Reliable HDD recommendations?

[Yahliamir]

Hello everyone! I am in need of a new hard drive.

 

So here's the deal, I have 3 drives in my PC at the moment

• A Samsung 850pro SSD 128GB with windows and frequently used programs and games installed
• A Seagate (? not quite sure about this one) 500GB hard drive I have salvaged from an old laptop (around 6-7 years old)
• And a WD green 2000GB hard drive which used to be an external drive (around 4-6 years old)

 

Now, recently both of these hard drives have been acting weird (Being slower than usual, long time until files show up in windows explorer, when I try to rename a new folder specifically in the music library, win explorer stops responding [library in the 500GB drive) this might be caused by drivers not installed properly idk but 

 

I have in these drives my original music projects and short recordings which are priceless to me, and after having one corrupted file that won't open I kinda started to freak out (luckily I had back up of the file on my phone)

I since made sure to have a copy of that folder on both drives + my Dropbox just in case, but I'd like to get a new drive ASAP. 

 

I have several questions:

1. Are there brands more reliable than others?
2. This drive will be pretty much just storage, is 5400rpm enough for that? 7200rpm are significantly pricier.
3. Should I go with a 1x4TB, 2x2TB, or maybe A single 3TB right now and get another in the future?
4. Dedicated backup drive/raid 1? I don't think I'd like to spend x2 the money but maybe I should?
5. Was thinking about a single WD red 3TB for now (As they say they are more reliable, and black costs about twice as much), any comment?

I may get another 500GB SSD anyway for programs and games in the near future, but I don't think I can afford this kind of storage in SSDs

 

tl;dr I need a reliable, roomy, hardrive for my sick beats. any recommendation?

 

(Also this is my first post and I'm a forum n00b in general so if this is in the wrong section or something I apologize)

 

[Enderman]

WD red, they are as fast as the old WD blacks which is pretty good for a hard drive.

Also quieter, cooler, and longer lifetime.

Don't do raid, if you don't want to lose data use a separate drive and make backups.

[Peter Falconio]

You should just buy a 4TB 7200rpm hard drive from western digital.

[rcarlos243]

21 hours ago, Yahliamir said:

Hello everyone! I am in need of a new hard drive.

 

So here's the deal, I have 3 drives in my PC at the moment

• A Samsung 850pro SSD 128GB with windows and frequently used programs and games installed
• A Seagate (? not quite sure about this one) 500GB hard drive I have salvaged from an old laptop (around 6-7 years old)
• And a WD green 2000GB hard drive which used to be an external drive (around 4-6 years old)

 

Now, recently both of these hard drives have been acting weird (Being slower than usual, long time until files show up in windows explorer, when I try to rename a new folder specifically in the music library, win explorer stops responding [library in the 500GB drive) this might be caused by drivers not installed properly idk but 

 

I have in these drives my original music projects and short recordings which are priceless to me, and after having one corrupted file that won't open I kinda started to freak out (luckily I had back up of the file on my phone)

I since made sure to have a copy of that folder on both drives + my Dropbox just in case, but I'd like to get a new drive ASAP. 

 

I have several questions:

1. Are there brands more reliable than others?
2. This drive will be pretty much just storage, is 5400rpm enough for that? 7200rpm are significantly pricier.
3. Should I go with a 1x4TB, 2x2TB, or maybe A single 3TB right now and get another in the future?
4. Dedicated backup drive/raid 1? I don't think I'd like to spend x2 the money but maybe I should?
5. Was thinking about a single WD red 3TB for now (As they say they are more reliable, and black costs about twice as much), any comment?

I may get another 500GB SSD anyway for programs and games in the near future, but I don't think I can afford this kind of storage in SSDs

 

tl;dr I need a reliable, roomy, hardrive for my sick beats. any recommendation?

 

(Also this is my first post and I'm a forum n00b in general so if this is in the wrong section or something I apologize)

 

 

1. HGST/Hitachi according to statistics floating around is the most reliable brand.

2. 5400RPM is enough, at the moment you can get a good value 7200RPM drive

3. Depends on your budget.

4. Mirroring is useful if you cannot afford to have a downtime on your system. RAID1 is not a backup, it is a redundancy so you have no downtime.

5. WD RED is indeed a good reliable drive, but you have to make sure you fix the head park issue otherwise stay away from it.

 

HGST Deskstar 7K3000 3TB, HGST Ultrastar 7k4000 3TB is good value and can be had for less than $60 at the moment.

both use PMR (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording) which is a must have for good write speed.

 

3TB 7K3000 uses 600GB platters while 4TB 7K4000 uses 800GB platters. Because the 7K4000 has a denser platter, it will have higher throughput speed and lower latency.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hitachi-Ultrastar-7K4000-HUS724030ALE641-3TB-64MB-cache-Internal-Hard-Drive-/272404141771?hash=item3f6c8d56cb:g:xiIAAOSwYIxX9vUu

 

[RamiFede]

I had the same problem with two WD caviar green 2tb and one WD caviar black 1tb.

About HDD, I recommended migrate to Seagate. In this case Seagate FireCuda (it's hybrid) for gaming, and for general storage Seagate BarraCuda or Toshiba X300.

For PC desktop I think 7200rpm is better always.

My favorite combination would be: one SSD 120gb (or 128gb), one HDD seagate firecuda 2tb (or 1tb) and one 3tb 7200rpm 128mb cache for general storage.

I think raid for backup is not necessary.

 

[Yahliamir]

Thank you all for responding so fast! 

 

I didn't really think about ordering from Ebay or something but it does come out cheaper (no surprise there, really)

HGST are pretty rare here (Israel) so I didn't really think about those before

14 hours ago, rcarlos243 said:

5. WD RED is indeed a good reliable drive, but you have to make sure you fix the head park issue otherwise stay away from it.

I was not aware of this issue, and couldn't really figure this out, can you please explain? If it's such a deal breaker I just might go with a HGST drive.

 

6 hours ago, RamiFede said:

I recommended migrate to Seagate

I read bad things about Seagate in general, although I also read that they fixed their reliability issues. It all seems pretty contradictory?

 

ATM a 3TB HGST Ultrastar 7k4000 for about 90$ plus shipping sounds pretty neat, does the shipping poses a significant risk to the drive?

 

[rcarlos243]

5 hours ago, Yahliamir said:

Thank you all for responding so fast! 

 

I didn't really think about ordering from Ebay or something but it does come out cheaper (no surprise there, really)

HGST are pretty rare here (Israel) so I didn't really think about those before

I was not aware of this issue, and couldn't really figure this out, can you please explain? If it's such a deal breaker I just might go with a HGST drive.

 

I read bad things about Seagate in general, although I also read that they fixed their reliability issues. It all seems pretty contradictory?

 

ATM a 3TB HGST Ultrastar 7k4000 for about 90$ plus shipping sounds pretty neat, does the shipping poses a significant risk to the drive?

 

 

WD drives especially the Green variant has very aggressive head park timer (3 seconds) to save power. Some WD Red drives have head park timer of 8 seconds to save power.

 

The problem is it puts excessive wear and tear on the heads so much that plastic bits holding the actuator arm will wear out in just a couple of years. It is especially fatal if the hard drive is in a constant use like on a server environment.

 

The solution is while the drive is brand new you have to either set the head park timer to 300 seconds or disable it

 

You can view the current head park count in windows by using CrystalDiskMark and look for load/unload cycle count.

[Yahliamir]

Alright, tbh I'd rather not deal with this kind of things even though it sounds easy enough.

 

I have decided to not deal with the taxes and difficult warranty of buying from overseas (on second inspection it isn't THAT much cheaper anyway). So I have this (hopefully) last question

 

Is the HGST Deskstar NAS a good option as well? I can't find the other models you spoke of here, @rcarlos243 (H3IKNAS30003272SE is the model name if it helps)

It is 7200rpm and 3TB as well, so faster than the RED but not that much more expensive. I think I'll go with this one, I would love to get your seal of approval though, since you are much more knowledgeable than I am

Either way thank you very much!

[rcarlos243]

16 minutes ago, Yahliamir said:

Alright, tbh I'd rather not deal with this kind of things even though it sounds easy enough.

 

I have decided to not deal with the taxes and difficult warranty of buying from overseas (on second inspection it isn't THAT much cheaper anyway). So I have this (hopefully) last question

 

Is the HGST Deskstar NAS a good option as well? I can't find the other models you spoke of here, @rcarlos243 (H3IKNAS30003272SE is the model name if it helps)

It is 7200rpm and 3TB as well, so faster than the RED but not that much more expensive. I think I'll go with this one, I would love to get your seal of approval though, since you are much more knowledgeable than I am

Either way thank you very much!

2

WD RED is not a bad drive at all, in fact HGST is owned by WD and the new high capacity Helium filled HGST and WD are basically the same design.

http://www.storagereview.com/wd_red_8tb_review

http://www.storagereview.com/hgst_ultrastar_helium_he8_8tb_enterprise_hard_drive_review

note: the WD RED PRO is the exact same hardware as HE 8TB, the difference is the secret sauce (firmware)

 

From what I can tell based on the P/N https://www.hgst.com/sites/default/files/resources/DS_NAS_ds.pdf

The drive model is HDN724030ALE640 and it is using a 600GB five platter design http://rml527.blogspot.com/2010/10/hdd-platter-database-hitachihgst-35.html

 

[Yahliamir]

So not as good as a denser platter if I understand correctly? Would the RED be better?

 

I can see the RED PRO is also quite a bit more expensive

Edited July 16, 2017 by Yahliamir

[rcarlos243]

3 minutes ago, Yahliamir said:

So not as good as a denser platter if I understand correctly?

Sorry I mistyped some info about.

3TB 7K3000 uses 600GB platters, 7K4000 uses 800GB platters on higher capacities(4TB) and 7K6000 uses 1.2TB platters on 6TB

 

The biggest performance differentiators on an HDD is

-Magnetic storage data recording technology: SMR(extremely poor write performance) or PMR(better performance)

-Platter Size: the denser the platter is the higher the throughput and less latency it will have

-Rotation Speed: How fast the Platters are spinning (usually 5400RPM, 5900RPM, 7200RPM). 

-Cache size: useful when you are handling lots of small files that can fit on the buffer so the drive can reorder it for higher efficiency. It also helps with wear and tear by reducing unnecessarily repetitious reads and writes.

[Yahliamir]

So would you say the HGST Deskstar NAS is good enough? It's about 20-30% cheaper than RED pro or BLACK, but is also 7200rpm which I kinda want at this point... haha greedy me

[rcarlos243]

25 minutes ago, Yahliamir said:

So not as good as a denser platter if I understand correctly? Would the RED be better?

 

I can see the RED PRO is also quite a bit more expensive

It all comes down on

-What you need

-How much you are willing to pay

 

As I said both WD Red and HGST are good drives.

If you can find this forum and sign up without any issues, fixing the head park is a piece of cake.

 

[Yahliamir]

Fair enough haha, if that's the case I'll go with the HGST for the 7200rpm, thanks a ton for the help!

[jeffery7466]

Great info here!

[seagate_surfer]

Hi Yahliamir,

 

there has been a great amount of comments to your question already. We would like to add that you should base your choice of drive(s) on your personal projected usage behavior. Are you planning to run a NAS (24/7, multiple drives, RAID) or are you just planning to run your drive to store and periodically play your beats?

 

NAS drives, as mentioned, are rated for 24x7 use, and also designed to push bigger workloads year round. For example, a standard Seagate BarraCuda drive is rated to handle 55TB of data a year, whereas a standard Seagate IronWolf (NAS) drive is rated to handle 180TB a year, bump up to the IronWolf Pro, and that is rated for 300TB per year. So how hard the drive is going to work does come into play as well. There is also the warranty to consider. A standard BarraCuda drive comes with a 2-year warranty, whereas a standard IronWolf drive comes with a 3 year warranty, and the IronWolf Pro comes with a 5 year warranty. One reason that some users prefer to buy NAS rated drives is that warranties can be longer for them.

NAS drives are also designed to handle more vibration than your standard desktop drives, the reason for this: Imagine a NAS enclosure with, say, 4-8 huge 8TB or 10TB drives all stored right next to each-other in that enclosed space. Hard drives used in this capacity tend to have the potential to "beat up" on each-other just with the raw force of all of those spinning platters and the operations taking place on them, causing performance and longevity issues. So the firmware on NAS drives is designed to account for, protect against issues with, and manage these vibration considerations. Some NAS drives actually have what are called RV (Rotational Vibration) Sensors on them as well for this same reason.

 

If you are not considering this, you are good to go with a regular desktop drive like a BarraCuda or BarraCuda Pro.
Whichever drive you go for, evaluate your projected usage behavior first and make your drive(s) decision in regards to that scenario.

Enjoy your new drive(s)!

[Yahliamir]

23 hours ago, seagate_surfer said:

there has been a great amount of comments to your question already. We would like to add that you should base your choice of drive(s) on your personal projected usage behavior. Are you planning to run a NAS (24/7, multiple drives, RAID) or are you just planning to run your drive to store and periodically play your beats?

True, I do not plan on building a NAS machine, but rather looking to get the superior reliability I understand these drives provide.

As for Seagate drives, there isn't much variety at all here in Israel and I would like to buy locally for the easier support and warranty, so it isn't really an option.

 

Sadly, the HGST drive I was going to buy is out of stock (and since it's an older model it won't be restocked as I understand it)

 

At this point the choices are these:

Do I go with the cheaper WD RED or other 5400rpm drive, or pay a bit more for a 7200rpm RED pro/BLACK (which are tbh more expensive than what I intended to spend)? 

 

And does anyone know if the RED pro has the same head parking issue as the RED? I'm not worried about it too much anymore but I'd like to know if that's something I'd need to deal with if I buy one.

[Murilo_A]

First of all, run a memory test and see if the problem is not RAM instead of the drives.

Anyway, 

1. As said before, Hitachi, WD is good, but Hitachi still better, just make sure to not buy Seagate

2. Depends on your work load, if you can afford, go for 7.2K, if you don't have a large budget, 5.4K should be enough if you don't work if very heavy files

3. If the 2x2 is not going to be used as redundancy or backup, go for 1x4.

4. If you can't loose anything you have on your drives, a backup drive is really recommended, redundancy has it's benefits, backups are made in real time (don't know how to explain better, you probably know how RAID 1 works), but write speeds are slower and in case of PSU failure (or smth like that) that kills both drives, you'll need to send your drives to a data recovery center. this is way less unlikely to happen with external drives.

 

Note: I didn't read everything, so I don't know if you already made a choice, or what other users said, that's only my opinion =P

[Yahliamir]

On 7/19/2017 at 3:59 AM, Murilo_A said:

First of all, run a memory test and see if the problem is not RAM instead of the drives.

Anyway, 

1. As said before, Hitachi, WD is good, but Hitachi still better, just make sure to not buy Seagate

2. Depends on your work load, if you can afford, go for 7.2K, if you don't have a large budget, 5.4K should be enough if you don't work if very heavy files

3. If the 2x2 is not going to be used as redundancy or backup, go for 1x4.

4. If you can't loose anything you have on your drives, a backup drive is really recommended, redundancy has it's benefits, backups are made in real time (don't know how to explain better, you probably know how RAID 1 works), but write speeds are slower and in case of PSU failure (or smth like that) that kills both drives, you'll need to send your drives to a data recovery center. this is way less unlikely to happen with external drives.

 

Note: I didn't read everything, so I don't know if you already made a choice, or what other users said, that's only my opinion =P

Mhm I will see if I can turn one of the older drives into a backup drive (as stupid is it sounds to use a failing drive as backup I guess it's still unlikely they will fail at the same time, and I don't have a better option atm)

 

My new 3tb WD red arrived today, thank you all for your helpful and educational info!