2.5" hdd reliability - same as 3.5"?

eddiew

eddiew

eddiew

Soldato
Joined
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Hey folks,

I have a couple of aging HDDs that I'd like to replace and consolidate into one larger (4+ tb) drive. It is purely for streaming media to my TV, and holding backup files; I've got plenty of SSD space for games and work files, so this drive does not need to be fast, but I do want a good long working life out of it and it should be as quiet and cool as possible.

I've got a bit of a mind to get a little 2.5" 5tb drive to free up some physical space and a bit of power usage, but... well, in my experience, laptops fail much faster than desktops, and I'm wondering if there's anything intrinsically unreliable about the 2.5" drive format? I notice the only option is Seagate, with a mere 2 year warranty, which almost feels like they are expecting them to die young...

If it's a bad idea I'll probably go with a WD Red Pro.

Of note; I will also get some sort of external drive to occasionally take manual backups of the most important stuff. It does worry me that I have 20 years of digitised CDs on a single drive. Would not like to have to do that all over again!

Thanks for any advice!
 
My experience, albeit with usb drives, is that I've had 2.5inch fail but I've not had 3.5inch fail (touch wood). I wasn't slinging it around either but in all honesty it's literally luck of the draw when it comes to hard drives, I have seen a fair few negative reviews on the 5tb 2.5 inch drives though.

If you're concerned over longevity of data, online or bluray/tape as another backup is likely the best but you could double up on the hard drives for a bit of piece of mind..... if it's music, I uploaded mine to google music as a 'backup' and in some cases got better quality than I'd started with when I downloaded it lol

The power usage difference would be pretty minimal in all honesty because the 3.5inch is generally faster meaning it would be 'working' for less time etc.
 
lsg1r said:
My experience, albeit with usb drives, is that I've had 2.5inch fail but I've not had 3.5inch fail (touch wood). I wasn't slinging it around either but in all honesty it's literally luck of the draw when it comes to hard drives, I have seen a fair few negative reviews on the 5tb 2.5 inch drives though.

If you're concerned over longevity of data, online or bluray/tape as another backup is likely the best but you could double up on the hard drives for a bit of piece of mind..... if it's music, I uploaded mine to google music as a 'backup' and in some cases got better quality than I'd started with when I downloaded it lol

The power usage difference would be pretty minimal in all honesty because the 3.5inch is generally faster meaning it would be 'working' for less time etc.
Click to expand...

I think I'm 1 and 1 on the failure front; lost a Seagate laptop drive after just 2 years of service - though it did do me the favour of degrading slowly such that I could get data off it before swapping it for an SSD. Also lost a Seagate desktop drive, but that was about 10 years ago and maybe that's no longer indicative. You might be right with the power; most of the time both my HDDs are spun down because I'm working off one of my three SSDs instead.

I think my current 4tb WD Green might be on its way, but I'm not really sure yet. Yesterday it didn't start with the PC, but after a jiggle of the cables and a reboot it came back. I should probably try another cable before consigning it to the bin, really, but I suspect it is 5+ years old and can't even find where/when it was bought. I also have a 1tb WD something that is possibly pushing a decade now - it's currently the backup drive, while the Green is the media drive. Maybe I can find a drive health monitor to pass over them...

Either way, I'm inclined to get a 2tb external drive for ~£75 which I can do monthly backups with then put it back in a drawer. It'll hold the bulk of my media (~1.6tb), plus the most recent copy of my working files from Clip Studio Paint and Photoshop. Most of my documents are either in Dropbox or Google docs. There is a part of me wants to fit a 2-4tb sata SSD for "slow data" and remove all spinning disks, but I'm a little bit too Yorkshire to really consider it :cry:

Or I could be a sensible human being and uninstall the ones I haven't played for a couple of years.

Side note, I very nearly ordered a £25 "2 terabyte" flash drive from the rainforest... then realised that was too good to be true, and also it looked very slim and graceful for 2tb. Turns out there is a common scam with flash drives that misreport their size to the OS, but just overwrite data as they go. Actual capacity can be as low as 800mb, but they work fine until you fill them. At least I caught on before I wasted my money there, but how disappointing that a major retailer is allowing people to sell products that don't exist!
 
eddiew said:
Side note, I very nearly ordered a £25 "2 terabyte" flash drive from the rainforest... then realised that was too good to be true, and also it looked very slim and graceful for 2tb. Turns out there is a common scam with flash drives that misreport their size to the OS, but just overwrite data as they go. Actual capacity can be as low as 800mb, but they work fine until you fill them. At least I caught on before I wasted my money there, but how disappointing that a major retailer is allowing people to sell products that don't exist!
Click to expand...
Yeah I've seen them and I was like... nope I'm not that stupid.... but then that is the issue with both rainforest and the auction site.

I'd keep an eye on WD site though, they seem to have regular deals on external drives (I paid £45 for 3tb 2.5inch usb and £90 for 6tb 3.5inch usb) and they often come in at lower prices than what OCUK, and even the rainforest, can offer.
 
2.5" drives aren't inherently less reliable than 3.5" drives - up until fairly recently 2.5" hard drives were the format of choice for most servers.

The problem is that most 2.5" drives designed for laptops are designed to a specific price point (i.e. cheap laptops), so some corners are cut, things like MTBF specifications are a lot lower (than e.g. Enterprise Near Line SATA 2.5" hard drives, or SAS 10k/15k 2.5" drives), despite working is some of the hardest conditions expected (e.g. frequent start ups and shutdowns, vibration, shocks etc)


It's worth bearing in mind that a 5tb 2.5" drive is 15mm in height anyway, so won't necessarily fit everywhere you would want a 2.5" drive to anyway (e.g. it won't fit most USB enclosures, game consoles or laptops, and even some case 2.5" mounts)

3.5" drives also tend to be cheaper - as for a given capacity they normally use less platters and so are slightly less complicated.

For your external backup requirement - it can also be worth just buying a 2.5" USB enclosure, then picking up a cheap SSD (or reusing a spare existing ssd e.g. old 250gb drives)


My basket at OcUK:

Total: £304.62 (includes delivery: £8.70)​

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Seagate Basic 2TB Portable USB 3.0 External Hard Drive
HD-3CP-SE
£63 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Crucial BX500 1TB SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps Solid State Drive
HD-06V-CR
£68 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
IcyBox External 2.5" Enclosure for SATA HDD / SSD with USB 3.0 (IB-273StU3)
HD-025-IB
£14 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
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