# Most reliable hard drives nowadays?



## ithehappy (Oct 3, 2019)

I only have a WD Black 1 TB and 500 GB Evo for my system and finally I am in need of upgrading to a 4TB hard drive as the space I have simply is way too low. I had an external Sony HD-E2 hard drive, 2 TB, but it isn't working anymore, didn't even use it that much at all, but it just doesn't work suddenly! So I have lost faith on these external drives. 

Now I don't want to spend much. I see that some folks are selling WD Red drives at good price. Can I get one of those? I mean are WD Reds reliable drives (4TB versions)? Also I see that the Reds are actually 5400 RPM while the Black I am using is 7200 RPM. For day to day usage how much will I notice this performance difference? I play my movies, load photos and stuffs from this drive, only those need an installation go to the SSD, so you get what I mean.

I am just looking for the most reliable internal drive which is available in current market. A hard drive which I can rely upon, should run for long time and won't crap out on me like the external Sony did.

PS- It doesn't necessarily be an internal one anyway, I can go for a Passport Ultra or something, but like I said, I have lost faith on them external drives.


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## Athlonite (Oct 3, 2019)

You wont go wrong with another WD Black unless it's purely for storage then you can go Red if you want


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## EarthDog (Oct 3, 2019)

Pick one. The overall difference between the popular brands and most models are with a percent so. Sometimes bad drives wont fail and good drives fail. It's a crapshoot outside of anomalies.


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## newtekie1 (Oct 4, 2019)

EarthDog said:


> Pick one. The overall difference between the popular brands and most models are with a percent so. Sometimes bad drives wont fail and good drives fail. It's a crapshoot outside of anomalies.



This, they're all good enough.  I wouldn't get a 5400RPM drive though unless it was just for storage.


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## ithehappy (Oct 4, 2019)

Athlonite said:


> You wont go wrong with another WD Black unless it's purely for storage then you can go Red if you want


WD Black or WD Red Pro, 7200 rpm ones, both cost a lot, like 1.5 times more than a regular 5200 rpm WD Red drive. Hmm. My usage like I said it is, mainly storage, but movies/tv shows and other media consumption stuffs will be done from that only.
Should I completely rule the external ones out? They can't compete in reliability with internal ones?


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## Final_Fighter (Oct 4, 2019)

i just buy white label drivers that have the specs i want. check the smart info to insure new then put them to work. saves money too.

example https://www.ebay.com/itm/New-4TB-64...ty!96019!US!-1&LH_BIN=1&LH_ItemCondition=1000


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## potato580+ (Oct 4, 2019)

5xxx rpm, becouse the price drope, i got my used baracuda 3tb just for $20+, altho 7k rmp might have btter write speed but the price still not cheap
pretty reliable $20 storage drive




health checker pointing to 70%, but i tested and no single bad sector


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## Lorec (Oct 4, 2019)

potato580+ said:


> 5xxx rpm, becouse the price drope, i got my used westren digital 3tb just for $20+, altho 7k rmp might have btter write speed but the price still not cheap


There are two things in this world I would never do: 
1)Eat yellow snow
2)Buy a used hard drive (well if seller show screenshots in crystal disk then maybe...) 

Too much risk, better to save on something else


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## potato580+ (Oct 4, 2019)

y


Lorec said:


> There are two things in this world I would never do:
> 1)Eat yellow snow
> 2)Buy a used hard drive (well if seller show screenshots in crystal disk then maybe...)
> 
> Too much risk, better to save on something else


yes but forjust daily use excell extension backup, ive been use this for a year, the health still tend on 70% or so, this is the buck bang


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## Athlonite (Oct 4, 2019)

ithehappy said:


> WD Black or WD Red Pro, 7200 rpm ones, both cost a lot, like 1.5 times more than a regular 5200 rpm WD Red drive. Hmm. My usage like I said it is, mainly storage, but movies/tv shows and other media consumption stuffs will be done from that only.
> Should I completely rule the external ones out? They can't compete in reliability with internal ones?



Should you completely rule an external HDD short answer no. I have a 2TB WD Elements drive which is about 7yrs old now and still going good so it's paid for itself a few times over by now but it mostly sits idle until I want something on it or to put something on it I also have a 4TB WD Passport which I use for Movies and TV programs which gets used far more often for streaming and never skips a beat aswell so really it's up to you and how you want to use it


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## ithehappy (Oct 4, 2019)

Athlonite said:


> Should you completely rule an external HDD short answer no. I have a 2TB WD Elements drive which is about 7yrs old now and still going good so it's paid for itself a few times over by now but it mostly sits idle until I want something on it or to put something on it I also have a 4TB WD Passport which I use for Movies and TV programs which gets used far more often for streaming and never skips a beat aswell so really it's up to you and how you want to use it


Ok sir, Thanks. I will either get a WD Red 5400 rpm one or a My Passport unit, while the latter being pretty cheap due to is demand in current market. I just need storage, don't care how it comes internal or external.
One more thing, as my Sony one crapped up after just using it for a handful occasions only, does the external drives degrade if they sit idle or something? I mean more usage is better or something like that? I know sounds weird but I can't find a reason for a hard drive to be dead only after 10-12 sessions of usage!


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## Roddey (Oct 5, 2019)

I have a WD black 1tb for about 7 years and since going to ssd maybe access it a few times a year for photos. Sleeping most of the time. Still going strong.


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## timta2 (Oct 5, 2019)

ithehappy said:


> Ok sir, Thanks. I will either get a WD Red 5400 rpm one or a My Passport unit, while the latter being pretty cheap due to is demand in current market. I just need storage, don't care how it comes internal or external.
> One more thing, as my Sony one crapped up after just using it for a handful occasions only, does the external drives degrade if they sit idle or something? I mean more usage is better or something like that? I know sounds weird but I can't find a reason for a hard drive to be dead only after 10-12 sessions of usage!



The two major issues with external drives is that they are portable and get beat up, through abuse and lack of care, and they also are usually in cheap plastic cases, that make great insulators, and cause them to run hot.


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## MazeFrame (Oct 5, 2019)

EarthDog said:


> Pick one. The overall difference between the popular brands and most models are with a percent so. Sometimes bad drives wont fail and good drives fail. It's a crapshoot outside of anomalies.


This

Also: For a NAS, have drives from various brands so they will fail at different times.


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## oobymach (Oct 5, 2019)

The difference between 5400 and 7200rpm is 2ms, 11ms seek on a 7200 and 13ms seek on a 5400, not enough to notice. I use wd black drives and have a 4tb and 2x 2tb hdd's in my rig rn.


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## micropage7 (Oct 5, 2019)

I still running seagate and so far i'm pretty happy with that, but one of my drive shows unusual spins up although the health shows 100%, it looks i need to back it up then before sorry

Now i'm eyeing WD red since the price especially in here little bit lower


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## s3thra (Oct 5, 2019)

Here's some HDD failure rate stats for reference - reported on earlier in the year by TPU. Note though these are enterprise HDDs used in a data center.

TPU article:








						Backblaze Releases Hard Drive Stats for Q1 2019
					

As of March 31, 2019, Backblaze had 106,238 spinning hard drives in our cloud storage ecosystem spread across three data centers. Of that number, there were 1,913 boot drives and 104,325 data drives. This review looks at the Q1 2019 and lifetime hard drive failure rates of the data drive models...




					www.techpowerup.com
				




Direct link:








						2019 Update on Hard Drive Failure Rates: Seeing More Failures
					

This review looks at the Q1 2019 and lifetime hard drive failure rates of the 104,325 data drive models currently in operation in our data centers.




					www.backblaze.com


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## freeagent (Oct 5, 2019)

I’ve got a little more than 68k hours on my original wd 1tb black. That thing is two days older than dirt. I think I bought in 2007 or so.. whenever they first came out. I recently moved my important stuff off and is now my steam drive until the end of its days. Never had any problems.


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## micropage7 (Oct 5, 2019)

Toshiba and HGST looks good but actually i dunno here


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## silkstone (Oct 5, 2019)

ithehappy said:


> I only have a WD Black 1 TB and 500 GB Evo for my system and finally I am in need of upgrading to a 4TB hard drive as the space I have simply is way too low. I had an external Sony HD-E2 hard drive, 2 TB, but it isn't working anymore, didn't even use it that much at all, but it just doesn't work suddenly! So I have lost faith on these external drives.
> 
> Now I don't want to spend much. I see that some folks are selling WD Red drives at good price. Can I get one of those? I mean are WD Reds reliable drives (4TB versions)? Also I see that the Reds are actually 5400 RPM while the Black I am using is 7200 RPM. For day to day usage how much will I notice this performance difference? I play my movies, load photos and stuffs from this drive, only those need an installation go to the SSD, so you get what I mean.
> 
> ...



Take that external drive out of it's enclosure and hook it up internally. It might still work.

Otherwise, best bet for storage are the WD external drives 4-8 Tb. Take them out of their enclosures and you either get a Red Drive or something very similar.
Extremely reliable drives that are one of the best options for storage, rather than boot.


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## newtekie1 (Oct 5, 2019)

oobymach said:


> The difference between 5400 and 7200rpm is 2ms, 11ms seek on a 7200 and 13ms seek on a 5400, not enough to notice. I use wd black drives and have a 4tb and 2x 2tb hdd's in my rig rn.



If it is noticeable really depends on the usage.  It is definitely noticeable if you are trying to load programs/games or even run Windows off it. It's not so noticeable if you are just using it for storage.

Where I live the 7200RPM drives are only $10-20 more than the 5400RPM drive, so it doesn't make any sense to go with the 5400RPM drives.


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## oobymach (Oct 6, 2019)

newtekie1 said:


> If it is noticeable really depends on the usage.  It is definitely noticeable if you are trying to load programs/games or even run Windows off it. It's not so noticeable if you are just using it for storage.
> 
> Where I live the 7200RPM drives are only $10-20 more than the 5400RPM drive, so it doesn't make any sense to go with the 5400RPM drives.


I put windows on a wd green 5400rpm a few years ago for a friend and it had almost identical boot speed to the wd blue 7200rpm I had in mine. At 5400rpm it runs with less vibration too, but I've always used 7200rpm drives myself. As an enthusiast a couple ms is worth the extra little bit to me.


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## Mussels (Oct 6, 2019)

Only advice i've got is to avoid drives with power saving functions like WD greens, the hardware power downs cause excessive wear for no reasons. Fine for occasional USB storage, bad for internal drives.


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## EarthDog (Oct 7, 2019)

s3thra said:


> Here's some HDD failure rate stats for reference - reported on earlier in the year by TPU. Note though these are enterprise HDDs used in a data center.
> 
> TPU article:
> 
> ...


ahh, the support for just  'picking one'


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## las (Oct 7, 2019)

WD, Hitachi, Toshiba >>>>>>>>>>>> Seagate


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## shovenose (Oct 7, 2019)

Honestly it doesn't really matter what brand you buy. I just had a 3tb WD Red with about 30K hours start dying. In my NAS/storage server I have a mixture of WD, Seagate, Toshiba, and Hitachi.

I'd buy WD/HGST, Seagate, or Hitachi over Toshiba for sure though. I have a Toshiba 4TB that sounds like it's gonna blow up any moment now but SMART data is perfect.


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## las (Oct 7, 2019)

Seagate's consumer drivers are about the worst, and cheapest, you can get. For good reason.

I have seen sooo many Seagate drives fail thru the years. Almost as bad as Maxtor. Seagate bought Maxtor. Another reason to stay away.


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## EarthDog (Oct 7, 2019)

las said:


> Seagate's consumer drivers are about the worst, and cheapest, you can get. For good reason.
> 
> I have seen sooo many Seagate drives fail thru the years. Almost as bad as Maxtor. Seagate bought Maxtor. Another reason to stay away.


It's weird to hear anecdotes when we have some decent datasets from reliable sources (instead of randos and their 'experiences').


zOMG, like Scoooby Doo, XXXXX brand is terrible! I had one and saw someone with it and it failed!!!!!  


Again, outside of some bad apples, we can see from teh data provided in this thread (and other data like from PUget systems) the failure rates for these drives (which are beat up more in a DC environment) are minuscule and hardly worth a discussion.


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## Deleted member 158293 (Oct 7, 2019)

Switching back to Seagate for their extra integrated health checks in server and NAS environments.  Quite useful rather than just relying on S.M.A.R.T. data for impending HD failure.

For desktop use it doesn't really matter which company IMO.


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## karl53 (Oct 7, 2019)

@*ithehappy*: buy according to your budget the least expensive but you need to buy _insurance _too: plan to buy cloud or other HDs for *backup*.  You will never know _if and when _something is going wrong... unless you can afford to lose your data, eventually.


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## Mac2580 (Oct 7, 2019)

Seagate Firecuda 2TB. Ive had one for a while now probably nearing or past its 5 year warranty and have had no issues with it. Has been used heavily all my installed games are on the drive. If it fails now ill buy another.


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## linuxbuild (Nov 26, 2019)

There is a new project to estimate reliability of hard drive models: https://github.com/linuxhw/SMART

The reliability is measured by "Years before/between errors". If you are lucky enough you can find your drive in the list. Check reliability of vendor if model is missed.


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## PooPipeBoy (Nov 26, 2019)

las said:


> Seagate's consumer drivers are about the worst, and cheapest, you can get. For good reason.
> 
> I have seen sooo many Seagate drives fail thru the years. Almost as bad as Maxtor. Seagate bought Maxtor. Another reason to stay away.



I have a Seagate Barracuda 1TB as my game file storage drive, it's been alright for almost six years. Not that I would recommend it. Right now it's hooked up externally because it's developed a vibration that was making my whole case resonate and buzz constantly. About time to chuck it in the bin I think.


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## EarthDog (Nov 26, 2019)

linuxbuild said:


> There is a new project to estimate reliability of hard drive models: https://github.com/linuxhw/SMART
> 
> The reliability is measured by "Years before/between errors". If you are lucky enough you can find your drive in the list. Check reliability of vendor if model is missed.


Neat link!

Im curious how this works... like, how do they get the start and end data, etc...


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## Kissamies (Dec 11, 2019)

I've been a WD "fanboy" for years. Though my 2TB Green shows warnings, but with these hours, it's not that surprising. And all important stuff has been backuped to an another drive.


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## Komshija (Dec 11, 2019)

Toshiba and Hitachi (HGST) are very reliable HDD's according to Backblaze reports. WD's are also very good but I gravitate towards Toshiba and HGST.
It also depends on how lucky you are. You can buy the best and most the reliable HDD on the market but if you are out of luck it will fail pretty soon.

Backblaze reports:
1) https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-q2-2019/
2) https://www.backblaze.com/blog/2018-hard-drive-failure-rates/


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## suraswami (Dec 12, 2019)

My theory is Backup the Backup.  Have multiple copies of data in multiple drives in multiple locations.

I read some where that Reds are not good for stand alone windows drive even for just storage purposes.  It plays well with Raid controllers.  Reason being the error correction/reporting algorithm is better in regular Blue or Black drives as they are more geared towards stand alone purposes.

Anybody have any inputs on this?


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## newtekie1 (Dec 12, 2019)

suraswami said:


> My theory is Backup the Backup. Have multiple copies of data in multiple drives in multiple locations.



The rule of 3-2-1.  You should always have 3 copies of your data, with 2 backups on different media, and at least 1 backup located off site.


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## suraswami (Dec 12, 2019)

newtekie1 said:


> The rule of 3-2-1.  You should always have 3 copies of your data, with 2 backups on different media, and at least 1 backup located off site.


I follow the same.


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## Mescalamba (Dec 12, 2019)

Im using server category HDDs. More expensive, more durable. It doesnt beat good backup, but you are not forced to buy new one until you run out of space as opposed to your HDD dying.


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## xkm1948 (Dec 12, 2019)

Most of our labs buy HGST enterprise drivers for use in storage servers and backup systems. Haven't had one failed out of the two batches of 20 drivers we bought, yet.


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## lexluthermiester (Dec 12, 2019)

Mussels said:


> Only advice i've got is to avoid drives with power saving functions like WD greens, the hardware power downs cause excessive wear for no reasons. Fine for occasional USB storage, bad for internal drives.


This. If you want ultimate reliability, go for a WD Gold. However, they're pricey. WD Blues and Blacks are very solid and HGST are very reliable as well.


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## oobymach (Dec 12, 2019)

wd ultrastar hdd's are built to last 2million hours


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## AhokZYashA (Dec 12, 2019)

i got an 500GB deskstar that is closing in on 80k hours,

never missed a beat

for now i will stick to WD red pro, and seagate enterprise drives for reliability


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## John Naylor (Dec 13, 2019)

If you use Backblaze as your reference, you're ill informed.   Backblaze started their business after flooding took out several HD factories (Thailand if I recall correctly) and jumped in to the server market by using consumer drives in a server environment.     Many concluded, wrongly, that this was just the equivalent of a stress test, like using P95 on a CPU.  That assumption simply couldn't be more wrong.  It is, in fact, the protection schemes in consumer drives that actually cause them to fail in a server environment.

but before getting into that let's look at the BB business model:



> In short, by its own admission, Backblaze employed consumer-class drives in a high-volume enterprise-class *environment that far exceeded the warranty conditions of the HDD*s. Backblaze installed consumer drives into a number of revisions of its own internally developed chassis, *many of which utilized a rubber band to "reduce the vibration" of a vertically mounted HDD*.... a heavy HDD is mounted vertically on top of a thin multiplexer PCB. The SATA connectors are bearing the full weight of the drive, and factoring the vibration of a normal HDD into the non-supported equation creates the *almost perfect recipe for device failure*.
> 
> The Backblaze environment employed more drives per chassis and featured much heavier workloads (b*oth of which accelerate failure rates tremendously*) than the vendors designed the client-class HDDs for. This ultimately helped Backblaze save money on their infrastructure. The Seagate 3 TB models failed at a higher rate than other drives during the Backblaze deployment, but in fairness, the *Seagate drives were the only models that did not feature RV (Rotational Vibration) sensors* that counteract excessive vibration in heavy usage models -- specifically because Seagate did not design the drives for that use case.



A server environment dictates thick concrete floors and structural sound rack systems.  For that reason, there is no need to include rotational vibration sensors in server drives.  Mounting drives vertically on a case laid on its side on a table and holding them in place with rubberbands ... it's as if they designed the environment on a whim saying "lets see how fast we can make a drive fail".

More importantly perhaps, consumer drives are designed with a feature called "head parking" ... when not spinning, the arm is 'parked" away from the platter so that when the copy paper delivery guy bumps ya desk with his hand truck or ya pet lab sleeping under ya desk jumps up when the UPS man knocks on the door, the hed doesn't crash into the patters causing damage.   Consumer drives are rated for 250k - 500k parking cycles ... way more than the typoicl consuer drives ever experience cause of low I/O.  OTOH, server drives they are all about I.O and they can burn through those cycles in a matter of months ... server drives do not come equipped with that feature because server farms do not have cases laying sideways on a desk and held in with rubberbands.  This is why you don't use server drives on a desktop and you don't use consumer drives in a server farm

If you are using server drives on a desktop ...* no they are not more durable, far from it* ... they have no built in protection.

Real world failure rate / RMA data was published for HDs every 6 months by the french site behardware.  They stopped doing so, dunno why ... can't read french)  But the data is in numbers



* Period Ending*​* HGST*​* Seagate*​* Toshiba*​* Western*​2017-08-01​0.82%​0.93%​1.06%​1.26%​2016-12-09​1.13%​0.72%​0.80%​1.04%​2016-05-13​0.60%​0.69%​1.15%​1.03%​2015-11-09​0.81%​0.60%​0.96%​0.90%​2015-05-19​1.16%​0.68%​1.34%​1.09%​2014-11-06​1.01%​0.69%​1.29%​0.93%​2013-04-30​1.08%​0.86%​1.02%​1.13%​2013-10-30​1.16%​0.95%​1.54%​1.19%​2013-05-10​2.40%​1.44%​1.15%​1.55%​​3.45%​1.65%​NA​1.44%​* Average*​* 1.36%*​* 0.92%*​* 1.15%*​* 1.16%*​
So that's it, the real data based upon actual HDs replaced under warranty that were between 6 and 12 months of usage.  Each report listed the data for the current 6 month period as well as the previous 6 month period.  So what can we glean from this information.


1.  This is real data from consumer drives installed in a  consumer environment.
2.  Fanbois may wanna beat their chests if they like the numbers for 'their brand", but what is shows me is that out of each 1,000 drives   ... the guy with the best number delivered 991 good drives ... the guy with the worst number delivered 986 good ones... that's pretty damn close.
3.  Failure rates were pretty consistent for the last 4 years of the data set.

It must be noted that drive models rather than brands had significant variation.  Some models had failure rates as high as 10% ... some were under 0.50 %

As to which HD to buy ....

1.  Pick the drive appropriate for your usage.

-Use NAS drives in NAS devices
-Use consumer drives in desktops
-Use Green drives if you have 100's of drives and energy is important to you.   There is nothing else of value here and they have significantly slower performance (5400 rpm)
-Use server drives in server farms ... no server drives are not tougher, they are missing important desktop features like head parking
-Use surveillance drives in surveillance applications

2.   Check the warranty ... be aware that often the same drive is sold under different model numbers... a drive with a  2 yeat warranty for $55 ... may be the same drive as the 3 year warranty model that sells for $67.   We only buy models with 5 year warrantees.... the cost difference is minimal ... it's not the 'free replacement, it's the T & E replacing the drive that matters.

3.  Consider not buying a HD.   In THGs testing, the Seagate 2 TB SSD was 1.54 times faster in gaming than the WD Black ... 2.5 times faster than the WD Blue*.  We haven't puchased a HD in about 8 years.  Have about 100 SSHDs installed over that period and no reported failures.  I have about a  dozen here, 4 of which are > 5 years old.

For comparison purposes:

WD Black WD2003FZEX  =  2 TB / 5 year warranty / 0.45% failure rate / 100% relative gaming performance / $105 on newegg
Seagate Desktop SSHD ST2000DX001  =  2 TB 5 year warranty / 0.43% failure rate / 154% relative gaming performance / $885 on newegg


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## Hardcore Games (Dec 29, 2019)

I use Seagate and I have not had problems, mid you I use uppity power supplies so the regulators are not trashed by noise etc/

I have run some disks towards 50,000 operating hours and they still work. but I tend to retire them when larger capacity disks are available


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## Calmmo (Dec 29, 2019)

Ive been on WDBlack drives exclusively since.. well early 2000's not sure exactly. I replaced 2 1tb ones from 08 and 09 last year that had no problems with a single 4tb wdblack that i've using since.
Call it bad luck if you want but before going all WD I had every single other brand drive fail within 2 to 3 years. I do not trust their green/blue stuff however (work related). I've seen a sea of failed such drives on corporate Dell/Lenovo PC's.


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## FordGT90Concept (Dec 29, 2019)

Seeing a lot of HGST 2.5" 1TB drives fail.  Other than that, everything else has been reliable.


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## ShrimpBrime (Dec 29, 2019)

Have 2 WD Green drives for storage. 640GB and 64mb cache. I've had them for a while now and about full, mainly family pictures and only one is in a case, the other is wrapped for safe keeping.
Great drives, never had an issue, low power and nice sized cache.

Do you guys recommend I stick with the green series for this purpose? I'd like to increase the storage size some time this year for future memories.


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## FordGT90Concept (Dec 29, 2019)

If they're used for archival purposes, yes, WD Green and 5400 RPM Seagate drives are fine (Seagate apparently doesn't have low power branding).


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## silentbogo (Dec 29, 2019)

Modern 5400RPM is more than fine. Running a few of 3TB WD REDs at work, and a pair of 4TB Seagate BarraCuda drives in RAID-1 at home. All have adequate speed and neither died yet (though, it still remains to be seen). Barracudas get stable 180+MB/s sequential R/W, which is perfect for a NAS on a gigabit network. So far those are my favorites.


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## R-T-B (Dec 30, 2019)

John Naylor said:


> Use server drives in server farms ... no server drives are not tougher, they are missing important desktop features like head parking



My Ultrastar 7K6000 and Constellation.3's sure aren't missing head parking.


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## WHOFOUNDFUNGUS (Dec 30, 2019)

Can't believe I never addressed this post. As Suraswami said, BACK UP your BACK UP. Also, cold storage. What is cold storage you may ask? A: Cold storage is when you make a drive image of everything on your hard drive (make sure it is bootable) to another drive you have no intentions of using except in case of an emergency. Then remove it, put it in a safe, cool, dry, dark place where you will forget about it until you move. Then when your mechanical drive (the one you're using) finally crashes you can go into panic mode and run around your house tearing your hair out and wondering where you put that @#$ other drive in cold storage. When you finally find it, disconnect the crashed drive and connect the drive you kept in storage all those years. VIOLA! It will boot. You have all your stuff that you saved years ago and you can now proceed to write your back up to your once upon a time cold storage drive, or, (and this is likely wiser) you can pop the crashed drive into a toaster and start dragging and dropping files onto your newly reinstalled once-upon-a-time cold storage drive presuming the crashed drive lets you at least access the files. You can also make cold storage drives that strictly only contain data. The whole idea is that they don't stay running in your PC and you only use them for recovery purposes.

We are talking about mechanical drives here. I can't resist the temptation to state that in this day and age mechanical drives are dumb. But they do still have some use as storage drives  — especially cold storage drives where they don't experience so much wear and tear. Frankly, it has been my finding that the quality of hard drives in this day is diminishing rapidly because manufacturers cannot afford to stay in the race anymore. They can't compete with SSDs, NVME, and M.2 drives so they sacrifice quality. The sooner the consumer realizes that these companies are on the make & take the better off they will be. Mechanical drives are approaching that threshold where they're not worth the shipping you have to pay for to get them delivered. That said, the OLDER MECHANICAL DRIVES are a different deal altogether. I have some ten year old Velociraptors running in RAID 10 that simply will not die. If I were to purchase a comparable, brand new, WD mechanical drive today it would likely be dead in a week. That has been my experience, that is my story and I'm sticking to it.



R-T-B said:


> My Ultrastar 7K6000 and Constellation.3's sure aren't missing head parking.


Yup. My Ultrastar and Constellation 3 are both running strong too. Like I said... Older drives. The new Seagates and Western Digital mechanical drives are veritable nightmares.


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## freeagent (Dec 30, 2019)

I've got 69,457 hours on my first gen 1TB Black.


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## umeng2002 (Jan 1, 2020)

My WD Black from 2009 (FALS) is going strong, but I retired it last month simply because of it's age - not SMART data indicating it's going bad or anything weird.

I have 3 7,200 rpm 1 TB WD Blue drives in my computer now, but the oldest one is from like 2015... so I can't attest to the longevity. I'm never buying an HDD slower than 7200rpm.

I probably won't buy another spinning HDD again anyways.


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## ShrimpBrime (Jan 1, 2020)

FordGT90Concept said:


> If they're used for archival purposes, yes, WD Green and 5400 RPM Seagate drives are fine (Seagate apparently doesn't have low power branding).



Thanks, I like the ones with big cache. So mine have 64mb each. Helps for moving smaller files, never have to see the status bar pop up. It's kinda nice.

I don't do Seagate drives anymore.









						WD Green WD30EZRX 3TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive - Newegg.com
					

Buy WD Green WD30EZRX 3TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!




					www.newegg.com
				




What do you guys know about this Intella-Power? Is that just a fancy naming?

I'm looking at a pair of these 3T 64mb cache drives. Whatcha think? Good for storage? (2 for redundancy. I always have 2 drives with the same data)

I should mention this is external storage, they won't be running with PCs.


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## FordGT90Concept (Jan 1, 2020)

For a few bucks more, could get 4 TB:








						Seagate BarraCuda 4TB 5400 RPM 3.5" Hard Drives - Newegg.com
					

Buy Seagate BarraCuda ST4000DM004 4TB 5400 RPM 256MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drives Bare Drive - Desktop Internal Hard Drives with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!




					www.newegg.com
				











						WD Blue 4TB Desktop Hard Disk Drive 5400 RPM 3.5" - Newegg.com
					

Buy WD Blue 4TB Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD40EZRZ - Desktop Internal Hard Drives with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!




					www.newegg.com
				




It's kind of looking like Western Digital doesn't even make Green hard drives anymore (the one you linked may be discontinued):








						Internal SSDs: Shop Internal SSDs for Computer, Laptop, NAS | Western Digital
					

Shop internal SSDs to save mission-critical business data, PC games, or home backups.




					www.westerndigital.com
				



Like Seagate...they may have lost that market to SSDs so they've stopped.


This is a fantastic deal:








						Seagate Constellation ES.3 ST4000NM0033 4TB 7200 RPM 128MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Enterprise Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive - Newegg.com
					

Buy Seagate Constellation ES.3 ST4000NM0033 4TB 7200 RPM 128MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Enterprise Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!




					www.newegg.com
				



They're an older, discontinued model (lower platter density) but they are enterprise drives, 7200 RPM, and 4 TB.


I think if it were me and considering your usage, I'd probably go with Seagate BarraCuda ST4000DM004 because the platters are more dense and it's direct from Newegg instead of third party.


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## Melvis (Jan 1, 2020)

Once you go Black you never go back!


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## jimleeucf (Feb 16, 2021)

ithehappy said:


> I only have a WD Black 1 TB and 500 GB Evo for my system and finally I am in need of upgrading to a 4TB hard drive as the space I have simply is way too low. I had an external Sony HD-E2 hard drive, 2 TB, but it isn't working anymore, didn't even use it that much at all, but it just doesn't work suddenly! So I have lost faith on these external drives.
> 
> Now I don't want to spend much. I see that some folks are selling WD Red drives at good price. Can I get one of those? I mean are WD Reds reliable drives (4TB versions)? Also I see that the Reds are actually 5400 RPM while the Black I am using is 7200 RPM. For day to day usage how much will I notice this performance difference? I play my movies, load photos and stuffs from this drive, only those need an installation go to the SSD, so you get what I mean.
> 
> ...


SSD is reliable


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## P4-630 (Feb 16, 2021)

jimleeucf said:


> SSD is reliable


Which


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## jimleeucf (Feb 16, 2021)

las said:


> WD, Hitachi, Toshiba >>>>>>>>>>>> Seagate


I used to test used hard drives for a local company, and yes, seagate has much higher failure rate.


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## kapone32 (Feb 16, 2021)

I actually like to buy the Seagate Expansion series. The USB header on that is flaky but the drive (used to be) a 7200 RPM SATA drive. The key was because of the negative reviews they were cheaper than their internal counterparts.


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## P4-630 (Feb 16, 2021)

kapone32 said:


> I actually like to buy the Seagate Expansion series. The USB header on that is flaky but the drive (used to be) a 7200 RPM SATA drive. The key was because of the negative reviews they were cheaper than their internal counterparts.


You do know it's a thread necro right..
Last post Jan 1 2020..


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## W1zzard (Feb 18, 2021)

I talked to @jimleeucf, he used to work for buysellram (no longer does) and just wanted to share his experience. So it#s not spam

I've also restored the other posts. @Tatty_One just fyi


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## HD64G (Feb 18, 2021)

Lorec said:


> There are two things in this world I would never do:
> 1)Eat yellow snow
> 2)Buy a used hard drive (well if seller show screenshots in crystal disk then maybe...)
> 
> Too much risk, better to save on something else


Since HDDs tend to show their manufacturing faults early on (first 2-3 months), the known for being reliable are safe enough to buy even used (Hitachi mainly, now known as WD Ultrastar or Gold).


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## fullinfusion (Feb 18, 2021)

ithehappy said:


> I only have a WD Black 1 TB and 500 GB Evo for my system and finally I am in need of upgrading to a 4TB hard drive as the space I have simply is way too low. I had an external Sony HD-E2 hard drive, 2 TB, but it isn't working anymore, didn't even use it that much at all, but it just doesn't work suddenly! So I have lost faith on these external drives.
> 
> Now I don't want to spend much. I see that some folks are selling WD Red drives at good price. Can I get one of those? I mean are WD Reds reliable drives (4TB versions)? Also I see that the Reds are actually 5400 RPM while the Black I am using is 7200 RPM. For day to day usage how much will I notice this performance difference? I play my movies, load photos and stuffs from this drive, only those need an installation go to the SSD, so you get what I mean.
> 
> ...


I only use the Samsung SSD's, NVME and Sata, And NEVER had a problem with any of them.. Thats what I buy and never had to look back


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## P4-630 (Feb 18, 2021)

fullinfusion said:


> I only use the Samsung SSD's, NVME and Sata, And NEVER had a problem with any of them.. Thats what I buy and never had to look back


#MeToo  , only Samsung sofar in my rig.   
However I use 1 Sandisk SSD as external backup.


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## Hardcore Games (Feb 21, 2021)

freeagent said:


> I've got 69,457 hours on my first gen 1TB Black.



Not bad at all

I suggest for _vital data_ use a backup on optical disks suck a DVD or BD media which can live on a shelf in the dungeon for centuries

I was updating my spreadsheet on disks and was thinking of a new report on disk reliability


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