Need more storage. Any HDD recommendations?

m4a · Apr 13, 2022

Hey,

I currently have Samsung SSD 512GB M.2 Samsung 970 for my boot drive, but I am running out of storage. Since I will use it just for storage I don't mind slower speeds. Any recommendations or things to look out for buying an HDD drive? I want to add 1TB of extra storage.

Thanks

dfritchie · Apr 13, 2022

I've had zero failures with any of the Western Digital drives I own. Just be aware that the least expensive WD Green drives are very slow!
For performance on a HDD I would go with the WD Black series.

trboteg · Apr 13, 2022

I second WD hdds. I've been running a WD Caviar Black for 12 years. No hiccups ever. It's been reformatted, wiped, zero'd, who knows how many times. It was my boot drive (Windows and MacOS dual boot) for 8 of those years. The last four years it's been my extra storage to supplement my SSD like what you want to do.

This is the model I bought (old version): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0036Q7MV0/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
This is the new model: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FJRS6FU/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

tedyun · Apr 13, 2022

Western Digital is my hard drive manufacturer of choice. I've had bad luck with Seagates. I swore them off long time ago, so I don't know if their build quality has improved recently. But in the early 2000's it seemed that every time my hard drives or friends' hard drives developed the "click of death" it was always a Seagate.

That being said, I have had a couple WD's die on me, so even WD isn't perfect.

pastrychef · Apr 13, 2022

I look for the second highest capacity drives available on the market and then buy whichever happens to be least expensive.

In recent years, I have not had any failures from Seagate, Western Digital, or HGST.

c-o-pr · Apr 13, 2022

Toshiba.

Today newegg has new 16T enterprise (two bottom mounting screw locations slightly diff than consumer) for $265, shipped by new egg. Am using a pair bought 3 mons ago. Fast 200MB/s quiet and cool.

Enterprise drives usually have a programmable read error timeout which is needed for RAID failover if you like that sort of thing. Can set duration with ~~smartmontools~~ hdparm (sry misspoke).

My opinion is Toshiba is tops for reliability

UtterDisbelief · Apr 13, 2022

I was shocked recently when I experienced the failure of an HGST 2.5" HDD. Rarely have I had problems with hard-disks, well except for Seagate. Back then they hadn't bought up everyone else (or seemed that way). I used to like Maxtor.

Given all experience pooled Toshiba does indeed seem one of the top choices in my view, despite them usually being a little cheaper than premium. Never had one fail.

trs96 · Apr 13, 2022

UtterDisbelief said:
Toshiba does indeed seem one of the top choices in my view, despite them usually being a little cheaper than premium. Never had one fail.

For 3.5" HDDs yes, Toshiba is good. For their 5400 RPM 2.5" laptop HDDs I've seen many failures. I've removed so many failed 2.5" Toshiba drives from laptops I can't count them all. So if anyone has a laptop with one of these, expect the worst. Better yet, clone it to an SSD and just use it as a backup.

m4a · Apr 14, 2022

Ok, thanks to everyone for the answers. Seems like WD will be the one I go for.
Do you guys run another HDD drive for the backup?

trboteg · Apr 14, 2022

m4a said:
Ok, thanks to everyone for the answers. Seems like WD will be the one I go for.
Do you guys run another HDD drive for the backup?

I use the same WD caviar black I mentioned early as my backup. One for the boot drive and one for the backup. Probably overkill performance-wise for a backup, but I keep it as a bootable backup so when I reformat or upgrade primary boot drives I can use it without missing a beat.

Search

Need more storage. Any HDD recommendations?

m4a

dfritchie

trboteg

tedyun

pastrychef

Moderator

c-o-pr

UtterDisbelief

Moderator

trs96

Moderator

m4a

trboteg

Forum

Guides

Downloads