Reliable 6TB drive

[Lither]

I'm looking for a reliable 6TB drive mainly for movies and files that will be used in a hard drive enclosure and the drive will be powered off when it is not in use but I'm not sure whether to get the WD, Seagate or Toshiba, what do you guys recommend?

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Seagate 6TB BarraCuda 5400RPM 256MB Cache Internal Hard Drive (ST6000DM003)= £148.99
• 1 x Seagate 6TB IronWolf NAS 7200RPM 256MB Cache Internal Hard Drive (ST6000VN0033)= £169.99
• 1 x WD 6TB Blue 5400rpm 64MB Cache Internal Hard Drive (WD60EZRZ)= £172.99
• 1 x WD 6TB Red 5400rpm 64MB Cache Internal NAS Hard Drive (WD60EFRX)= £184.99

Total: £686.86 (includes shipping: £9.90)​

​

 

[JasonM]

I would go for either of the Western Digital's, but would favor the Red as it's rated for double the load cycles over the WD Blue (600k on Red, 300k on Blue). Also the Red is optimized for data, where as the Blue is more of an all round drive for application/OS loading also. So yes go for the Red, plus an extra 1 year guarantee on Red over the Blue.

 

[gEd]

I would recommend reading the backblaze Lifetime Hard Drive Reliability Statistics

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-q1-2018/

 

[EsaT]

I would recommend reading the backblaze Lifetime Hard Drive Reliability Statistics

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-q1-2018/

Environment they put their drives isn't exactly similar to home users:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/open-source-data-storage-server/
For example vibration level in that rack can cause vastly different failure mechanisms compared to home use, making reliability figures different.

And anyway there's no guaranteed reliability for any single drive.
Individual sample of drive known from high reliability could die fast, while individual drive from "bad" maker could last long.
Hence redundancy and back ups are needed.

 

[ANDARIAL]

WD RED

 

[gEd]

Environment they put their drives isn't exactly similar to home users:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/open-source-data-storage-server/
For example vibration level in that rack can cause vastly different failure mechanisms compared to home use, making reliability figures different.

And anyway there's no guaranteed reliability for any single drive.
Individual sample of drive known from high reliability could die fast, while individual drive from "bad" maker could last long.
Hence redundancy and back ups are needed.

So you're saying that their reliability data is going to different to that of home users as their usage and environment of the disk is different. ok I can see your point although I would suggest that backblaze stress all of their drivers (equally) much harder than home users and that their results are far more statistically significant that someone saying (for example) "I had 2 [brand X] drives fail on me, don't buy them" which is what you normally read on forums. So yes, the OP can chose to ignore this data (from 98,000 drives being thrashed) and buy based only on the manufacturers claimed reliability rating and anecdotal forum recommendations, which is typically based on restating a manufacturers on MTBF/endurance rating or their own experience of having had no bad experience with HD model Z. Personally, given that the WD60EFRX) appears to have one of the worst reliability ratings according to Backblaze, I would be tempted to consider the equivalent size Seagate which shows a significantly better reliability rating.

As you say, it's a completely lottery anyway. Every drive will fail eventually, even my heavily used 7 year old 1TB seagate drive will eventually. Reliability tends to follow a "bath curve" with more reliability problems very early and then late in the life of a disk. Ultimately, the only answer (as you say) is verified backups (and possibly redundancy). If you don't have backups, you clearly don't care about your data.

 

[hornetstinger]

Depends if data is important IE if it windows and steam games then doesn't matter if you lose everything you'll get it back. Be a little bit of pain but not hard.

But if you're ripped and encoded tens of thousanda of CDs have personal photos and videos then you want to make a backup of these.

 

[Lither]

I would go for either of the Western Digital's, but would favor the Red as it's rated for double the load cycles over the WD Blue (600k on Red, 300k on Blue). Also the Red is optimized for data, where as the Blue is more of an all round drive for application/OS loading also. So yes go for the Red, plus an extra 1 year guarantee on Red over the Blue.

WD RED

The Red is only £12 more than the Blue with an extra 1 year guarantee and double the load cycles is a no brainer but what worries me is reading the Backblaze stats shows the Red failure rate is quite high compared to other brands.

I would recommend reading the backblaze Lifetime Hard Drive Reliability Statistics

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-q1-2018/

So yes, the OP can chose to ignore this data (from 98,000 drives being thrashed) and buy based only on the manufacturers claimed reliability rating and anecdotal forum recommendations, which is typically based on restating a manufacturers on MTBF/endurance rating or their own experience of having had no bad experience with HD model Z. Personally, given that the WD60EFRX) appears to have one of the worst reliability ratings according to Backblaze, I would be tempted to consider the equivalent size Seagate which shows a significantly better reliability rating.

I haven't looked into storage for a while but last time I heard that Seagate drives fail more than other brands. Would you recommend the Barracuda or Ironwolf drive?

Depends if data is important IE if it windows and steam games then doesn't matter if you lose everything you'll get it back. Be a little bit of pain but not hard.

But if you're ripped and encoded tens of thousanda of CDs have personal photos and videos then you want to make a backup of these.

Some are ripped DVD/Blu-rays and rest of them are MKV files.

 

[Lither]

I have bought the 6TB WD Red and the default head parking value is set to 300 seconds, should I disable it so it doesn't park the heads? As I'm using the drive in a enclosure and I will power it off when it is not in use.