Best source for reliable Hard Drives these days?

Forums › Desktop computing › Best source for reliable Hard Drives these days?

openmedia

3449 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 878

Trusted

#290810 6-Dec-2021 21:05

My old MythTV box is getting close to needing a HDD refresh at 5+ years on the 4TB units.

In addition I'm after some newer external HDDs for my backups - the current set I picked up in the US nearly 5 years ago.

So any recommendations for

6TB or greater 3.5" non-SMR internal drives
8 or 10TB+ external drives for backup

Current domestic pricing is OK (ish), but are people still bringing large drives in from Amazon or other etailers?

Generally known online as OpenMedia, now working for Red Hat APAC as a Technology Evangelist and Portfolio Architect. Still playing with MythTV and digital media on the side.

davidcole

6099 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1465

Trusted

#2825368 6-Dec-2021 21:53

I just get WD reds now. Still mostly on 4s. Will look at 6s probably when the next goes. But I like to only spend ~$200 a drive

Previously known as psycik

Home Assistant: Gigabyte AMD A8 Brix, Home Assistant with Aeotech ZWave Controller, Raspberry PI, Wemos D1 Mini, Zwave, Shelly Humidity and Temperature sensors
Media:Chromecast v2, ATV4 4k, ATV4, HDHomeRun Dual
Server Host Plex Server 3x3TB, 4x4TB using MergerFS, Samsung 850 evo 512 GB SSD, Proxmox Server with 1xW10, 2xUbuntu 22.04 LTS, Backblaze Backups, usenetprime.com fastmail.com Sharesies Trakt.TV Sharesight

Jase2985

13731 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 6202

ID Verified

Lifetime subscriber

#2825390 6-Dec-2021 22:12

I got 2x Seagate Expansion Desktop Hard Drive 10TB HDD External, for $400USD + delivery. shucked them and they had Seagate barracuda pro drives in them.

Same internal drive sells for at least $75USD more even when on special. Currently its about $120 USD more.

Wait till newegg or Amazon have a 30-50% off deal going on them.

fe31nz

1294 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 423

#2825421 6-Dec-2021 23:52

If buying new WD drives, check online to see if they do the "click every 5 seconds" trick. This is a thing that newer WD drives do, a feature called PWL = Preventive Wear Leveling. Apparently the clicks are the drives moving the lubricant around so that no track will run dry, and it is supposed to extend their lifetime significantly. Older WD SCSI drives also do this.

The sound is very annoying in a quiet room (eg bedroom). I have three new enterprise class WD drives (1 x 10 Tbyte, 2 x 18 Tbyte) on my MythTV box and they all do this. It would not be so bad if they all did it at the same moment, but it is not possible to synchronise their power on times that well. The only way to prevent the noise is to spin them down, so I now have them doing that overnight - I have written a program to move them out of my MythTV "Default" storage group at night, and to give them an "hdparm -S 12" command (60 second timeout to spin down). That gets reversed during the day so they are available for recordings at peak times.

Newer WD red drives may by now have this feature also, so it would pay to download the specific manual for any WD drive you are looking at and see if it does PWL.