What are the most-reliable HDDs for long-term storage?
- Thread starter oxf77
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I use Seagate Ironwolf Pro's for hdd's in my backup server not super loud.
Caporegime
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Unraid server. Then you have no need to clone or backup.
If one drive dies it simply re-builds when you swap it out
I've found Seagate drives stand up well (though I'm not as impressed with them as I used to be) - the higher end ones can even keep data integrity when stuff starts to fail up to a point. But on my NAS setups I use real time replication to keep another mirror of the data either to an external USB HDD or cloud storage or both.
The irony being I've just had one fail a week after it was installed.
The warranty and returns process has been faultless however
The irony being I've just had one fail a week after it was installed.
The warranty and returns process has been faultless however
How are they for data recovery? I know that's a big selling point with the Senate Ironwolfs is that they offer it free of charge, if I'm not mistaken
Not sure if they even offer it (as I personally didn't need it anyway), but can't fault the returns process (which has both standard and advanced replacement options)
Is the return not with the store because it's <1 year old?
It could well have been, but it's as easy to raise an web advanced RMA with WD, and get a new drive sent out next day, then post the old one back.
By contrast my supplier would have had to wait for receipt of the drive, testing it etc, before being able to provide a replacement.
Good to know. Do you know if they offer this with WD Reds too?
Yep they do
I seen a sort of test / diary made by company who were running hundreds of drives from different brands and Toshiba drives were very reliable if i remember but i think they were used in a commercial way. In a home PC i just go for WD because i always have good luck with them myself
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I think you might be thinking of the Backblaze drive reliability reports.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q2-2021/
It's worth taking a look at their results, but their usage pattern is pretty specific; so it is very much a case of YMMV.
I use WD Blacks, Gold, RE's and Ultrastars. The last 3 are the same family of drives with branding name changes.
Basic calculation in my head of the numbers I own.
Maybe 5 WD Blacks
4 WD Ultrastars
5 WD RE's
At least 2 WD Gold's.
None of the above have every failed, or given any issues. My drives are used in Silverstone FT-02 cases (own a number of these cases, great for servers & workstations), and I have 180mm fan running slow speed directly under the HDD's. I personally believe that getting some air over a HDD helps it's reliability.
Before anyone says I should stop using HDD's and get SSD's, I own quite a number of SSD's also, and ironically it's been SSD's that have failed / lost data, and not the HDD's.
Basic calculation in my head of the numbers I own.
Maybe 5 WD Blacks
4 WD Ultrastars
5 WD RE's
At least 2 WD Gold's.
None of the above have every failed, or given any issues. My drives are used in Silverstone FT-02 cases (own a number of these cases, great for servers & workstations), and I have 180mm fan running slow speed directly under the HDD's. I personally believe that getting some air over a HDD helps it's reliability.
Before anyone says I should stop using HDD's and get SSD's, I own quite a number of SSD's also, and ironically it's been SSD's that have failed / lost data, and not the HDD's.
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