Hi Guys,

In my PC I use an SSD for the OS, and a regular HD for storage. The current storage drive, a 6 TB Western Digital (green) model drive is getting cramped again so I guess it's time for an upgrade.

In the last couple of years I always did this like so : I bought a newer and bigger model, copied everything from the old storage drive onto the new one, replaced the drive and put the old drive on the shelf, as a sort of backup in case the new drive would fail in the first couple of months of use.

This modus operandi has worked fine for years, but now I'm facing a problem : it seems most manufacturers stop making desktop drives at 6 TB. They do have NAS drives or enterprise drives that are bigger, but I'm not sure if I can use one of those drives in my desktop PC without problems.

The only manufacturer that seems to have desktop drives bigger than 6 TB is Seagate, in their Barracuda series. But it's Seagate, you know... I've been burned by that brand in the past (multiple times) and I don't know if I want to take that plunge again. On the other hand, I know one bad series does not make a bad brand... Oh, and there's Toshiba also, but reviews about these disks are scarce and users reviews on Amazon and other are not exactly comforting.

If I could choose, I would put a HGST Ultrastar 8 TB or 10 TB drive into my PC, but as said I'm still not sure if that's a good idea. I've heard about TLER and stuff like that and I'm not sure if this could end up in data loss because enterprise disks are not meant to be used that way?

So should I do it, or simply buy a Seagate drive?
(yes, I know I could also add a second 6 TB drive, but that's an option I would like to avoid... more noise etc...)

My understanding of NAS drives is that they're supposed to have improved resiliency from heat and vibration, as their intended use is packing them into a chassis with a whole bunch of other spinning drives. IMO, you would be absolutely fine putting one in a desktop, if that's what you really want to do -- personally, I don't think the cost/TB for those drives is worth it, yet.

Yes, nothing wrong with putting a "NAS" drive into pretty much any situation, including a desktop system. The only difference there is that a "NAS" drive with TLER will not try as hard to recover data in the event of a "bad sector". In practice, I haven't really found the extra effort taken by a "desktop" drive to help at all, so go for it!

WD also has "Red" NAS drives in large sizes, plus their "Purple" drives labelled as "for surveillance systems". As near as I can tell from using one, the Purple drives are the same as the Red Drives, but with the addition of the ATA Streaming Command Set. Most software outside of a dedicated PVR/Camera recorder will just ignore the extra "Streaming" commands, and all of the normal capabilities are still there.

Cheers
-ml

Thanks Mark! That's comforting!
Mind if I ask you what your stance is on HGST drives? More in particular their new helium Ultrastar drives? I might be able to buy one of those at a very good price, but it's an OEM so I only get 3 months of warranty...

I don't have an informed opinion on HGST drives. Other writers seem to consistently rank some HGST drives as the most reliable out there, but no relevant experience here.

I do like their firmware -- very capable and standards compliant, and (at one time at least) they didn't play silly marketing games by picking and choosing different features to colour their lineup.

Cheers

Good enough for me! Cheers Mark!

Good timing, Backblaze just published their most recent report on hard drive reliability:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/2018-hard-drive-failire-rates/

My anecdotal, non-scientific personal experience is that Seagate should be avoided, and the backblaze reports seem to continue to support that.

Notes and Observations
The failure rates of all of the larger drives (8, 10, and 12 TB) are very good: 1.21% AFR (Annualized Failure Rate) or less. In particular, the Seagate 10TB drives, which have been in operation for over 1 year now, are performing very nicely with a failure rate of 0.48%.

tanstaafl.

Your disks are going to fail. Use RAID. You are going to screw up. Make (and test) backups.

Nice! This only strengthens my faith in HGST drives!



Very valid point, but trust me, I know. I have backups of all my important files. Next month, a new NAS will be installed also. This NAS will, amongst other things, be used to create backups of all the PC's in the house.