Green will be fine. Greens aren't suited to NAS usage though, and I've seen plenty of them fail.

[asusfan]

An SSHD apparently uses a special cache which will learn your most used apps and have them set for faster execution, but you need to use them during multiple startups and shutdowns before the SSHD will make them faster. Other than that it's supposed to be the same as a regular HDD for everything else.

yes this is true and good for say a one only drive that you have windows and normal files, games on etc. but if you want it just for games / media etc i am not sure it will be as fast as a normal HDD at 7200rpm. but if a hybrid drive at 5400 can run games as fast as a 7200 HDD then it might be good depending how good the cache works.

for sure if the SSHD was at 7200rpm then i would go for it, but as i have an SSD for windows, i can't find the transfer speeds of both types of drive in 2.5" format. to compare the bench tests and see which is the best option.

[sgtcool]

I like my seagate barracuda 7500rpm

It loads hardline really fast the same as BF4 on SSD

[jsjgamer]

You did forget the WD Velocirapter 10K RPM HDD's. 

[TheProfosist]

You did forget the WD Velocirapter 10K RPM HDD's.

those really are not relevant with cheap SSD meeting or beating the at cost per gigabyte.

[Blade of Grass]

You did forget the WD Velocirapter 10K RPM HDD's.

They're in the description area, just not the information at a glance. I'll add it later today

[Olivertheguy]

Do you think you could do a section on the pro/cons of buying hard drives and ssds used of ebay.etc?