Hard drive suggestion

[NeoNight1986]

Budget (including currency): 150-300

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Emulators (i do own the games used), Music, Video, maybe steam/GOG game.

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

I have an end goal of making a NAS with all my multi media in the future. However for now i want to create a framework for my Collections right now. I am looking to get a 8TB at least HD. This should carry me for at least a few years. Ultimately i am looking for suggestions on the following.

I am looking for RPM of 5400 or 7200. How much does this really effect Games? steam games? Emulated games? music videos. stuff like that. 

We have several types of Drives. Regular, NAS, Enterprise. Eventually i want to build a NAS. But this may not be for a few months, Would it be best to buy a normal HD for now and just buy a NAS drive. later when i get serious about making it. Or buy the drive ill want to use eventually now and simply transition it to my NAS when its later built.

While i am a bit of  a techy, i still am a novice in many more technical areas. Any tips, tricks, or suggestions would be helpful.  

[Hairless Monkey]

Unfortunately your plan probably won't work as smoothly as you expect.

 

A NAS will typically use some kind of RAID for redundancy. Building a RAID requires the deletion of any data that is currently on any of the drives. Buying a drive now, which you intend to add to a NAS later, will require you to do some fancy stuff later in order to not lose your data.

 

But to answer some of your other questions:

• The RPM won't matter so much in games. It's still slow compared to an SSD.
• Get a NAS drive if that is the intended ultimate use for the drive.
• It's probably better to just get a regular, smaller drive for your computer now, and build the NAS later.

[NeoNight1986]

2 hours ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

Unfortunately your plan probably won't work as smoothly as you expect.

 

A NAS will typically use some kind of RAID for redundancy. Building a RAID requires the deletion of any data that is currently on any of the drives. Buying a drive now, which you intend to add to a NAS later, will require you to do some fancy stuff later in order to not lose your data.

 

But to answer some of your other questions:

• The RPM won't matter so much in games. It's still slow compared to an SSD.
• Get a NAS drive if that is the intended ultimate use for the drive.
• It's probably better to just get a regular, smaller drive for your computer now, and build the NAS later.

Ultimately i do plan on a nas system and will be getting nas drives for it. but... I am not sure if it will be anytime soon. Thank you very much for your suggestions i will likely get something for now just a normal 8TB drive and look to something better/more when i get to building the NAS machine. 

Thank you!