Hard drive Recommendations

[BCreation]

Something along the lines of 1TB or 2TB. What brands are the most reliable and what do you guys recommend?

[MrWatch]

Western Digital Caviar Black is always a top choise for a 1TB HDD. A little expensive, but excellent. If it is too much, there is also the caviar blue line too.

[SnakeDoc]

For some reason I usually have Seagate drives in my PC and I've got 4xWD Drives in my NAS.

I've also found Seagate to be more reliable. But at the end of the day, it's apples v apples.

I've got WD greeens in my NAS as it's only used for network backups, so I don't need the performance.

[BCreation]

Forgot to say that this will be used for mainly storage because Ill have an SSD

[Broxigar]

Where and what would you be using these drives for?

NAS = WD Red

Performance (games, media editing) = WD Black

Just extra space = WD Blue, Green (eco drive = slow), Seagate Barracuda

Need server/enterprise reliability = WD RE4, Seagate Constellation

[BCreation]

Where and what would you be using these drives for?

NAS = WD Red

Performance (games, media editing) = WD Black

Just extra space = WD Blue, Green (eco drive = slow), Seagate Barracuda

Need server/enterprise reliability = WD RE4, Seagate Constellation

I would be using it to store pictures, videos that I edit, photos from photoshop, stuff like that.

I was thinking to get some Seagate Backup pluses? Maybe a 1TB hard drive in the rig for edited videos and photos, then have a backup, and use the backup pluses for raw pictures that are on facebook or raw videos. not sure

[Glenwing]

Where and what would you be using these drives for?

NAS = WD Red

Performance (games, media editing) = WD Black

Just extra space = WD Blue, Green (eco drive = slow), Seagate Barracuda

Need server/enterprise reliability = WD RE4, Seagate Constellation

Note that WD RE4 has high reliability, but it needs to be run in an array (RE = RAID EDITION). It seems to have issues being used in normal desktop usage.

[Broxigar]

Where and what would you be using these drives for?

NAS = WD Red

Performance (games, media editing) = WD Black

Just extra space = WD Blue, Green (eco drive = slow), Seagate Barracuda

Need server/enterprise reliability = WD RE4, Seagate Constellation

Internal drive the WD Black would probably be your best option, second would be the WD Blue or Seagate Barracuda.

I'm pretty sure Seagate uses the Barracudas in the external drives, so can't go wrong there.

One thing I would actually recommend coming from a server environment is to do everything on internal drives and then have external drives making regular automated backups (daily, weekly depending on info backed up).

Worst thing is to lose a drive only to fins out no backups!

[Richard Burton]

Western Digital. They have a range of drives all for different applications. For the best performance a WD Black drive is a great choice.

[ZeVo]

I agree the WD Caviar Black is regarded as the most reliable. If you need it simply for storing movies/pictures, I'd settle on the Caviar Blue. But if it is anything else really, especially recording game footage, I'd recommend the Black.

[Helltech]

Western Digital Red and Green if you don't care about speed, and care about low noise/heat. Blue if you want something faster. Black if you want a little faster and more reliability.

[Guest]

I've seen nothing but problems from WD drives (Green's and Reds) across 7 different builds so I now use either Seagate Barracuda's (2TB = $99) or WD Blacks which are a fair bit more expensive. Don't bother with the slower 5400rpm drives as you'll quickly find yourself wishing for more power.

[Metallurgico]

I've got 4 WD drives for 3+ years: Black, Blue, Green and a Scorpio. Never a problem!

[dchen12]

Any WD (Black, Blue, Red, or Green) depending on what speeds you're looking for and price.

[Huskie]

I really like an SSD + Caviar Green combo...

[Paperchase]

It's been stated before. It depends on your needs. Personally I wouldn't recommend Seagate. (I've had trouble with them in the past).

• You want reliability in raid? Go with the WD Enterprise RE drives.
  
• Do you need lightning fast performance? Go with the WD Caviar Black.
  
• Do you want a cheap drive that is power efficient, and you don't care much about performance? Go with a WD Green drive.
  
• Want something inbetween a WD Caviar Black and a WD Green drive? Go with the Blue drive.
  
• Do you keep your computer on at all times, do you own a server, or in need of your computer being powered on 100% of the time, but you still wan't close to top performance? Then go with the WD Red drives,
  
• Do you want a whisper quiet Hard Drive, like in an office environment? Den go with the AV-GP series of drives.
  

[Dr3nz4r]

Thebest reliable brand i can sugesst you is Seagate. If your dont want Seagate for any reason go with Westen Digital Caviar RED. Both are absolutly outstanding harddrives and they're offering a very good performence.

[jakemp]

I too like WD. Their Red drives have a 3 year warranty, iirc, their black, Raptor, and RE4 drives have 5 year warranties, and the blue/green are 2.

Others have mentioned how they differ, but I would also like to add, that the current gen platter size is 1TB, and will yield very high (at least to me) read/write speeds even at 5400 RPMs; my REDs are 5400 RPMs and will pull 80-160MB/s from inner to outer edge, averaging 120MB/s. The latency is going to be slightly worse on 5400 RPM drives, about 22ms instead of 10 (or ~7 with a Raptor), but with larger files, you probably won't notice this on a storage disk.

Also, don't RAID anything but the RE4's and the Reds, google TLER for more info.

[Guest]

Looking at this thread we've got quite a few WD fanboys - Linus's trip to CES may be in danger..

[looney]

Note that WD RE4 has high reliability' date=' but it needs to be run in an array (RE = RAID EDITION). It seems to have issues being used in normal desktop usage.[/size']

RE4 drive are NOT limited to RAID, the fact that they are called RAID EDITION simply refers to the fact that the driver are tested and build for optimized performance/ reliability in raid, but this does not limit them in any way to being for RAID only.

[looney]

also for normal data storage i use seagate barracuda drives or hitachi drives.

for my system drives i used to use black drives (using ssd's now) or RE4 drives for my server system drives.