My internal 1TB HDD is getting full, shopping for a bigger drive

[mikeymikec]

When I was replacing the ailing and only HDD in my computer in 2014, I went with an SSD for OS/games/docs and a HDD for other data and temporarily backing up customer data on to (during say a data recovery routine). At the time I went with a WD Black because I felt that the last thing I wanted was for my system to be bottlenecking throughput in the event that say an ailing drive fails after x minutes, having said that I don't tend to see transfer speeds exceeding say 80-100MB generally which I'm sure is easily within the capabilities of any modern 3.5" HDD.

Budget is a bit tight. I probably won't go over £100 UKP without a particularly good reason. I'd like to keep noise levels down (there's a subtle but noticeable difference in system noise between the HDD being spun up and down), obviously I want a reliable drive.

One thing that would be nice is a decent review of recent model HDDs in say the region of 2-4TB but techreport and anandtech seem to only have eyes for SSDs these days. There seem to be a fair few 5400RPM drives on the market for example that I'd traditionally avoid like the plague but perhaps their performance is easily within my needs, maybe they're more reliable, I don't know.

Requirement: More than a 1-year warranty.

So far I've googled model numbers for reviews but it would be nice to have a load of similar drives recently reviewed.

 

[PliotronX]

Toshiba X300 seems pretty solid, actually put some 4TB drives into a NAS recently and they were $105 each (which is probably under the 100 pound budget). If you can find some Hitachi/HGST 7K4000 drives in your budget, those are stellar as well.

 

[aigomorla]

HGST 7k4000 +1

 

[Shmee]

WD Black or Red.

 

[bigboxes]

HGST 7k4000 +2

 

[mikeymikec]

WD Black or Red.

I was a bit worried about the Black because while I've bought many WDB 3.5" drives, only one was as big as 2TB, and christ did it make a racket when accessing data. The lower capacity WDBs are virtually silent when doing the same.

 

[mxnerd]

Another vote for Hitachi drives. They are quiet and cool.

Some WD drives are really noisy as hell, thought they will die any time.

 

[mikeymikec]

The 7K4000 - I'm seeing a few 7K3000's, but is that a different range / generation or what?

 

[aigomorla]

typically the last 4 digits is capacity.

So a 7K3000 = 3TB drive.
7K4000 = 4TB drive.
7k6000 = 6tb drive.