What Drive Should I Get? A Guide to the Mechanical HD Market

[Columbo]

I have only had one drive fail that I could not fix/repair using software and external USB HDD readers. A 640GB WD Caviar Black drive. I have had many WD's Caviars. They went from calling their top of the line consumer HDD Caviars to WD black. The drive that failed says WD Caviar Black so it was a gradual transition. 

 

I think a lot of the failures are user error today vs. drive failure. Not saying drives do not fail but the computer is only as good as the one repairing/building and maintaining it. 

 

With that said I just ordered a Seagate Barracuda 3TB drive. It was going to be either that or the 3TB Toshiba. The WD black models are too pricey for a spinner drive. 

[gellen]

I've tried to look up for a reliable ssd for my motherboard but i couldnt even find what type should i buy. 

My motherboard is GA-Z77X-D3H... I think it only supports mSata? Am I right? 

 

Thank you .

[gtx_viper]

How does the Iron Wolf, WD Gold and HGST Ultrastar He compare? For instance the IronWolf 10 and Ultrastar He10 are about £320 but the WD Gold 10 is £385. The IronWolf 12 and Ultrastar He12 are about £400 with the WD Gold 12 expected to be in the £500 region.

 

On a long term storage reliability only basis which would you opt for? Is the WD Gold worth the extra money?

[adman29]

So, what's the prevailing opinion of HGST & Toshiba Drives nowadays?

[Curufinwe_wins]

On 11/24/2017 at 5:31 PM, adman29 said:

So, what's the prevailing opinion of HGST & Toshiba Drives nowadays?

HGST is owned by WD, and the products generally sit between the WD Enterprise and WD Consumer models. If you can find HGST Reds/NAS drives for a comparable price to literally any NAS Seagate or WD  (Non pro) equivalent, I'd highly recommend the HGST.

 

Toshiba is hmmmm. Cheap. It's all good enough for standard use cases. But I'd want to see a significant discount before using them in  NAS.

[Curufinwe_wins]

On 10/13/2017 at 8:30 AM, gtx_viper said:

How does the Iron Wolf, WD Gold and HGST Ultrastar He compare? For instance the IronWolf 10 and Ultrastar He10 are about £320 but the WD Gold 10 is £385. The IronWolf 12 and Ultrastar He12 are about £400 with the WD Gold 12 expected to be in the £500 region.

 

On a long term storage reliability only basis which would you opt for? Is the WD Gold worth the extra money?

The WD gold and Ultrastar HE are identical drives at the same capacity. Always go for the cheaper. WD owns HGST. HGST under WD is the one pushing HDD tech for WD. I'd highly recommend them over Seagate personally.

[DerHof]

Need some mass backup external storage... 8-10TB. What are the recommendations these days? I've always been a WD/Seagate user. I see brands like Lacie and G-Technology on Amazon but know nothing about them....

[kurama1099]

wil the ssd prices be dropping any time soon?

 

[HeartOfGermany]

Just a Question, if allowed. Many listed drives do not officially support RAID or just in a limited ammount like 2-10 drives.

 

Why? If I tell linux:

sudo mdadm -C --raid-level=6 -"#driveammounts#=20" /dev/sda1.......... /dev/sda20

it should work flawless, unless MDADM has a software limit. And in a RAID card? Would it not work with more than 10 drives?

 

I cannot find a reason, why it should not work. (only on hardware RAID, if drives turn off and get kicked out of the array on WD green for example)

[seagate_surfer]

Hi HeartOfGermany!

Most of the cases the amount of drives in a RAID array shouldn't represent any type of limitations, we have seen people discussing about running 50+ drives in their set ups, the amount of drives that can be configured are usually not restricted by the hard drives, but by the user's other equipment like their motherboard, RAID controller, etc.

[jim33]

i want one hard disk of 10 TB to buy.. i am between Seagate Barracuda Pro 10TB and Hitachi Deskstar NAS 10TB and Ultrastar He10

which is the best?? and which you are suggested me to buy??

and what is the difference between these 3??
which is faster,, quality and speed??

is better to buy 2 Seagate Barracuda Pro 6TB instead of one hardisk with 10 TB?>?

can you tell me please??

what is more safe and better?

to buy one hardisk with 10 TB? or to buy 2 Seagate Barracuda Pro 6TB ?
look i am between these 3 hardisks


Seagate Barracuda Pro 12TB



Hitachi Deskstar NAS 10TB


Ultrastar He10

i will use one of these drives for games ,movies music,, add files,,, delete files, to play games in this hardisk,, to uninstall , and all these things
so

my question is which from these 3 hardisks to, buy and what is better to take 2 pairs Seagate-Barracuda-Pro-6TB or to buy one Seagate-Barracuda-Pro-12TB

or to buy 2 pairs from Hitachi Deskstar NAS 6TB? instead of one hardisk Hitachi-Deskstar-NAS-10TB

what you suggested me to buy??

which is the best????
Ultrastar He10
Hitachi Deskstar or baraguda??? 

which is better and which is faster??> with less failures?? 
and which is the difference between 128 and 256 cashe?

can you see any difference between 128 and 256 cashe?

 

Ultrastar He10 is only for nas and server?? is not for destop??

from Ultrastar He10 i see 2 kinds sas and SATA 

i didnt know that there are 2 kinds
Ultrastar He10 is only for nas and server?? is not for destop?? 

because baraguda PRO 1O in the decription says for destop ,, nas and server

[seagate_surfer]

Hello jim33,

 

I am going to paste the data sheet of the BarraCuda Pro for further reference down below, definitely the Barracuda Pro fits better on home PCs, home servers and/or Entry-level direct-attached storage devices (DAS). For NAS severs we manufacture the IronWolf and for surveillance/security cameras we make the Skyhawk series.

 

When you use 2 separated drives instead of only one you increase your chances of recovering your data, electronics devices will degrade just because of the fact that they are being used, so at some point everything will come to an end and that sometimes causes data to be unrecoverable, any professional will always recommend you to have a back up of your data in a separated drive in case the first one fails: https://www.seagate.com/www-content/datasheets/pdfs/barracuda-pro-12-tbDS1901-7-1707US-en_US.pdf

[jim33]

someone said  that 

 

 

2 disks is more of a risk. if you run them as a pair if one fails the other may not be far behind trying to handle the increased workload

people only think of seagate drives as a risk because of something that happened 10 years ago with faulty drive motors. its long in the past now and they use a different supplier

 

the smaller the cpapacity a drive is, the faster it has to spin to read data. the read heads move faster everything moves faster

 

 

 

the faster stuff moves, the faster it wears out

 

 

 

i repalce more 4 and 6tb drives at work than i ever do 10tb drives

 

what is  your  opinion??

[jim33]

what is  your  opinion  for  

 

HGST Ultrastar He10 10TB Enterprise Hard Drive  is  like Barracuda Pro???

 

do you believe  that helion  tecnology is  very risky??

[jim33]

and one  more  question why  the  most people prefer  HGST from baracuda pro and  segeate disks/?

 

they say that  segeate disks has  lot of  failures  from  hitachi is  it  true?>?

 

or  the last  years  segeate has proved  their  hardisks  for less failures??

[seagate_surfer]

On ‎6‎/‎19‎/‎2018 at 7:18 AM, jim33 said:

someone said  that 

 

 

2 disks is more of a risk. if you run them as a pair if one fails the other may not be far behind trying to handle the increased workload

people only think of seagate drives as a risk because of something that happened 10 years ago with faulty drive motors. its long in the past now and they use a different supplier

 

the smaller the cpapacity a drive is, the faster it has to spin to read data. the read heads move faster everything moves faster

 

 

 

the faster stuff moves, the faster it wears out

 

 

 

i repalce more 4 and 6tb drives at work than i ever do 10tb drives

 

what is  your  opinion??

Not necessarily the size of a drive determines the longevity or the speed that data is read or written (IOPS) and of course if one drive fails in a RAID configuration the other will pay the consequences. To know what's the real speed a drive spins or reads data the best thing to do is going into the data sheet and check.

 

A drive that's smaller don't have "less life" than another that has more capacity, a 4TB drive is as reliable as a 6TB drive but there is something that makes them different and it is the "load cycle". You can completely fill out a hard drive a certain amount of times, empty it out and then fill it out again and so on but that has also a limit, for example let's say you have a 2TB hard drive that supports 500K load cycles meaning that you can fill it out completely 500K times and let's say that you also have a 6TB HDD with the same 500K load cycles. If you put the two devices to work under the same workload of course the smaller one will get burnt faster because you are completing the life time cycles quicker, it is not the same a 2TB HDD with 500K load cycles than a 6TB HDD with 500K load cycles, the bigger device will last much more time to complete each one of those cycles and thus lasting more. 

 

So in other words, if you have a heavy workload try to use the bigger devices as much as you can because their load cycle will always be bigger than the smaller ones.  

[jim33]

hi i wan to buy one from these 2 WD Black or WD gold??

which is the best? and which is the difference between them.?

do you believe that black WD is better from gold?
i want one from these hardisks for my destop ,, for games music and movies ..

so which to buy from these 2>??>

does black and gold have failures like segeate baraguda pro??

[seagate_surfer]

20 hours ago, jim33 said:

hi i wan to buy one from these 2 WD Black or WD gold??

which is the best? and which is the difference between them.?

do you believe that black WD is better from gold?
i want one from these hardisks for my destop ,, for games music and movies ..

so which to buy from these 2>??>

Looking at the specs, the difference in IOPS speeds are minimal, Gold runs over 200 mostly due to double cache size but the read/write are about the same, the Gold is a lot less power hungry and there is nothing wrong with using it in a desktop computer but there is only a very little advantage over a black WD drive, they both have the same warranty for 5 years and enterprise level hard drives are manufactured for 24/7 heavy load cycles, not really for home usage.

 

• WD Gold Enterprise-Class Hard Drive: https://www.wdc.com/products/internal-storage/wd-gold-enterprise-class-hard-drive.html#WD2005FBYZ
• WD Black Performance Desktop Hard Drive: https://www.wdc.com/products/internal-storage/wd-black-desktop.html#WD1003FZEX

 

20 hours ago, jim33 said:

does black and gold have failures like segeate baraguda pro??

What failures specifically? 

[jim33]

so  which to  buy WD Black or WD gold??  for  the destop??

[seagate_surfer]

I will reply by sating that the best time to get an enterprise level drive is when you need an enterprise level hard drive, the drives in real usage don't represent much of a difference as stated earlier, so you can spend some of your money in other parts and not only in one drive. Either/or is ok!

[jim33]

?
 

[jim33]

??

[jim33]

hi i want to buy one ^6TB hardisk i am between in

WD6003FZBX 6TB SATA 6Gb s 7200 rpm 256MB


https://www.wdc.com/products/internal-storage/wd-black-desktop.html#WD6003FZBX



and in 6TB BarraCuda Pro

https://www.seagate.com/gb/en/internal-hard-drives/hdd/barracuda/

what is the difference between so from these 2 which is the best??western black 6TB and Seagate baraguda pro 6TB??

which from these 2 is better to buy?/

do you believe that WD black drives TB are better from Seagate BarraCuda pro 6B??



can you give me some analyze good infomartion about these 2 disks please?/ black and Seagate BarraCuda pro ??



6TB BarraCuda Pro or western black 6TB??

i want the hardisk for games movies and music and storage.. also to delete and install games ,, add movies delete movies. and to run the games from the hardisk.,.



i, dont want nas.



i want it for destop use..

[seagate_surfer]

These two devices are pretty much the same, they both are 7200 RPM and offer you 5 years warranty and share the same amount of load cycles. If you want to point to the differences then you need to look under specifications at the columns:

• Cache: Seagate has 256MB and WD has 128MB of cache. More caches is good for when you use several different type of data or applications, the drive stores in the cache the most frequently used data to have it available for when is requested and that helps minimize wait to load times.
• Nonrecoverable Read Errors per Bits Read, Max: Seagate has 1 per 10E15 and WD has 1 per 10E14. This number means the amount of possibilities that a sector could fail, not every body likes math but 1 per 10E15 means that there are less possibilities for one sector to fail than 1 per 10E14.

I don't really believe you are gonna get regretted for buying one or the other, get the one that suits your budget better.

[Stefan Payne]

Are there any really quiet 4TB Drives on the Market?
I mean EARX level of quietness (have two 2TB ones of those).

 

The 4TB EZRX is pretty annoying and loud. The 4TB MD04ACA400 are even worse but not by much....

 

The ST4000DM004 seems OK, but seems to resonate with my Deep Silence 5B a bit (and its a rather flimsy Drive as well a bit more metal would have been nice)...

That's so far the quietst 4TB HDD, though I'm not really satisfied.

 

Any better alternatives that I missed??