Hard Drive advice pls

Soldato
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Brand/model doesn't matter: Compared to SSDs all HDDs are equally slow.

Though if you want drive to be as cool and quiet as possible 5400 rpm drive would be good.
 
Associate
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Cheapest 4 Tb internal seem to be the

Seagate 4TB Barracuda:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/seag...nternal-hard-drive-st4000dm004-hd-37t-se.html

Western Digital 4TB Blue HDD:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/wd-4...e-internal-hard-drive-wd40ezaz-hd-57s-wd.html

Both £80. Of those two I'd go with the Western Digital over the Seagate, since the Seagate one uses SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording). I won't go into the technical details unless you are interested, but generally that's not something you want. Given a choice between a drive with it and drive without it at the same price, avoid it.
 
Associate
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I have had no issues with Western Digital drives. Both of my Seagate drives failed (one was my video / music drive - wasn't so botherd about the videos but losing my entire music collection was pretty lame). Might be anecdotal but wouldn't buy another seagate
 
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For the above guy, always 2 backups!! Any drive can fail, don't get caught out again :)

Ha, quite right! Have a 2tb drive plugged into the router, OneDrive, and an offsite backup drive that gets synced every now and then nowadays

It's VERY lucky that I'd started syncing all my work files to Onedrive a few months earlier - all my lesson plans and teaching resources would have gone as well otherwise
 
Soldato
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26 Aug 2013
Posts
8,393
Cheapest 4 Tb internal seem to be the

Seagate 4TB Barracuda:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/seag...nternal-hard-drive-st4000dm004-hd-37t-se.html

Western Digital 4TB Blue HDD:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/wd-4...e-internal-hard-drive-wd40ezaz-hd-57s-wd.html

Both £80. Of those two I'd go with the Western Digital over the Seagate, since the Seagate one uses SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording). I won't go into the technical details unless you are interested, but generally that's not something you want. Given a choice between a drive with it and drive without it at the same price, avoid it.

The WD40EZAZ is also SMR.

Recording Technology
CMR: WD5000AZLX, WD5000AZRZ, WD10EZEX, WD10EZRZ, WD20EZRZ, WD30EZRZ, WD40EZRZ
SMR: WD20EZAZ, WD20EZBX, WD30EZAZ, WD40EZAZ, WD60EZAZ

https://shop.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-blue-desktop-sata-hdd#WD5000AZLX
 
Associate
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Ah is it? Bugger. They don't exactly draw attention to that do they?

I should have known better than to not check something from Western Digital very carefully, given the dirty tricks their marketing have done recently, like the drives marketed as "5400 RPM class" that actually have 7200 RPM spindle speed (and the related increased power and noise) but only the performance of a 5400 RPM one...
 
Soldato
Joined
26 Aug 2013
Posts
8,393
Ah is it? Bugger. They don't exactly draw attention to that do they?

I should have known better than to not check something from Western Digital very carefully, given the dirty tricks their marketing have done recently, like the drives marketed as "5400 RPM class" that actually have 7200 RPM spindle speed (and the related increased power and noise) but only the performance of a 5400 RPM one...

Yes, and they switched the plain WD Red NAS from CMR to SMR without saying anything initially.
 
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Associate
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Swansea, South Wales. UK
foster grant--not sure you mean me with PSU..It has been doing GREAT work since I installed it with this self build a few years ago.
I got Loads of usb devices and hard drives working off of it. Not going to buy a larger one until I decide to build another NEW PC. But with the Extortionate prices of Gear everywhere I'll not be Upgrading any time soon. If prices keep rising I'll be better off going MAC. lol
 
Associate
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Swansea, South Wales. UK
Tanin'iver-----Both those 5400rps drives are SMR technology. No way will I buy them even if they sold at £10 each. I've lost 3x 3TB Seagate Drives in just over 3 years. Last one was last year. Too many Errors on them so they now sitting in a box with 3 older ones. My main reason for going 4tb Toshiba 7300rpm HDD. CMR..
 
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