hard drive Which is the more reliable hard drive for safe storage?

[-X-]

I had a hard drive failure and I need to get a new one, decided to expand the storage while I'm at it and going from a 1TB (500gb was for games 500gb for storage) I'm looking to get a seperate 1TB for games/programs and a 2TB for storage. Due to a limited budget and specific needs the choice mostly comes down to 4 HDDs (1 for games/programs one for storage). The one for games/programs I don't need to be anything fast like an SSD or NVMe, the budget let's me choose between a 256gb SSD, 120gb NVMe or a 1TB HDD and anything under 1TB doesn't do it. The one for storage also due to budget limitations is mostly around 2TB HDDs and not high class professional storage models and an SSD/NVMe is far from the 2TB I need. The one for storage has to be as reliable as it can for the price.

 

Currently the choice is between these:

 

Games/programs HDD: Western Digital Blue 10EZEX 7200rpm 1TB vs Seagate Barracuda Pro ST1000LM049 7200rpm 1TB 

Storage: Western Digital Blue 20EZRZ 5400rpm 2TB vs Seagate SkyHawk ST2000VX015 (?rpm) 2TB 

 

I've always used Western Digital (Blue), I decided to research the difference between their Seagate equivalents in case they have advantages over WD's Blue and Green series and among the mixed reviews and experiences that vary from extremely good/bad experiences from both WD and Seagate the thing that is most common is that Seagate compared to WD is generally faster but at the cost of reliability. As I said there are good/bad and great/horrible stories for both brands, but the most frequent is that Seagate has faster but less reliable HDDs while WD has slower but more reliable HDDs. A bit of info that caught my attention is that Seagate HDDs aside from being less reliable in general, tend to fail suddenly and the chances of saving any files from them are quite low to none. I also read that WD has a different type of head for reading that doesn't physically touch the disk while the head in Seagates has physical contact, true or not the low reliability of Seagate is still a common comment everywhere ignoring the way the head reads the disk. 

 

So, which of this is more or less true? What would you suggest between these and maybe another choice (the choice between brands is low where I live, I think there are some Toshiba HDDs though I haven't looked them up and I'm not sure how available are any other brands for mechanical drives). The WD Blue 2TB 20EZRZ as I know is the old WD Green drive which was for storage purpose and I currently have that one, though I've got it a bit more than a year ago. The HDD for games/programs would probably be fine as either the WD Blue or Seagate Barracuda Pro (though the small speed difference isn't that important, a more reliable drive would be just a bit nicer), but the HDD for storage absolutely has to be the most reliable for that price range, the speed can be as slow as it needs like the usual 5400rpm but the files have to be as safe as possible (that's why the info that Seagate isn't as reliable and that the files can't be saved as easily or at all in case of a failure and the general bad reputation they have on reliability is pushing me away from buying Seagate for storage, but I'd like to hear thoughts about this) 

 

Thank you 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just get one hdd for both games and storage, I don't see a reason to get 2. ALso bigger hdds are faster.

 

All of the drives between brands will be about the same, and there really aren't big changes between brands.

 

 

Just be sure to backup the drives and you won't lose data. Don't try to get a super reliable drive, it doesn't exist. 

 

Id just get a single 4tb barracuda, blue, or toshiba x300. They will all preform and work about the same. Toshiba would be my pick as I think there norm smr and a bit faster cause 7200rpm, but a 5400rpm would work fine here.

 

 

[LIGISTX]

29 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Just get one hdd for both games and storage, I don't see a reason to get 2. ALso bigger hdds are faster.

 

All of the drives between brands will be about the same, and there really aren't big changes between brands.

 

 

Just be sure to backup the drives and you won't lose data. Don't try to get a super reliable drive, it doesn't exist. 

 

Id just get a single 4tb barracuda, blue, or toshiba x300. They will all preform and work about the same. Toshiba would be my pick as I think there norm smr and a bit faster cause 7200rpm, but a 5400rpm would work fine here.

 

 

This...

 

@-X- A single drive makes more sense, and will almost certainly be cheaper than 2 smaller drives. A single 4 TB would work well.

 

As far as reliability, it really is a total luck of the draw. On average, over very large datasets, they all are about as reliable as each other. Everyone has had a failure that influences their personal opinion, but when you look at folks like google or backblaze, they really do show failure rates between brands to be very, very similar. You have MUCH more chance of bad luck in the form of a defect, UPS kicking or dropping your package (which being a harddrive, that can lead to issues...), or just random bad luck.

 

Unfortunately, the best way to have safe data is to have backed up data. Backblaze is relatively cheap and offers unlimited storage. For your critically important data, it may be worth backing up to the cloud.