Mechanical Internal hard drive recommendations

f/2.8

f/2.8

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So with a bit of luck my new p.c will be here tomorrow or Tuesday and I have decided to buy a new mechanical hard drive to add to it.

My new P.C has a 500GB Samsung 980 PRO for the operating system and I also have a Crucial MX500 1tb drive that I will set up as a scratch drive.

I already have a 4tb Toshiba X300 and a few Western digital Blues that I was originally going to switch over to the new desktop but considering the age of those drives and that I can make of use of them for something else I was thinking it may not be a bad idea to start of with a nice fresh new drive for the new desktop.

Not really sure what to go for so any advice appreciated, have looked at a few, it used to be that Seagate were frowned upon but apparently now they are good? I don't play games so the computer is just being used for photoshop, Lightroom and my daughter may use it for a bit of video editing as well. Would it be worthwhile paying the extra cash for the WD Black drives? Would the quicker drives be of much benefit? It will mostly just be used for my raw files.

The Toshiba X300 is very noisy they are known for this so would prefer something not as loud, so this put me off buying another one of these.

Probably looking at another 4tb drive but might consider 8tb.

As a left field alternative would I better to get a Lacie 2big raid drive set up as raid 0 and not bother with an internal mechanical drive? I already have a WD duo set up as raid 1 that I use as a primary back up.
 
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Purely FWIW

Whenever I have added drives or replacement to increase storage sizes it has been WD Black drives.

Caveat being I have two fans sucking in air over the drives cage as heat is a real killer of drives.

PS the last change I made was to replace my C drive (OS system only) & the E drive (programs only) with Crucial MX SSD's........so my data drives are due replacement(s) in due course.
 
Box Brownie said:
Purely FWIW

Whenever I have added drives or replacement to increase storage sizes it has been WD Black drives.

Caveat being I have two fans sucking in air over the drives cage as heat is a real killer of drives.

PS the last change I made was to replace my C drive (OS system only) & the E drive (programs only) with Crucial MX SSD's........so my data drives are due replacement(s) in due course.
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Have you found the black drives to be noisy a couple of reviews on amazon said they were in particular the 4tb version?
 
All hard drive brands are great / all hard drive brands are terrible....

Backblaze publishes quarterly stats on their farm of 130k drives

Hard Drive Failure Rates: A Look at Drive Reliability (backblaze.com)

TL;DR: drives are getting more reliable and Tosh/Seagate/Hitachi are currently about as good as each other. Backblaze have no stats that I could see on WD drives which I suspect means they don't buy them due to the cost :)

I have a Blue WD 4TB and never hear anything from it - but it only really does anything during backups because the rest of my storage is NVME. I suspect in your setup it will be similar. They cost about 65 quid which I think is a very fair price to pay. Personally I wouldn't bother spending more on a higher grade or an 8TB (c 3X the price).

Again, this is just me, but I would stay away from LaCies. They look nice and have some cool features but (1) they don't make their own drives - you are buying blind and (2) they often seem to fail in construction - the drives are fine but you can't get the data off due to interface problems. And unless they have changed things, opening a LaCie is very much a one way process.
 
f/2.8 said:
Have you found the black drives to be noisy a couple of reviews on amazon said they were in particular the 4tb version?
Click to expand...

Hmm! I surmise they contribute to the overall noise but that dropped a tad when I switched to the SSD mentioned. But there are still 3 of them, though the most noise is generated by the fans and the box is on my desk (IMO never put it/them near the floor......as they are like vacuum cleaners ;) ) so I am approx 2 feet away from it.

If used in an entertainment box then perhaps too noisy??? So horses for courses!
 
I run a couple of WD Red drives (2TB) as storage drives for video/music/ and photos from previous years (I keep current year images on my NVME drive).

I have a few large fans (140mm I think) running at slow speeds and the drives and box stays cool and quiet.
 
Thanks for all of the advice guys in the end I have just decided to grab another Toshiba X300 for now. The one I have had has been reliable up until now and its a little faster being 7200 rpm than the other drives at the same price point. I might have just went for more WD blues as while slow they have been ultra reliable and quiet but they have really increased in price since I last bought them.

I have just got the Toshiba from Amazon as the returns process is easy, maybe with a bit of luck it won't seem so noisy in my new BeQuiet case and if it's too annoying I can send it back easily and get something else.
 
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If you are looking for bulk storage i would buy a NAS and stick a few mirrored drives in it and find a cupboard or celler you can hide it in.
 
I get a measurement of 37dB about three feet from my computer but that is likely down to the fact I don't use the Sata drives very much. Most of my active stuff is on NVME or SSD.

I backup to an external 4TB Fantom Drive and that is silent too.

A good case helps a lot; I use a Fractal Design Define
 
moggi1964 said:
I get a measurement of 37dB about three feet from my computer but that is likely down to the fact I don't use the Sata drives very much. Most of my active stuff is on NVME or SSD.

I backup to an external 4TB Fantom Drive and that is silent too.

A good case helps a lot; I use a Fractal Design Define
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What do you do to measure the dB? Fancy seeing what mine is. I reckon the nearby fishtank is louder than the PC.
I think HDDs are much of muchness these days.
Just get the correct category drive, of it's for storage get something designed for storage, they'll be designed to be quiet, cool and energy efficient.
Black's are designed for performance bit are still terrible compared to even an SSD.
REDs or equivalent are for NAS so have suitable robust motors for 24/7 use.
Brand wise I just get the cheapest for the size. I think I have Seagate Ironwolf in my NAS 2x 8tb and a WD Green 3tb I had lying around as a backup drive.
 
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I have a sound meter from when I took my audio setup more seriously. I also downloaded a Sound meter App (Called Sound Meter) just to see how accurate it was and it pretty close on the average though the peaks were about 10% too high.
 
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