Misinthe 35 Posted February 3, 2021 Share Posted February 3, 2021 Hi everyone, this is more of a hardware related post, please relocate if this is the wrong section. Just wondering what's everyone using for hard drives, I try to always get WD Reds but it's getting expensive, was thinking maybe I could start using WD Blacks or Blues, but I know they're not as reliable. Wanted to hear some opinions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ronstang 201 Posted February 3, 2021 Share Posted February 3, 2021 There is only one major brand I ALWAYS avoid and that is Seagate. I have had more Seagates die than any other. The last Seagate I bought was an 8 TB External drive....which failed within a few minutes of moving files to it and I lost a few movies. Remember for storage of large media files that don't have to be accessed that fast to play correctly you don't need the super expensive drives. Personally, I have no problems with WD but I usually buy Hitachi (also known as HGST) or Toshiba as they are more on the affordable side and rock solid in my experience. Hitachi bought out IBM and took over their Deskstar....but corrected the issue that made us all call them Deathstars. I have quite a few that are 10 years old and still going strong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Misinthe 35 Posted February 3, 2021 Author Share Posted February 3, 2021 1 minute ago, Ronstang said: There is only one major brand I ALWAYS avoid and that is Seagate. I have had more Seagates die than any other. The last Seagate I bought was an 8 TB External drive....which failed within a few minutes of moving files to it and I lost a few movies. Remember for storage of large media files that don't have to be accessed that fast to play correctly you don't need the super expensive drives. Personally, I have no problems with WD but I usually buy Hitachi (also known as HGST) or Toshiba as they are more on the affordable side and rock solid in my experience. Hitachi bought out IBM and took over their Deskstar....but corrected the issue that made us all call them Deathstars. I have quite a few that are 10 years old and still going strong. Yeah, I currently use WD Red 5200RPM since I don't need speed like you said. But now my issue is I'm running out of space in my server case for drives, so I need to start getting bigger sizes, and the Reds are like $250 for 8TB, so I'm trying to find cheaper solutions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sammy 735 Posted February 3, 2021 Share Posted February 3, 2021 (edited) I have quite a few shucked WD Whites from External Drives such as Elements or EasyStores. Right now I have, in addition to my 2TB's and 4TB's that have moved along with server upgrades for over and up to 10 years now, 3 8TB's and a 12TB. I also have two 12 TB's waiting for a time to shuck and install them. Take a look.. https://www.google.com/search?q=shucking+wd+elements&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS909US909&oq=shucking+w&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l7.10337j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Edited February 3, 2021 by Sammy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ronstang 201 Posted February 3, 2021 Share Posted February 3, 2021 I have an HTPC case that holds I think 12 drives, 8 of them 3.5" hard drives. But I have a 5 drive USB dock that has all 4TB drives in it now. At some point I will just buy on enclosure on sale and fill it up too as USB attached drives work perfectly fine for Emby from my experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arrbee99 1551 Posted February 3, 2021 Share Posted February 3, 2021 Personally don't agree about Seagate (can't say never had a problem, but pretty rare). Not going to say anymore in case they hear me. Having said that, I'm going for these https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1532285-REG/wd_wdbwlg0120hbk_nesn_12tb_elements_desktop_hd.html?sts=pi&pim=Y at the moment, as you can shuck them, and they're not, apparently, SMR. See I've been beaten to it... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sammy 735 Posted February 3, 2021 Share Posted February 3, 2021 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ronstang 201 Posted February 3, 2021 Share Posted February 3, 2021 33 minutes ago, arrbee99 said: Personally don't agree about Seagate (can't say never had a problem, but pretty rare). Not going to say anymore in case they hear me. Having said that, I'm going for these https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1532285-REG/wd_wdbwlg0120hbk_nesn_12tb_elements_desktop_hd.html?sts=pi&pim=Y at the moment, as you can shuck them, and they're not, apparently, SMR. See I've been beaten to it... I don't mind many smaller drives. I can buy 4 4 TB drives for that price. Two for the case, and two to copy everything on the other two onto for backup that once full go in the cabinet. If a drive fails, I take the appropriate drive out of the cabinet, install it in the case or enclosure in place of the failed drive, order another drive, make copy and put into the cabinet. Now if the backup drive is out of warranty I stick it in a USB dock to use until the new drive arrives, make the copy, and put the new drive into the case or enclosure. This way the drives spinning all the time are mostly under warranty or I expose myself to the most opportunities for free replacements. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Misinthe 35 Posted February 3, 2021 Author Share Posted February 3, 2021 46 minutes ago, Sammy said: I have quite a few shucked WD Whites from External Drives such as Elements or EasyStores. Right now I have, in addition to my 2TB's and 4TB's that have moved along with server upgrades for over and up to 10 years now, 3 8TB's and a 12TB. I also have two 12 TB's waiting for a time to shuck and install them. Take a look.. https://www.google.com/search?q=shucking+wd+elements&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS909US909&oq=shucking+w&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l7.10337j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 By Shuck, you mean just open up and take the drive out? I see the 12TB go on sale pretty often, sometimes they come with WD Reds. 44 minutes ago, arrbee99 said: Personally don't agree about Seagate (can't say never had a problem, but pretty rare). Not going to say anymore in case they hear me. Having said that, I'm going for these https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1532285-REG/wd_wdbwlg0120hbk_nesn_12tb_elements_desktop_hd.html?sts=pi&pim=Y at the moment, as you can shuck them, and they're not, apparently, SMR. See I've been beaten to it... 43 minutes ago, Sammy said: I'm jealous! 46 minutes ago, Ronstang said: I have an HTPC case that holds I think 12 drives, 8 of them 3.5" hard drives. But I have a 5 drive USB dock that has all 4TB drives in it now. At some point I will just buy on enclosure on sale and fill it up too as USB attached drives work perfectly fine for Emby from my experience. I have a Define R7, I think it holds 7 drives, but I'm preparing to move to a new house where I'll have a server rack and I'm going to transfer to a 4U server case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AVRider 3 Posted February 3, 2021 Share Posted February 3, 2021 Recommendation: Install a RAID 5/10 4-port SATA II/III card. Buy any 5 x 4TB drives (one as backup), new or used.. If a drive fails no problem. Hot swap the failing drive install the backup, The failed drive will be rebuilt over a few hours. Good as new. You can mix and match drives and drive capacities but understand that the drive with the least capacity will dictate total capacity. For example, if you install 1 x 2TB drive along with 3 x 4TB drives your total capacity will be 8TB. Also, if you still can't sleep buy a couple mini 5TB ext drives at Costco for $100 each for additional backup and portability. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mastrmind11 717 Posted February 3, 2021 Share Posted February 3, 2021 i've got about 6 4TB shucked drives, definitely the way to go. just make sure you do you research on which ones to shuck since they're not all created equal. and yeah, I agree to avoid seagate. i've lost quite a few seagates over the years and 0 WD reds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aspdend 174 Posted February 3, 2021 Share Posted February 3, 2021 I used to avoid Seagate like the plague as I had issues with their drives years ago, always geenrally bought WD since then, however, I have had WD Red's fail in my Unraid server that are younger than a lot of the other drives and I've been changing to Seagate Ironwolfs for the longer term storage drives and using Seagate or HGST otherwise - will be avoiding WD Reds... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sammy 735 Posted February 3, 2021 Share Posted February 3, 2021 Knock on wood as I've not lost but maybe one or two drives of all makes and models over the last 25 or 30 years. I know a lot of people like to set up RAID but I just do DrivePool because all of the data I have is dispensable and mostly replaceable and not critical. That which is is backed up remotely to the cloud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rbjtech 4222 Posted February 3, 2021 Share Posted February 3, 2021 (edited) Over MANY years worth of HDD usage, agree with many here that Seagate are the most unreliable. On my backup NAS where I run my older 2Tb drives, the ONLY drives to have bad sectors on the drives are, you guessed it, the Seagate drives. I use Toshiba and WD - drives are on 24x7 for literally YEARS in some cases, and zero bad sectors. I do what many do here, and simple cycle the older lower capacity drives into 'pools' as a 1:1 backup of the bigger drives - ie buy a new 8Tb HDD, back it up with 2 x 4Tb drives in a storage pool. My 'oldest' 24x7 drive still in use has been running for nearly 6 years continuously lol .. (Blimey.. may need to replace that soon - but it still has Zero bad sectors - It's a Toshiba HDWE140 ..) Edited February 3, 2021 by rbjtech Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BAlGaInTl 279 Posted February 3, 2021 Share Posted February 3, 2021 I'm using WD White 10TB shucked drives. My setup requires me to do a simple hardware mod (kapton tape over a pin) to recognize them, but it's easy to do. They've been great, and you can't beat the price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sammy 735 Posted February 4, 2021 Share Posted February 4, 2021 22 hours ago, BAlGaInTl said: I'm using WD White 10TB shucked drives. My setup requires me to do a simple hardware mod (kapton tape over a pin) to recognize them, but it's easy to do. They've been great, and you can't beat the price. I use Molex to SATA adaptors for the same purpose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BAlGaInTl 279 Posted February 4, 2021 Share Posted February 4, 2021 46 minutes ago, Sammy said: I use Molex to SATA adaptors for the same purpose. Yeah, that's another option, but I'm using trays and a back-plane, so I had to tape the pin. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SHSPVR 119 Posted February 6, 2021 Share Posted February 6, 2021 On 2/2/2021 at 7:41 PM, Misinthe said: I'm jealous! Me to LoL he got 54TB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Steve 28 Posted February 13, 2021 Share Posted February 13, 2021 I've been using HGST for years with no issues after having poor luck with WD RE enterprise drives. HGST has routinely been in the top running for the most reliable drives. WD purchased HGST and the same drives are available under the "Ultrastar" line. Most recent purchase was a 12TB from B&H. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Junglejim 340 Posted February 14, 2021 Share Posted February 14, 2021 I personally prefer WD RED drives, I've never had any trouble with them (touch wood) and they have been 24/7 for 5 years now. I use them in raid 0, It's a modest array (3 * 6TB). Hopefully they will last another 5 years.. lol I know peeps will strongly recommend against raid 0 for various reasons but it has it's advantages too. Just got to backup + backup.. which can be said of any raid array. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liamsoren 0 Posted March 14, 2022 Share Posted March 14, 2022 (edited) Hey, Misinthe! Usually, I don't buy my computer from the already made builds. I make the custom build for my desktop, so in most cases, I use the transcend hard drives. They were pretty cheap before this crypto mining trend. Now I use some of my old hard drives for mining purposes. I used some online hard disk restore services to heal them and make them back in work, so in any case, today, I recommend you buy the transcend hard drives due to the medium pricing and good effectiveness. Edited March 14, 2022 by liamsoren Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Misinthe 35 Posted March 14, 2022 Author Share Posted March 14, 2022 55 minutes ago, liamsoren said: Hey, Misinthe! Usually, I don't buy my computer from the already made builds. I make the custom build for my desktop, so in most cases, I use the transcend hard drives. They were pretty cheap before this crypto mining trend. Now I use some of my old hard drives for mining purposes. I used some online hard disk restore services to heal them and make them back in work, so in any case, today, I recommend you buy the transcend hard drives due to the medium pricing and good effectiveness. Thanks, this was about a year ago haha. I went with Seagate Barracuda for now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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