Internal Hard Drive Suggestions

[stitchmanz]

I need to get a new internal hard drive and would like to get some recommendations. It will be 2TB or 3TB (preferable) and 7200 RPM, not on a network.

Which drives would you suggest I check out.

Thank you

Jerry

 

[coolpurplefan]

I just bought a Western Digital Black hard drive partly based on a comment that someone would not buy a blue or a green model.

Some people say they won't bother paying the price for a Black. If that's the case, then why do they have a longer warranty for the Black models?

 

[Essence_of_War]

Some people say they won't bother paying the price for a Black. If that's the case, then why do they have a longer warranty for the Black models?

Price difference in going to WD Black = cost to WD to pay for extended warranty.

What do you need it to do? If it's a media storage drive, I'd go with whatever's cheapest of the WD Green, Seagate Barracuda, or Toshiba in the capacity that you want.

 

[Cerb]

^ That. Do you care about the investment in a HDD, or the data on it? If the data on it, warranty matters not, only how you protect said data. If you're already looking at it from that angle, you are already going to buy another drive or two in awhile, have one or more copies of your data, or don't value your data. In those cases, playing the odds makes more sense, because you can buy whole other HDD with the money saved by not buying a Black 2 or 3 times in a row.

However, a Black gives you 3 more years to get a replacement at near-zero cost, should it fail.

 

[stitchmanz]

Our SSD drive failed and needs replacing. We don’t want to spend the money for another SSD drive, so the new drive will be our boot drive and contain our programs. Any data stored on it will have a copy on another drive/cloud/dvd.

We are thinking about this Toshiba from New Egg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...9SIA24G15V7835

thank you

Jerry

 

[Essence_of_War]

I think you can pick up the identical item for $20 less on Amazon. Check my links above.

 

[Charlie98]

His link is to the retail kit, Newegg has the bare drive for $120. They also have a Seagate .14 for $114... I'd probably take the Seagate, myself. Both have a 2-year warranty.

 

[ronbo613]

Our SSD drive failed and needs replacing. We don’t want to spend the money for another SSD drive, so the new drive will be our boot drive and contain our programs. Any data stored on it will have a copy on another drive/cloud/dvd.

If your data is going to be stored elsewhere, why do you need a 3TB hard drive? A 1TB would be much cheaper and have more than enough room for your boot drive programs.

 

[nudave]

If your data is going to be stored elsewhere, why do you need a 3TB hard drive? A 1TB would be much cheaper and have more than enough room for your boot drive programs.

I don't think he meant stored, but rather backed up.

 

[smitbret]

I agree with what Cerb said. The data on the drive is far more important than the drive itself so if you can buy 2 Seagates for the price of 1 Black (one for backup) I don't see how warranty makes a whole lotta difference in the long run.

Don't get me wrong, the Blacks are great drives but the 7200.14 is faster and also run as cool and quiet as the Greens. I have three in my server and they are awesome.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I have favored the black drives since they appeared for SATA-II. They always cost a little more. I think the difference between the blue and black drives is the traditional cache memory in the drive.

Somehow, the blues seemed a bit noisier. I think I had one fail -- can't be sure. I generally order more than one drive of a kind when I need one.

With my ISRT SSD-caching configuration, I'd probably be OK with using the Blue WD HDD. An accelerated boot drive under ISRT doesn't have to work as hard as an HDD standalone.

Otherwise, I'd pick the Black drive for a standalone boot HDD. Also, successive generations of the same "badge" or model get different performance and reliability reviews.

There was also a 1TB Samsung drive -- I purchased three for my WHS-2011 server box. Think it was "Spinpoint," but I can't find them on the Egg. They may even have been SATA-II.

Call me an old fart, but I don't see the need for a 2 or 3TB boot drive. If filled to 66% or something of that order, you'd need a comparably sized drive to clone or back up. For data -- like recorded movies with Media Center -- maybe -- yes. But programs? Business data? Even photo collections? Rather doubt it.

My boot drive is 600GB, and only 252GB of space is filled after almost three years. Of course, I store documents, photos, movies, other data files on my server. The other HDD for the same system is 500GB -- used for DVR movie recording. Only 300GB are filled, and I have a LOT of movies and recorded TV shows. I prune these recordings from time to time.

Figure I've got computer files that go back to 1990. It's nice to have 2TB of storage, but I don't see myself running out of space anytime soon.