Need good reliable HDD
 

I need to buy a good reliable, high quality HDD 2TB. Since I am going thru many desktops and want to build my first build, I need to save all my data that I have on one internal HDD and keep it there. That's why I would like to buy a good quality HDD with, preferably with green advantages. Or, please suggest what I have to pay attention to when choosing one to buy.

Thank you :),

I appreciate your help.

If you are looking for a 2 TB storage drive:

Western Digital WD AV-GP WD20EURS 2TB 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive - Newegg.com

When you get the new system built, you can, if you want, put this drive in an external housing and use it for keeping separate backups.

Rosewill RX-358 U3C SLV Silver External Enclosure - Newegg.com

Thank you,

Could you please explain what advantages this one has vs let say this one Newegg.com - Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, LED LCD TV, Digital Cameras and more!

The Green drives generally have a shorter warranty and aren't designed for continuous use like the AV drives.

Get a server drive like the Seagate Constellation.

Why spend THAT kind of money? Also, Seagate is pretty iffy, if I wanted a server drive I'd get a WD RE.

Newegg.com > Compare Western Digital 2TB SATA hard drives

Pay particular attention to the "Interface", "Cache", "Parts" and "Labor" (warranty) rows.

Kind of a crap shoot these days.

Seagates get a bad rap around here, but I have had good luck with them. I just bought this one for a NAS. I like it.

Seagate Barracuda STBD2000101 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Retail kit


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Yes, the WD RE is a good one and like the WD Black my Constellation have a 5 year warranty. I chose my Seagate because from the reviews and reports it's solid.

Also from the reviews the WDs have a bad batch showing up and at the time I bought my Seagate it wasn't a good time to buy a WD. I'm not saying that WD is bad, just not the good time to buy 'em. I have a 2009 WD Green 500 gig that's still going.

In a similar comparison a while ago, I found that the AV and Red drives do limited error recovery. If an AV drive has trouble reading a sector, it just returns the corrupted data (maybe after a few retries) to keep the video stream flowing smoothly: the bad data may show up as a bad frame in the video, but this shouldn't affect video quality too badly. The Red drives are intended to be used in a RAID configuration and also limit their retries, assuming the other RAID drive(s) will cover for the data loss. The enterprise drives were out of my price range so I didn't research them.

I wouldn't use either an AV or Red drive in a single-drive configuration. I'd think you'd want a straight (non-AV) Green drive.

Seagate has a similar stable of drives, presumably with similar characteristics. I've used mostly Seagates and have had several fail over the years but I've got backups that allow me to go for the lower price without worrying too much about lower reliability.

That reasoning isn't quite in line with the products that are available.

WD Black/Blue drives are designed to be high/medium performance drives containing a computer's operating system. (5-year warranty for black, 2-year warranty for blue)

WD AV drives are intended for DVRs, digital signage, and security camera systems--basically for any stand-alone devices running media applications that are operational 24/7. (3-year warranty)

WD Green drives are intended for storage drives that aren't highly utilized. (2-year warranty)

WD Red drives are for RAID arrays. (3-year warranty)

WD VelociRaptor drives...well...I'm not even sure where these might be useful, now that HDD technology has improved over the years. A WD Black drive is usually enough. (5-year warranty)

As for Seagate drives, many of us don't trust them because of the rampant firmware issues and drive failures from a few years ago. However, as far as I can tell, they seem to have settled on a 5-year warranty for all of their desktop and RAID drive models.

When it comes to HDD reliability is key. Premature failure is not acceptable. Why do you keep using Seagate drives if you say they keep failing on you?

Also keep in mind that Seagate 7200 RPM, SATA 1.5/3.0/6.0 Gb/s, "Barracuda" 250, 320, 500, 750, 1000, 1500, 2000 and 3000 GB hard drives are only rated for 2,400 Power-on hours (POH).

(2,400 divided by 24 hours per day is a mere 100 days).

Well,...

So what would you recommend? So many different advices. I don't reallyt understand which would be the best.

Western Digital WD Black WD2002FAEX 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive with 5 year warranty

Total will be $139.99 with promo code EMCXRXV26 (which ends 5/3, today).

WDs are still that good and Seagates are bad? I thought their new drives were fine.

If cost is not a major concern, I would agree with the WD Black recommendation. It's a proven high-performance reliable drive with a 5 year warranty. However, it's not a low-power drive - for low-power I prefer the WD AV-GP to the WD Green. If you want a drive for primary use in a computer (the OS/boot drive) I don't recommend any of the low-power drives.

Speaking of OS/boot drive, I actually wasn't considering to an HDD for boot anymore. So, the HDD I need, would be I would say 50% of a primary use, where a reliable SSD that I would need to chose would cover remaining 50% + OS/boot.
As you said GLC, you would prefer WD AV-GP to the WD Green for low-power. How much more power WD black requires? If the difference is not considerable I would go with WD black.

In the whole scheme of things, the extra power really is nominal. To me, the Black is always worth it as an internal data drive in a primary use computer. I don't have a SSD, I'm using a Black as my boot drive.

I'm still sad they off'd Samsung drives... Loved them but other than those it's WD. I've only ever had 1 WD drive fail and it was a 640 aaks Black drive and failed 2 days after warranty...

Pretty sure that was my fault as it was part of a Dual boot and I plugged in the power but forgot the Sata cable and the drive spun full speed for how long? and started squealing (it was hot and mounted sideways). I ended up reformatting the drive and using it for almost 2 years after that and one day it just died out of the blue no warning no noise... was surfing the web at the time.

WD drives have been very reliable to me and I've only bought the 5-year Black Editions... My media server has WD Black and Samsung F1 drives...going on 6 or 7 years now.

I didn't buy that WD Black, but as I understand, that is what I need. Could anyone give me good link on the same one or similar with a discount.

Thank you

Western Digital WD Black WD2002FAEX 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive - Newegg.com

Amazon.com: Western Digital Caviar Black 2 TB SATA III 7200 RPM 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Internal Desktop Hard Drive - WD2002FAEX: Computers & Accessories

Western Digital 2TB Caviar Black WD2002FAEX WDBMBE0020HNC-NRSN

Newegg.com > WD2002FAEX - REFURBISHED - $84.99

?

The refurb only has a 90 day warranty and it's out of stock.

Wow, got to be quick eh? They had four this morning.

And yes they only have a 90 day warranty. I personally don't buy 'refurb' hard drives but apparently somebody does. :)

Should've bought WD black one when it was discounted.

It's only 10 bucks more at B&H now than it was when it was on promo at Newegg.

You could save a whole $1.99 on eBay. :)