Hard drives

DCFC79

I'm after a new external hard drive which makes should I avoid ?

I'm considering getting a NAS instead, any suggestions ?

Oblivion

I personally favour Western Digital drives ... never let me down yet. Avoid Seagate like the plague ... the money I've wasted on those pile of @?#*

esuhl

I've also bought Western Digital drives for a couple of decades. I've never had a problem with one. Not sure about NASes, though.

Astraeus

I have bought Samsung HDDs without issue and Crucial SSDs.

As for NAS', I believe the 5400rpm Western Digital Greens are well-regarded as reliable, long-lasting and stable platforms.

pappa_golf

nas drives use RED drives , not green

Kendall80

Oblivion wrote: »

I personally favour Western Digital drives ... never let me down yet. Avoid Seagate like the plague ... the money I've wasted on those pile of @?#*

I own 10TB total in Seagate drives. They're performing very well and i've had none fail over the course of many years. Great price too.

ARandomMiser

There is less of a choice generally I would go for Hitachi or Western Digital. History has shown me not to trust Seagate drives for critical data.

For simple NAS storage you could look at any Western Digital drives (Blue, green, red, black) but you are probably best looking at the Red if you want to build a RAID array.

Fightsback

What are you going to use a NAS for ?

If you are just looking for something for a single PC back up then a single external drive would be adequate and cost effective but if you are looking for a local file server & media server for several devices then a NAS is the way to go.

I've two Synology NAS's, one old one with Samsung spinpoint F3's (never failed but no longer available) and a newer one with WD Reds.

I wouldn't recommend the WD greens for a NAS as they certainly used to have a head parking issue for NAS's and a quick Google suggests they may still have that problem which leads to a lot of spin up/spin down cycles:

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/3htwwc/do_2015_western_digital_greenn_hard_drives_still/

worried_jim

Kendall80 wrote: »

I own 10TB total in Seagate drives. They're performing very well and i've had none fail over the course of many years. Great price too.

Unlike the two that I have that gave up the ghost.

AndyPix

Western Digital "My Passport" external drives are good, I have 4 that have never missed a beat ..


As for NAS if that's the route you choose, a synology device to suit your environment with WD Red drives would be my recommendation.

psychic_teabag

Fightsback wrote: »

I wouldn't recommend the WD greens for a NAS as they certainly used to have a head parking issue for NAS's and a quick Google suggests they may still have that problem which leads to a lot of spin up/spin down cycles:

One of the few disks I've had fail on me was a WD green. I believe this parking thing was the issue for me, since I was using it as a linux system disk. (I heard that the default disk timeout is slightly shorter than linux's default flush timer, so the disk was constantly parking and unparking.) When I heard about the problem and checked the counters using the SMART tools, it was already close to the lifetime-limit of the count :-(

Even though many NAS use linux inside, as long as it's just a data disk rather than a system disk, it might not show the problem.

I have several Samsung M-range USB portable disks and have not had any problem. I use one with pi-based media centre - has been on 24/7 for couple of years now with no issues. (It too spins down when it's idle, but on a more sensible timescale.)