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Suggest Reliable and Quiet 4TB/5TB HDD

A

Alpha0mega

Member
I am going to be swapping out my current HDDs with new ones, and would like some suggestions. My requirement are:

  • 4 or 5TB capacity (I will decide if 5TB is worth it, the based on price). Might also consider some 3TB drives, again based on price.
  • Non-Seagate. Given the negative reports about their normal line recently.
  • Reliable, of course.
  • Quiet - This is important. Both my current HDDs are fairly noisy. The WD Black make small grinding noises when writing (from day one), and the Seagate External whirs too loudly. So I want my new HDD to be as quite a possible.
Performance isn't a big concern, since it's going to be used for media only. I will also not be doing RAID of any flavor.

What is the difference between WD Red and Purple? I know they are for NAS and surveillance respectively, but the prices for Purple are lower than the Reds where I am, by about USD 20 for 3TB, and USD 30 for 4TB.

Shouldn't the Purple drives be (theoretically) more reliable than the Reds, since they too, like the latter, are meant for 24/7 operation, but whereas the Reds are expected to idle or read most of the time, the Purple ones will be constantly written to.

Any help will be appreciated.
 
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Two WD Reds, from separate vendors 🙂. HDDs in general are fairly reliable, but failure is too random, and often too quick, to be concerned with any single drive's reliability. Mitigate that risk by means other than hoping for a highly reliable HDD.

I put a Purple in my desktop, because they were on sale (it would otherwise have been a Red), and it tests and performs oddly, very much like it has a write-back cache using a deadline-based scheduler. If it doesn't, they've got some good magic going on in the firmware. Beyond that, WD has been closed-mouth. FI, their older AV-GP drives had datasheets, and clearly noted they were basically TLER 0 (no recovery cycles). With the Purple, all I've found is just, "TLER," and have found no datasheets with any sort of depth at all.
 
I have a number of WD drives, but my last two 4TB drives have been HGST(which is owned by WD) and I've found them to be good hard drives.

They never go on sale so you know they are good...
 
Cerb said:
I put a Purple in my desktop, because they were on sale (it would otherwise have been a Red), and it tests and performs oddly, very much like it has a write-back cache using a deadline-based scheduler. If it doesn't, they've got some good magic going on in the firmware.
Click to expand...

Ok, given that I have very little idea about the inner workings of HDDs, beyond the ultra-basics, what does that mean? Did you like the Purples, for desktop storage? The "good magic" part of your post makes me think so, but please elaborate.

The reason I am considering Purple is that, as I mentioned, Reds are substantially more expensive for me.
 
They transfer actual files just a bit slow for their speed, but remain very responsive while doing so, more-so than the Reds, or most 7200 RPM drives, even. But, I'm not sure if that's just firmware tuned to handle constant writes well, or a write cache. Until WD claims otherwise, given the history of HDDs, I'm going to suspect a write cache.

With TLER, the drive will also not go into a deep recovery cycle to try to get data from a sector that's hard to read. If it can't read it fairly quickly, it's marked bad (pending), and the drive moves on.

It's generally not recommended to use such drives in desktops. But, if you have backups being made on a regular basis, and occasionally verify them, it won't matter; and, IMO, not doing so is taking too much of a risk anyway, since having to rely on things like long recovery routines to read your data means you're already in a bad place.
 
Thanks for clearing that up. One more thing, how noisy are the Purples? Do they whir too loud? Any regular (or odd) sounds like chirps or grinding?
 
Mine is like a Red. If I get close and at the right angle, I can just pick it out from the front panel (it's installed into a 5.25" bay, so nothing but the bay cover between it and outside). Chances are good that the hardware is identical to a Red.
 
Cerb said:
Two WD Reds, from separate vendors 🙂. HDDs in general are fairly reliable, but failure is too random, and often too quick, to be concerned with any single drive's reliability. Mitigate that risk by means other than hoping for a highly reliable HDD.

I put a Purple in my desktop, because they were on sale (it would otherwise have been a Red), and it tests and performs oddly, very much like it has a write-back cache using a deadline-based scheduler. If it doesn't, they've got some good magic going on in the firmware. Beyond that, WD has been closed-mouth. FI, their older AV-GP drives had datasheets, and clearly noted they were basically TLER 0 (no recovery cycles). With the Purple, all I've found is just, "TLER," and have found no datasheets with any sort of depth at all.
Click to expand...

This.

My 2x4TB reds have been great. Used for my NAS and they run cool/quiet.
 
Purple are meant for NVR for digital camera recording, where a bad write should not make the camera server drop frames, but rather write a bad sector and continue going. why AV-GP drives had TLER=0, one glitched sector is a lot better than losing 10-180 seconds of critical camera footage!

Not at all good for a desktop use since corruption will probably be passed on to NTFS to deal with!
 
I was looking around for more information, when I came across this thread:
http://community.wd.com/t5/Desktop-Mobile-Drives/Wd-Purple-for-desktop-use/td-p/779395

The OP, in his second post, quotes (information he got from another thread):
"These drives are designed for "it's more important to complete the read or write in the specified time frame than that the data written or read be correct" usage. Pretty much the opposite of what you want in a NAS that stores important documents, business data, treasured photos/videos, or anything except short-lived (days, weeks) streamed data."

However, the last post on that thread is by a "WD Staff" member, saying:
"The drive will only use the streaming ATA commands if it receives them from the host. Desktop computers should not natively issue these types of commands so the drive should work like a normal hard drive. Some differences are that since the drive is optimized for contiguous data streams, the random read/write may not be as fast as a regular desktop drive. Also, the drive is designed for constant 24/7 operation so it will not go into a power saving mode on its own."

This is interesting, since the staff poster is saying that the surveillance system has to specifically send the "streaming ATA commands" for the drive to function differently than a normal desktop drive.
 
Which is why I wish they still offered freaking data sheets. We don't care about the secret sauce, but such info should be in a publicly-available PDF, laying out the drive's behaviors. They used to have decent ones, but stopped sometime in the last several years. It's all very basic specs and advertising material, now.
 
Non-Seagate. Given the negative reports about their normal line recently.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't necessarily rule out Seagate. They've had problems with the 3TB drives (43.1% failure rate), but the 4TB Seagates (2.6% failure rate) are looking much better, and even better than the WD Red 3TB (6.9%) or the WD Red 6TB(3.1%).

backblaze Jan 21, 2015 report
 
if you want low noise and are not worried about performance make sure its a low rpm drive
i have yet to find a 7200rpm drive that anywhere near as quiet as a stock intel cooler at idle
 
Hitachi - HGST. They have 2 kinds of 4TB HDDs. I own both. Greatest reliability IMO are from Hitachi drives.
 
I think I am going for the WD Reds.

Now I have the choice between 4 or 5TB. Price per TB is coming out to be exactly the same in both cases. Which one is likely to be more reliable? The 4TB, because of the lower platter count? Or is that not a relevant metric anymore?
 
Alpha0mega said:
I think I am going for the WD Reds.

Now I have the choice between 4 or 5TB. Price per TB is coming out to be exactly the same in both cases. Which one is likely to be more reliable? The 4TB, because of the lower platter count? Or is that not a relevant metric anymore?
Click to expand...

The only size I would stay away from is the 3TB options. For some reason, these seem to have much higher failure rates, across the board for all HDD companies, vs. 2/4/5/6TB options.

I got the 4TB RED when I built my NAS last year due to the price/TB advantages. Get whatever 4/5/6TB drive is the best deal. 🙂
 
bigi said:
Hitachi - HGST. They have 2 kinds of 4TB HDDs. I own both. Greatest reliability IMO are from Hitachi drives.
Click to expand...

In the past, Hitachi drives were not known for their quietness. I don't know about their newer (HGST) drives, however.
 
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