Which 2TB HDD?

[Fun Guy]

The 6TB WD Black in my desktop PC croaked after 2 years. I will be sending it in under warranty, but I am not too hopeful I will be getting a new drive in return... seems others have been getting refurbished drives back on warranty claims.

I've decided to back off the humongous drives and stick with 2TB, which is the capacity of the external HDD I purchased to back up everything once I realized the 6TB Black was dying. In this way, I can do an incremental backup once a week or so.

The issue is, the WD Black still seems to be the go-to 7200RPM drive out there. However, as you can imagine, I am pretty leery due to this recent experience with my WD drive.

Here are the 5 drives I am considering - I would appreciate any insight you might have on my best chances for a fast, reliable drive... Newegg HDD Comparison

 

[Harry_Wild]

If you are using this as a boot drive; get a SSD, HDD are so very slow compared to SSD! They are dirty cheap now! If you are using it as a secondary drive then HDD is the right way to go!

 

[Fun Guy]

This would be a data drive. I have an SSD for boot/OS/apps.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I suppose the only reason I'm throwing in on this thread is that I'm looking for drives to use in the new server I'm building, no less to serve as backup disks for my workstations. So before I saw the OP's thread, I was looking at the Barracuda Pro, which seems to have a range of uses, with high-performance desktop or gaming on one end, and Home Server and DAS on the other.

I was looking at the 4TB size for that model, but there is also a 2TB size. Truth is, I was hoping to find a Seagate model I could use in my server that had a 2.5" form factor, but only the BarraCuda fills that bill, as opposed to the Barracuda Pro. I just bought a Barracuda 4TB for use in a hot-swap ICY-DOCK "2x 2.5"+ODD" bay as backup. It seems to be a solid and hefty 2.5" model, and looks more like a miniature 3.5" drive.

I also have a 2TB 2.5" Barracuda. I think it only spins at 5,400 RPM with a 128MB cache. For your purposes -- you could look at the 3.5" Barracuda Pro or the Barracuda, and I think they come in 2TB, 3TB and 4TB sizes and bigger. The Pro -- for sure -- has a 5 year warranty. But so does the Seagate FireCuda -- another option.

 

[Markfw]

I will probably get outvoted, but the last several drives I had fail were all WD. For simplicity I vote: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178993

I have a pile of them, and they have never failed me. (the $60 Seagate)

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I will probably get outvoted, but the last several drives I had fail were all WD. For simplicity I vote: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178993

I have a pile of them, and they have never failed me. (the $60 Seagate)

The 2.5" BarraCuda has a 128 MB cache. But it spins at 5,400. I think those are the same specs for both the 4TB and 2TB models. As long as I can pair one of these drives with a 128GB volume of any solid state drive, the speed limitations don't matter.

Could be that for a drive pool on an 8-lane controller at between 5 Gb/s and 6 Gb/s, that still might not matter much -- the rotational speed and access time . .

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I will probably get outvoted, but the last several drives I had fail were all WD. For simplicity I vote: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178993

I have a pile of them, and they have never failed me. (the $60 Seagate)

It looks as though I'll be more prudent myself to buy BarraCuda Pro drives. And I'll probably take another look at the Iron Wolf drives and FireCuda drives. But Barracuda Pro is a "candidate."

I think the OP would do just fine with one of the $60 Barracudas you linked.

Reviewing my mental statistics, I can also see that the three drives that failed me over the last five or six years were all WD -- two Blues and a VelociRaptor. They replaced the VelociRaptor on Warranty, although they insisted that my drive's serial number wasn't covered by the same warranty as other groups of those drives. But they were very kind about it. I could only show them my paperwork documenting my warranty expectations.

 

[Fun Guy]

Anyone else? I'm still stuck between the three 2TB Seagate drives (BarraCuda, BarraCuda Pro, FireCuda).

After reading the reviews of these three HDDs at Amazon and Newegg, I am discouraged. They don't seem much better (if any) than the WD Black that died on me.

 

[rchunter]

You can try one of these hgst drives. A lot more expensive though...
https://www.hgst.com/products/hard-drives/ultrastar-7k6000

Personally i've had pretty good luck with wd black drives.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

You can try one of these hgst drives. A lot more expensive though...
https://www.hgst.com/products/hard-drives/ultrastar-7k6000

Personally i've had pretty good luck with wd black drives.

HGST is also looking pretty good. There were some good reviews.

I used to buy the WD Black drives, and I've got a few well-used ones in storage -- 500 GB units. They had a pretty good reputation.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Anyone else? I'm still stuck between the three 2TB Seagate drives (BarraCuda, BarraCuda Pro, FireCuda).

After reading the reviews of these three HDDs at Amazon and Newegg, I am discouraged. They don't seem much better (if any) than the WD Black that died on me.

Customer reviews are useful, but one must keep in mind that dissatisfied customers are more likely to post reviews than anyone else. therefore, the will be over-represented in a sample of users. Instead, you can analyze the "one-egg" reviews to see if there are chronic or common problems with the drives.

Lab-test reviews that give comparisons are just as useful, but may not provide information about common troubles.