Hard Drive Recommendations

[Will Rickards]

My 4TB drives are nearing capacity and I'm looking at larger drives.
What drives are you guys using?

I see this amazon sale on a seagate 8TB 5400RPM drive for 109 but seems it is shingled and not very good.

 

[LunarMist]

The WD Ultrastar Datacenter drives are my favorites. The Seagate EXOS are a bit cheaper but noisy.
I do not suggest the consumer drives as many have only 10^-14 UBER and lower workload ratings.

 

[Mercutio]

I have more Seagate drives than anything else, but all of my 14TB+ drives are system pulls from enterprise product lines and I'm not picky about what I get given what I pay for them. The Seagate enterprise (Exos / Ironwolf) are a little louder but I have to be less than six feet from my file server to tell that.

 

[Will Rickards]

With those WD Ultrastar drives seems some have some power adaptor and some don't. Any ideas which ones to look for?

 

[LunarMist]

Make sure you get the SATA version of the Ultrastar or EXOS drives. Maybe you were looking at SAS drives?

 

[Handruin]

I've also used both the Ultrastar DC HC560 20TB SATA and Seagate Exos X16 SATA. I ended up selling the 16TB's to a friend just because they weren't the right fit for what I was planning but there was nothing wrong with them. The Ultrastar HDDs have been fine so far. I get mine through B&H photo so that the warranty is valid through WD or Seagate for the 5 years. Prices are cheaper on Amazon but the warranty is often served through a no-name reseller because they're sold as OEM drives.

 

[sedrosken]

I feel a little pedestrian with my 3xWD Blue setup but it's been reliable and it's more space than I really plan to use for a very long time. I think I'm sitting at ~5TB used on the array, total? And thats with a backup of my steam games thrown on there so I don't have to waste my data cap downloading them again.

 

[LunarMist]

In the enterprise drive category I have 8x18TB WD DC, 8x18TB & 4x20TB Seagate EXOS plus older 8x10TB Seagates Enterprise/EXOS. The old Seagates were some of the first they had with Heliums, but they are quiet and refuse to die. It's not that the newer EXOS are terrible, but not what I want in a NAS near me when I'm watching the TV or working. The NAS is actually farther away from than the computer.

 

[LunarMist]

I feel a little pedestrian with my 3xWD Blue setup but it's been reliable and it's more space than I really plan to use for a very long time. I think I'm sitting at ~5TB used on the array, total? And thats with a backup of my steam games thrown on there so I don't have to waste my data cap downloading them again.

I have numerous WD Red and Elemental pulled drives of 8/10/14TB capacity, but they are for backup NAS and archives.