What 8-10TB "better" HDD drive to buy...?

IloveYouSOmuch

IloveYouSOmuch

IloveYouSOmuch

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Hello

One my old ordinary HDD is dying, and im looking to buy a new HDD as a replacement for it. After looking at some shops at my country, i decided to go for something slightly better and more spacious this time (my OLD dying hdd is 8,3 years old WD Red 3TB 64MB cache (WD30EFRX)). Looking at the shops and prices in my country (none english), i narrowed the "menu" to:

1) WD Gold 10TB (WD Gold DC HA750 10TB - WD102KRYZ)
2) WD Ultrastar 8TB (WD Ultrastar HC320 8TB - HUS728T8TALE6L4 (0B36404) )
3) Seagate Exos 7E8 8TB (ST8000NM000A)
4) WD Gold 8TB (WD8004FRYZ)

All have (AFAIK, correct me if im wrong) - 2 000 000 MTBF (the gold ones even 2 500 000 (?) ), all have 5 years warranty (in my country)... I SOMEWHAT liked the Seagate Exos 7E8 8TB , cause its also the cheapest (somewhat "visibly") from the list, but i just dont like Seagate that much... Read like years ago that they are not that good (reliability-wise)and that "famous article" from backblaze that they (seagate) fail more... And it just sticked with me (in my mind)... Also its the cheapest which also doesnt give me any additional confidence... Also one online shop in my country has in each HDD product spec on his website that failure rate (i think its the percentage they sold vs the percentage that were sent back to them for warranty issues) they call it "reliability" basically... All the drives from the list have like 96-98%, the seagate one is the only one that has lower - 95%. Although its only 1-3% difference, its still a difference and sits well with the other "ideas" i have about seagate (that it just fails a bit more)). Thats why even though the seagate is the cheapest almost i just dont really want to go for it :-(.

Im eyeing mainly the 1) WD Gold 10TB or the 2) WD Ultrastar 8TB...
The gold is more expensive, but has additional 2 TB... I like the gold 10 TB drive so far the best probably...
But AFAIK the WD Ultrastars are the "ex-" Hitachi drives, and AFAIK, those are (or at least were in its days) the BEST (!), more RELIABLE drives out there... They are also a little bit cheaper where i live than the WD 8 TB gold...So i like that Ultrastar too quite a lot...

So... now what...

From the 4 drives i mentioned, which is the best one? Which has the best reviews, the best reputation and which one would you buy...?? Or from the 4 it really doesnt matter and they all are GREAT drives (just maybe avoid the Seagate)? But I also read the gold 10TB is quite loud...?

So which one?
 
I'm in a similar boat in some respects although I've been looking at 14-16TB range drives (seems the sweet spot for value/capacity imo). For all intense purposes WD Gold and WD Ultrastar are basically the same drive in most cases, just different branding. IIRC Gold got discontinued when WD bought out Hitachi, but sales dropped so they rereleased Ultrastar models rebranded as Gold models....something relating to 'gold standard' mentality of something.

In the past I'd have personally picked a HGST (Hitachi) drive any day of the week, the drives I have from 20years are still ticking along happily.... I've had good reliability from my consumer WD drives, albeit not as long as the hitachi, so I'd feel safe in going with either WD option, especially with them being enterprise grade.... so I think it would literally be a case of cost per gigabyte and picking the one with the best value.
 
Im in the process of choosing a new HDD, i had some drives in mind, but on some forum i was recommended even bigger and "better" drive for the same price - Toshiba 16TB, MG08ACA16TE. I liked it a lot from all the descriptions... But just few days ago new Back Blaze article about their HDD failure rates for 2022 came out

Backblaze Drive Stats for 2022

Check out the 2022 year-end Drive Stats data, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
www.backblaze.com www.backblaze.com

And I by pure accident came across it. What was my surprise when i saw that my new choice is among them - MG08ACA16TE.

And it doesnt look good... Although the drive SHOULD be GOOD (has 5 years warranty, 2.5 milion MTBF etc...) , BUT... according to the REAL WORLD samples/stats, it doesnt really look good... They have like 6000 of these (!) so the numbers that they give should give you a good idea about that HDD in general (if they had only 2 drives, who cares, 6000 drives is according to me a good sample size to make a judgement). They ran only for like a year (14,7 months) and ALREADY (!) they have AFR of 1,57% (!). Thats like almost the worst (if not WORST) number of all the drives with similiar "age" they have...

According to this:


The AFR should be (is stated that it is): 0,35%... And JUST in the 1st year of REAL WORLD USAGE (with 6000 samples (!) ) showed the real world AFR of 1,57%, thats like 4.5 times more than it should be...
So... this drives appears to be a BAD drive... right? And i should NOT go for it in light on these newly revealed real life "tests"...? Or is it possible that this drive just fails more in the first year and THAN it stabilizes its AFR on a much better number...? According to my understanding, if a drive exhibits unexpectedly high failure rate for the 1st year, its safe to assume, the failure rate will NOT get any better with years passing...?

Correct?

What would you thought about these revelations about the drive...? From all i know about PC HW and HDDs it appears to me, that this is a bad drive... (?) (in terms of reliability)

Thank you
 
Toshiba is basically using the manufacturing processes left behind by Hitachi when they got bought by WD. I can't say I'd personally pick a toshiba but there are others who happily will.

Backblaze is not going to be using the drives in the same way as you are as a home user, the environment your drive is in is going to be different as well... in other words lots of differing variables. Also to be fair backblaze is just one company, there are far more than 6000 drives out there (quick google says Toshiba sells around 250 MILLION drives per year) when you consider how much is stored these days so the failure percentage could easily be 'biased' by the relatively small sample at backblaze.

Basically buying a hard drive boils down to the simple fact that it doesn't matter what drive you buy, there will ALWAYS be a chance that it will fail, it might even be fine for several years before it fails or it might just keep ticking away for years and years and years. It's why 'data hoarders' often follow the 3-2-1 backup approach.
 
Thanks.

Wow, i didnt know toshiba sells that much drives per year... in that comparison the 6 000 back blaze sample seems rather small.
I will have to think about it. I hate this choosing of new PC components... it always takes me ages before i read up "all" on it and than decide :-/.
 
Is it "safe" (good idea) to buy (brand new) HDD (Helium filled (!)) that was sitting in a warehouse/store/stock shelf somewhere for like 3-4 years, without EVER being turned on/put into PC...? Just forgotten drive, LAST piece in stock which nobody bought...?

So i have found a nice drive, in my country (none english) e-shops, it appears to be the last piece of this particular HDD (its an older model AFAIK, replaced by newer models/revision (that are worse)). AFAIK this is the last HDD (new piece) thats being offered. Its WD Ultrastar 10TB HC510. I was thinking about buying WD Ultrastar HC DC 330, OR WD GOLD 10 TB (those are i think the same drives, but different names)... BUT... I by accident managed to find basically their (better quality/stats) predecessor - the WD Ultrastar 10TB HC510...

Its better in almost everything - Helium Filled (vs Air filled for the DC330 and WD GOLD 10 TB)), its has more MTBF, it consumes less power, should be significanntly quiter (20 dba in iddle vs 32 db in iddle - lol)). Its a better drive (on paper at least) more or less overall.

BUT (!). The problem is that AFAIK its an older model... these are NOT being manufactured anymore (were replaced by the worse HC DC 330 and Gold 10TB), and im not sure but i think that the manafacturing of H510 ended like in 2019 or 2020 (im not sure about that but i think its true)... That would make the drive like 3-4 years old (!!). That means that its a "brand new HDD" (not a "used one"), BUT the last piece in the stock... Simply nobody bought it yet and as far as i can tell it was just sitting in some warehouse/Store/stock shelf for all these years (3-4) :-) !!... Nobody touched it, it was never powered on during all these years etc...

My question is: Is it a good idea to buy such "long totally iddle" HDDs...?

Like didnt the helium "leak" - "reduced" during all these years or total innactivity or something...? Dont HDDs have some lubricant or "grease" or whatever that makes them run/spin the platters smoohtly etc... Didnt the years on shelf hurt it somehow... (hardened etc...)...? Wont it hurt the HDD or shorten its future use-lifespan if it sat on a stock shelf somewhere totall innactive for like 3-4 years...

Its hard for me to imagine that it didnt hurt it in some way (or reduce the future lifespan of the drive (HELIUM drive at that))...???

I like the specs of the drive on paper, its also like 10% cheaper (9%) than the newer (but worse) versions - GOLD 10 TB (WD102KRYZ)... I just like the drive, but what almost scares me are those 3-4 years of just lying around on a shelf not being powered on AT ALL... Am i wrong in being worried...?

(doesnt somebody know WHEN the HC510 was actually stopped being made?)
 
I don’t know about the helium spilled aspect and I can only speak from experience as I would chose either the WD Gold or the Seagate Exos. I have an 8Tb Exos in my media server and I bought it second hand out of a little used home lab and it has been running flawlessly for over a year. I have also purchased a load of them for our IT manager at work and they do get used for a load of database work and I don’t believer I can recall that he has had a failure but he is pretty rigorous with his replace after age policy.

I have used a few WD Gold for workstations that needed large reliable platter storage and they have been fine and don’t think I have had a failure either.

The Toshiba drives have been pretty reliable but had a couple of failures but one think I have noticed with them is that they are, more more often than not, a noisy drive constantly running it’s as if the drive motor isn’t very well dampened/isolated or the platters are out of balance.
 
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