harddrive Some Hard Drive Recommendations

[BotherRed]

Hello and good morning, everyone.

I'm here on behalf of my non-techy friend, trying to get him what he wants for Christmas. That is a simple Raid 1 setup with two 8TB hard drives.
He has one 1TB Samsung Evo SSD in the 2.5-inch form factor, not M.2, so there is plenty of space for the drives from a motherboard standpoint. He has a Defined Mini C from Fractal with two 3.5 bays in the basement, so plenty of space for the hard drives. I've asked him, and he doesn't seem to have any additional SATA cables, so I would need to pick some up as well.

If I were getting them for myself, I wouldn't mind trying to get something pre-owned or refurbished and using CrystalDiskMark to make sure they're good. But since they're for a friend, I would prefer they be new, just to be safe.
It's been a hot minute since I last messed around with hard drives, and I don't know which brands are respected and which to avoid. I know of Seagate, but that's only because they are in some LTT videos, but I am open to recommendations.

He wants bulk storage with redundancy, nothing too extremely fancy.

[porina]

Where I am, Seagate Barracuda 8TB are SMR drives which offer by far the best new TB/cost ratio. Since they are SMR their performance isn't exciting, but if it is just for general storage it'll do. I have 5 of these in NAS configurations where their performance is not a problem. Note the warranty of them has both hours/year and transfer/year guidance so they're not 24/7 rated.

 

If you want something higher performing, get any old 7200 rpm CMR drive typically from NAS or Enterprise series, like Seagate Ironwolf (Pro)/Exos, Toshiba N or MG series. WD tend to be more expensive/slow so I've not looked at them much recently.

 

Also consider if mirror is the best option, if a separate backup is also needed in addition or instead of.

[BotherRed]

2 hours ago, porina said:

 

Also consider if mirror is the best option, if a separate backup is also needed in addition or instead of.

While that would be extremely helpful, they don't really have space for something like that right now. I'd love to set up a NAS for them and their friends. But well, we live in current year and between buying food, rent, bills, etc. and getting a whole new NAS set up (Even if I was buying second hand stuff and scoring good deals on marketplace) Priorities dictate spending that money elsewhere. 

Only want to splug for X-Mas for him. I'll def look into those Seagate drives you recommended. 

[leclod]

3 hours ago, porina said:

Where I am, Seagate Barracuda 8TB are SMR drives which offer by far the best new TB/cost ratio.

Here, in Switzerland the cheapest 8TB drive is an Exos and it comes at 25USD/TB (to accept an SMR drive it'd need a significant price advantage)

(While a 16TB drive comes at 21USD/TB, same total price as the barracuda 24TB cmr, just saying)

Edited December 14, 2025 by leclod

[BotherRed]

6 minutes ago, leclod said:

Here, in Switzerland the cheapest 8TB drive is an Exos and it comes at 25USD/TB (to accept an SMR drive it'd need a significant price advantage)

(While a 16TB drive comes at 21USD/TB, same price as the barracuda 24TB cmr, just saying)

I'd ask if you could buy and ship one to me, but by the time you factor all the costs in. I'm certain it'll be just as much, if not more. Then, buying it locally. I wish I could just go into a store and pick them up. But the nearest Microcenter is hours away. 

[leclod]

20 minutes ago, BotherRed said:

I'd ask if you could buy and ship one to me, but by the time you factor all the costs in. I'm certain it'll be just as much, if not more. Then, buying it locally. I wish I could just go into a store and pick them up. But the nearest Microcenter is hours away. 

Usually US prices are lower,

Not long ago a 28TB drive could be had there for less than 300usd

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/external-hdds/huge-28tb-seagate-external-hdd-is-a-data-hoarders-dream-and-just-hit-an-all-time-low-grab-this-massive-black-friday-storage-upgrade-for-less-than-usd11-per-tb

Edited December 14, 2025 by leclod

[porina]

1 hour ago, leclod said:

Here, in Switzerland the cheapest 8TB drive is an Exos and it comes at 25USD/TB (to accept an SMR drive it'd need a significant price advantage)

Are they available from a reputable store? Reason I ask is, I can find them cheaper if I buy from either ebay or Amazon marketplace, but I don't trust them at all. There's a significant risk they're the relabelled used drives pretending to be new that's going around.

 

1 hour ago, leclod said:

Not long ago

Prices have been going up this year on HDs too. Kinda kicking myself for not expanding my NAS when they were still at old lower prices around summer or earlier.

 

Checking 3 major UK stores I've used and trust to have real stock, at 8TB, typical price for the Barracuda SMR then was around £130. Now it's from £170. Other models now include WD Blue £200, Ironwolf (7200rpm) £210. Many drives are out of stock. I wouldn't expect restock of new smaller capacity enterprise drives.

 

Ooh, the place that has the Ironwolf has a 5% off if you buy 3 or more. This is kinda tempting because it'll set my storage up for the foreseeable future and I don't expect things to get any cheaper. Edit: scratch that. It only applies to buying 3 different things.

[porina]

1 hour ago, BotherRed said:

While that would be extremely helpful, they don't really have space for something like that right now.

I wasn't proposing a dedicated NAS or anything like that. If the data is important, then consider how it is protected as you want more than one copy. A mirror like you mentioned only gives you protection from mechanical failure. If one disk dies, you still have another copy. But if you make a mistake and delete or overwrite a file, it's gone. If we put aside buying even more stuff, then with 2 disks, you could use them as a semi-manual backup. Use one drive to hold the main copy, and regularly copy changed files to the 2nd drive which should be kept elsewhere somehow (not same system). This can be automated. While not real time protection, having a separate 2nd copy can give you more protection. There is more management overhead with this approach. Mirror can be good enough if you understand and accept the risk.

 

How were you going to do the mirror? Through Windows?

[BotherRed]

11 minutes ago, porina said:

 1> Use one drive to hold the main copy, and regularly copy changed files to the 2nd drive which should be kept elsewhere somehow (not same system). This can be automated. While not real time protection, having a separate 2nd copy can give you more protection.

2> There is more management overhead with this approach. Mirror can be good enough if you understand and accept the risk.

 

3> How were you going to do the mirror? Through Windows?

1: That does sound interesting, but doing the Raid 1 is more than enough tech for my friend; he's very much not a tech person, and I think trying to do more and change the already established plan I've built with him would only serve to stress him out. To put it bluntly, he was going to buy an external drive just because he was scared of opening his PC to put anything in it. I personally would be interested to learn more, but for now. Just the method that I've already told him and coached him through would be enough for him right now.

2: He does understand and accepts the risk. This is just going to be pure storage for him, and he understands the risk that comes with mirroring.

3: If it's possible, we'd do it through the bios to try and side-step as much window stuff as possible. If his MB doesn't support that, then we'll have to do it through Windows. 

[leclod]

36 minutes ago, porina said:

Are they available from a reputable store? Reason I ask is, I can find them cheaper if I buy from either ebay or Amazon marketplace, but I don't trust them at all. There's a significant risk they're the relabelled used drives pretending to be new that's going around.

What I meant rather was it's (probably) not worth buying an SMR 8TB and the facts supported my claim.

To me, all local selling shops are legit until they aren't.

To me, the only not legit local stores I've experienced, are shops that went bankrupt and didn't deliver (it did happen to me maybe 15 years ago).

(by the way, not easy cheating the serial numbers while checking warranty or firmware updates, which I use, for example) 

Edited December 14, 2025 by leclod

[porina]

3 minutes ago, leclod said:

What I meant rather was it's not worth buying an SMR 8TB and the facts supported my claim.

Do you mean at the pricing I presented, you would not get the SMR and go for one of the other CMR options? I've long debated that same question, and given I need a LOT of drives for my NAS, that price difference makes a difference. However I kinda do agree, that today, I'd rather get the Ironwolf which I've now found at £200 from a supplier I haven't used in ~8 years, compared to another SMR at £170. The proportion difference was bigger in the past.

 

3 minutes ago, leclod said:

To me, all local selling shops are legit until they aren't.

To me, the only not legit local stores I've experienced, are shops that went bankrupt and didn't deliver (it did happen to me maybe 15 years ago).

Fair enough. I was just making sure it wasn't trying to compare to sellers you never heard or, and never will again, on Amazon marketplace or ebay.

 

9 minutes ago, BotherRed said:

3: If it's possible, we'd do it through the bios to try and side-step as much window stuff as possible. If his MB doesn't support that, then we'll have to do it through Windows. 

I'd rather do the opposite. Use Windows because it is then easier to transport to other windows systems if you ever need to. Since each drive is accessed normally by the system you get full features, which might not be possible if you do it in BIOS raid.

 

It's been a very long time since I did a software mirror, but be extra careful with proper shutdowns. If you don't, they have a nasty habit of triggering a full resync which on drives this big is still going to be well over 10 hours.

[BotherRed]

7 minutes ago, porina said:

 

It's been a very long time since I did a software mirror, but be extra careful with proper shutdowns. If you don't, they have a nasty habit of triggering a full resync which on drives this big is still going to be well over 10 hours.

Noted, thank you for the info. I'll change my plans accordingly then and be sure to pass along the message and info to my friend once he gets it set up. Is there anything that I'd need to tell him to be careful of with shutdowns?

[porina]

1 minute ago, BotherRed said:

Is there anything that I'd need to tell him to be careful of with shutdowns?

Just shut down normally through Windows. Don't yank power or reset unless absolutely needed e.g. after a bad crash.

[BotherRed]

Just now, porina said:

Just shut down normally through Windows. Don't yank power or reset unless absolutely needed e.g. after a bad crash.

Got it thank you. I'm sure he shouldn't be doing any of that stuff. 

If I had the budget to spare, I'd happily send him a UPS as well lol
That'd be a super good gift for him as well as he's an artist so preventing crashes would be a major boon to him. 

[leclod]

12 minutes ago, porina said:

Do you mean at the pricing I presented, you would not get the SMR and go for one of the other CMR options?

£130 for 8TB doesn't sound cheap enough, but I'm not following 8TB drives really, I don't know for sure.