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west
Adept II

HDD Upgrade Advice

Hello,

 

I am looking to add an additional HDD, as I need more space to store various data.

I currently have 500GB SSD For the OS and a 1TB WD Blue (7200 RPM) for everything else.

I looked up some HDDs and based on what I am looking for (4-5TB, 7200RPM) and I got the following options: 4TB, Western Digital Gold Datacenter, 4TB WD Red Pro NAS, 4 TB WD Black. I did find WD Blue, 6TB (cheapest of all four), but it's 5400RPM. Which one would be best? I am looking for durability and speed. Also, I am open to other/better HDD suggestions.

My general use of the PC is all-around: I play games from time to time, watch movies and I don't use any heavy programs in general - just looking to buy more storage, as my current 1TB HDD is running out of free space.

My current specs are:

Ryzen 5 3600

GTX 1650 KalmX

MSI B450 Tomahawk

2x8GB Corsair Vengeance

Seasonic S12II-520 520W Bronze

 

Thank you!

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9 Replies
LeyvinBeta
Adept I

For Storage Purposes., I'd go with Western Digital... specifically I'd recommend their Blue Series.

Red is optimised for Data Centre RAID Solutions (so it's best in a NAS) 
Black is optimised for Performance not Longevity (it's the "Gamer" variant, but for Gamers there is only one choice for Physical Hard Disks; and that's the Seagate Barracuda Series; as it'll actually on avg. hit it's advertised Performance, rather than being just "Peak" that you can see)
Gold comes with an extended warranty, and is more aimed at CCTV or other Data Recorders
Green is optimised for Power Efficiency ("Eco Friendly", but I'd recommend Samsung Spinpoint instead; it's a good balance of longevity, low power and sleep access... as the name suggests the Plates don't actually stop spinning, instead they have low-friction bearings that allow it to keep momentum with very little energy when the drive heads are lifted; other "Eco" Drives tend to just power-down and take a few moments to spin back up before they can be accessed again)
Blue is the "Standard" Drive; they're basically very average in most regards, Performance, Longevity, etc. but they tend to be the best value for money.

You'll get a good 160 - 200 Petabytes of R/W Operations before it Fails; which trust me takes about a decade even if you thrash it with Content Creation... they're what I've gone with since WD retired their Raptor Series., but I've had an IBM / Western Digital for Storage Purposes since the Mid-90s, some of which STILL work just fine today in their original machines. 

really can't say the same for their competitors Samsung, Seagate, Fujitsu, Quantum, etc.
When it comes to Solid State however., I believe Samsung has the best reputation and technology at the moment... but mind I have also switched to WD Black for my OS SSD; as it has respectable performance, and I'm hoping it has the same great reliability that I've come to expect from their HDDs. 
Still that's just something that'll take time to find out >_< only had it for about 2 years so far

That was something that originally put me off SSDs for a VERY long time though, as they've been around longer than most realise; but the original offerings had terrible shelf lives... and when they go back it's not like a HDD, where you have some warning and it tends to happen over say 6-18 months; so you have time to get a replacement and switch, when an SSD goes bad... whelp! that's a bricked PC until you get a replacement, and forget about recovering any data.

Mind that said originally SSDs were intended as more of a Caching Portion of a HDD., but they never really caught on, and the few that do exist are an "Okay" Middle Ground; but no where near as good as dedicated SSD + HDD. 


@LeyvinBeta wrote:

For Storage Purposes., I'd go with Western Digital... specifically I'd recommend their Blue Series.



Thank you for the detailed information LeyvinBeta! It is greatly appreciated.

So, the best choice is the WD 6TB, 5400RPM? Will it have problems running along with my current SSD and the 7200RPM HDD, or do I have to replace the current HDD with the new one?

Thank you in advance!

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One other thing.
The WD Golds are, essentially, enterprise drives.
They're more akin to the Red Pro drives than the Reds.
Additionally, the Golds have a better spec for URE (2 orders of magnitude) better than any other drives in their lineup.

Everything but Gold: 1 unrecoverable read error in 10E14
Golds: 1 URE in 10E16

This can be ESPECIALLY important in larger drive arrays.  It's the reason I've spec'ed for Golds in the storage array on my next machine.

One of the downsides of the Golds is that, because they're enterprise drives, noise isn't as much of an issue.
When idle, they're fine.  Even with regular read/write cycles, they're acceptable.
But with a heavy write cycle, they're LOUD.

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@Hyperstrike wrote:

One other thing.
The WD Golds are, essentially, enterprise drives.
They're more akin to the Red Pro drives than the Reds.
Additionally, the Golds have a better spec for URE (2 orders of magnitude) better than any other drives in their lineup.

Everything but Gold: 1 unrecoverable read error in 10E14
Golds: 1 URE in 10E16

This can be ESPECIALLY important in larger drive arrays.  It's the reason I've spec'ed for Golds in the storage array on my next machine.

One of the downsides of the Golds is that, because they're enterprise drives, noise isn't as much of an issue.
When idle, they're fine.  Even with regular read/write cycles, they're acceptable.
But with a heavy write cycle, they're LOUD.


Thank you for the information Hyperstrike! 

I will have the gold variant in mind, in case I decide to go for durability for the most part. Although if they are that noisy, then I'd probably skip because of that.

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Yeah.  If you're going for a whisper-quiet setup, Golds are NOT what you want in the box.

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I'm the opposite, I'd go for Seagate Exynos 8TB, which is currently $177 on Amazon, and is the butter zone in prices right now as a 4TB is $140, search for B07D9625PB on Amazon. You may get a lower end drive, like a WD Blue, and be perfectly fine, or it may die in a month, I'd just rather bank on the enterprise grade components.

And you do need to look at getting at least a 256gb SSD to put your Windows OS on and your most played games, the speed and responsiveness increase from an HDD will make your computer many fold faster.
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Thank you for your help black_zion!


@black_zion wrote:
I'm the opposite, I'd go for Seagate Exynos 8TB, which is currently $177 on Amazon, and is the butter zone in prices right now as a 4TB is $140, search for B07D9625PB on Amazon. You may get a lower end drive, like a WD Blue, and be perfectly fine, or it may die in a month, I'd just rather bank on the enterprise grade components.

And you do need to look at getting at least a 256gb SSD to put your Windows OS on and your most played games, the speed and responsiveness increase from an HDD will make your computer many fold faster.

I did post only WD HDDs, as I thought they were the best quality overall. At least from what I have read so far.

I did try to search  ''Seagate Exyno'' and tried to search with the ''B07D9625PB'', but I couldn't find anything. I am sure I am missing something.

I do have SSD (in the specs). Just looking to add additional HDD to the current SSD and HDD, as long as there won't be a problem with running 3 drives and as long as it's not a problem if the two HDDs have a different RPM.

 

Edit: I did manage to find it. It's ''Seagate Exos'' - I am guessing that's what you meant. Although with a different code.

It is 25% more expensive than the 6TB WD HDD I mentioned (at least where I am). However, I'd still go with the more expensive one, as long as it offers better durability.

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BillyFeltrop
Challenger

WD Gold hard drives are designed for heavy application workloads up to 550TB2 per year. WD Gold HDDs are compatible with most PC and major enterprise operating systems.

WD Red NAS Hard Drives are built with NASware 3.0 technology and featuring RAID error recovery control to help reduce failures within the NAS system. The Disk Speed is 5400rpm RPM.

WD BLACK hard drives are designed with Dynamic Cache Technology with 256MB of cache and features a dual-core processor that offers twice the processing capability. The WD BLACK HDD disk speed is 7200rpm RPM.

But if you are looking specifically for 7200 RPM Hard Drive in 4TB Capacity then go for Seagate.

 

PC Hardware Specialist

Sorry, personal preference and history here.
I don't trust Seagate drives and won't ever recommend them.

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