Recommend me the best & largest single HDD

[HunterAP]

I need an HDD for storing videos and similar files that I won't need to access often nor need incredible read/write speeds for, I just need one drive to reliably store this files in. What is the best bang-for-the-buck HDD out there right now?

[PineyCreek]

What country are you in?  I would say something in the 4 to 6 TB is the sweet spot right now.  You don't need a high speed drive.  Is warranty important to you?

[HunterAP]

Just now, PineyCreek said:

What country are you in?  I would say something in the 4 to 6 TB is the sweet spot right now.  You don't need a high speed drive.  Is warranty important to you?

In the east coast of the US, and I don't need speed to be anything amazing, just good enough to play (at most) 4k video from. Warranty is pretty important.

[SupaKomputa]

avoid seagate. use hitachi or toshiba if you can find one.

make sure its brand new not refurbished.

slower cctv hdd might be suitable for your application.

store the files and keep the hdd in a dry place.

make sure you run it once a while to check if the motor not dead.

[PineyCreek]

Here's some pertinent links for your consideration.  I agree with @SupaKomputa, although I would add Western Digital if you get a higher end drive, such as the Red or Gold drives, but you'll pay a premium for them.  If you're willing to sacrifice warranty, you could get a WD Blue I suppose.  The drives with the best warranty are either going to be labeled high performance or enterprise/datacenter grade, or archive/NAS/RAID.

 

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-2017/?highlight=Q4+2017

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12075/best-consumer-hdds

 

This might be a good deal if you're ok with a 2 year warranty:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Performance-Desktop-Internal-HDWE150XZSTA/dp/B013JPLKQK/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1518939021&sr=1-4&refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_four_browse-bin%3A8067154011%2Cp_n_feature_keywords_three_browse-bin%3A4990426011%2Cp_n_feature_keywords_six_browse-bin%3A6158683011

 

WD Gold 4tB, 5year:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Gold-Enterprise-Class-Hard-Drive/dp/B01AV1697A/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1518939131&sr=1-3&refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_four_browse-bin%3A8067154011%2Cp_n_feature_keywords_three_browse-bin%3A4990426011%2Cp_n_feature_keywords_six_browse-bin%3A6158683011&dpID=51PzJ3ULzFL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

 

This is probably a safe bet too, although I'd verify the warranty:

 

https://www.amazon.com/HITACHI-0F14683-Ultrastar-A7K4000-internal/dp/B008RTDN6E/ref=sr_1_6?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1518939363&sr=1-6&refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_four_browse-bin%3A8067154011%2Cp_n_feature_keywords_three_browse-bin%3A4990426011%2Cp_n_feature_keywords_six_browse-bin%3A6158683011

 

You might be able to catch a sale at a local electronics shop on a decent USB 3.0 external drive as well.

 

Watch out for OEM drives, sometimes the warranty differs from drives with retail packaging.

 

For my own rigs, my spinning rust drives are usually Western Digital, 6 WD Black and 4 10k RPM drives in the past 10 years or so. Had 2 Blacks fail, but I was using them in RAID and WD didn't like that when I tried to return them.  They took them anyway though.  I've had one old DeskStar drive fail in a laptop about 15 years ago after 2 years of usage.

[AdrianG001]

On 2/18/2018 at 12:38 PM, HunterAP said:

I need an HDD for storing videos and similar files that I won't need to access often nor need incredible read/write speeds for, I just need one drive to reliably store this files in. What is the best bang-for-the-buck HDD out there right now?

Samsung PM1633a (16TB)

If you know the basic differences between magnetic storage (HDDs) and solid-state storage (SSDs), you’ll know that SSDs are generally smaller than HDDs (or cost more per GB, at least). So, you’d expect the largest drive in the world to be an HDD, but surprisingly, it’s a solid-state drive. The 16 TB PM1633a was first announced in mid-2015 at the Flash Memory Summit in California, and even a couple years after, it still remains the largest storage drive in the world. Not only can it hold 16TB of data, all of that capacity has been packed into a small 2.5″ form factor SAS drive, using 3D NAND technology. 3D NAND basically means that rows of transistors used to store information are stacked vertically like files in a cabinet, rather than laying beside one another on a flat surface

Performance doesn’t disappoint either, with 1200MB/s read and 900MB/s write speeds reaching close to the limits of the 12Gbps SAS port. Needless to say, such a massive SSD is targetted at enterprise data centers, where capacity per physical space is an important concern.

The PM1663a’s price is accordingly too high for any normal consumer, with most industry technology retailers selling it at around $10’000 (around 60 cents per GB, which isn’t actually that bad). Not that anyone would really need 16 TB of super-fast data storage for personal needs anytime soon. Still, it’s reassuring to know that the tech industry is pushing forward in all fields of computing, not just performance.

 

Adrian Gates

Sr. System Admin - Apps4Rent

 

[HunterAP]

Thing is, I'm already going to use an SSD for the OS and programs, all I need is reliable HDD storage to supplement that. I do agree to say away from Seagate drives: every one I've had has died or gotten corrupted within a short period of time (compared to any WD or Hitachi drives I've had).

 

I do have a WD Gold 6TB in my main system right now, but I got it during a black Friday sale back in 2016, and it has been holding up very well. I guess it comes down to a comparison between different WD drives to different Hitachi drives.

 

I did have an external Toshiba drive that held up very well, but I don't know how good 5heir internal drives are rated.