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Most reliable 3.5" Hard Disk Drives?

G

gryffinwings

Member
Can anyone tell me if you had to choose one hard drive for a NAS and you could only have one, what would you get? It must be a 3.5" drive and be SATA, no external drives please. If you can, please provide your experiences. Reasonable suggestions are definitely appreciated.
 
Trusting in a single drive lifespan for "reliability", is mis-placed. They invented RAID and Backups for a reason. The lifespan of individual drives, should be largely irrelevant, save that they should last long enough, that the RAID array won't just drop out of the blue. But if it does, you should have backups too.

Consider multiple NAS units, each with multiple bays / drives, in either RAID1, RAID10, RAID 5, RAID 6, or unRAID.

Data should be stored, at least, in triplicate. If you care about not losing it.
 
VirtualLarry said:
Trusting in a single drive lifespan for "reliability", is mis-placed. They invented RAID and Backups for a reason. The lifespan of individual drives, should be largely irrelevant, save that they should last long enough, that the RAID array won't just drop out of the blue. But if it does, you should have backups too.

Consider multiple NAS units, each with multiple bays / drives, in either RAID1, RAID10, RAID 5, RAID 6, or unRAID.

Data should be stored, at least, in triplicate. If you care about not losing it.
Click to expand...

While I do agree for the most part with what you are saying. I doubt everyone can afford to do this like that. So the best I'll be able to likely do is a 2 hard drive setup in raid 1, either way, I have to start somewhere and I like to use hard drives that are less likely to fail, and besides I didn't say I was going to be using 1 HDD for it's life time, that's hardly logical, I'll start with one and then another to have at least RAID 1, then maybe when I have enough, I'll do a RAID 5 setup.

Either way the scenario I laid out was a theoretical situation and I'm sure plenty of people work with and it was to get some ideas as to what was reliable and what wasn't as reliable.
 
Well, the only reliable thing about HDDs is that they will fail sooner or later. Often literally.

Usually they either fail in the first month or two. If they're still running beyond, they tend to stay that way for a long time before eventual failure.

If you can, it's best to keep a drive spinning as it's often the spin-up and ramp loading which kills them.

As for the most reliable brand, I've had good luck with HGST but YMMV.

gryffinwings said:
While I do agree for the most part with what you are saying. I doubt everyone can afford to do this like that. So the best I'll be able to likely do is a 2 hard drive setup in raid 1, either way, I have to start somewhere and I like to use hard drives that are less likely to fail, and besides I didn't say I was going to be using 1 HDD for it's life time, that's hardly logical, I'll start with one and then another to have at least RAID 1, then maybe when I have enough, I'll do a RAID 5 setup.
Click to expand...

For home use, I'd recommend avoiding RAID5 all together. It's simply unneeded complexity. Stick with RAID1.
 
Reliability is highly model specific. Seagate 3TB have horrible reliability with 33% failure rate. Seagate 4TB have less than 3% failure rate, the newer 8-10TB are even lower than that.

As has been suggested, look at backblaze quarterly reports. Generally speaking HGST are the most reliable.
 
Get 2 and run RAID-1, or have copies of everything elsewhere. Drives can and will fail instantly with no warning, and drive recovery is expensive and often fails.

Off-site cloud backup is also a good idea if this is something valuable and irreplaceable like tax records.
 
gryffinwings said:
While I do agree for the most part with what you are saying. I doubt everyone can afford to do this like that. So the best I'll be able to likely do is a 2 hard drive setup in raid 1, either way, I have to start somewhere and I like to use hard drives that are less likely to fail, and besides I didn't say I was going to be using 1 HDD for it's life time, that's hardly logical, I'll start with one and then another to have at least RAID 1, then maybe when I have enough, I'll do a RAID 5 setup.

Either way the scenario I laid out was a theoretical situation and I'm sure plenty of people work with and it was to get some ideas as to what was reliable and what wasn't as reliable.
Click to expand...

DaveSimmons said:
Get 2 and run RAID-1, or have copies of everything elsewhere. Drives can and will fail instantly with no warning, and drive recovery is expensive and often fails.

Off-site cloud backup is also a good idea if this is something valuable and irreplaceable like tax records.
Click to expand...

If all you can do is get 2 drives, then don't use RAID 1, as Dave mentioned do 1 drive, and then backup to the other drive.

RAID 1 can't save you from user error, corrupted files, or malicious intent (cryptolockers). Backups can. If all you can do is 2 drives, then have 1 drive store your data, then have the other drive hold copies of the data on a retention level you're willing to tolerate.
 
From our offerings, the best fit for a NAS would be our IronWolf & IronWolf Pro. If it's single bay NAS or if it's for a RAID which is the only copy of your important data, then you may still want to invest in an external drive to back up to. RAID is not a backup. It's best to follow the 3-2-1 method: Keep 3 copies of your data, 2 locally but on different mediums, 1 offsite in case of disaster (cloud, external HDD stored in a separate location, etc.)
 
I have had terrible luck with Seagates, better luck with WD and great luck with Maxtor when they were still around. But even the results from Backblaze are a small sample size..
 
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