Big HDDs

[Ed P]

If you are in the market for a big HDD, this Ars article is a useful guide to WDs very confusing product range. The guide also tells you which drives should not be touched with a barge-pole. Caveat emptor indeed!

[Dave Rice]

WD have become a nightmare. I buy Toshiba P300 desktop drives, even for NAS, up to 3TB. 7,200 rpm, 64mb cache, 2 year warranty, good price. Never had a failure in 3 years +. Toshiba Canvio are my #1 for 2.5″ portables.

TBH anything larger is pretty much always going to be a NAS or CCTV recorder and there I’ve been buying Seagate Iron Wolf or Sky Hawk. Seagate have been working with Synology and Hikvision to include diagnostics in the firmware besides everything else.

[Drezha]

I recently shucked a WD Elements drive and used that in my NAS, as it was cheaper than a Seagate. I’ve got the data backed up so if it goes, it goes. I’ll be saving for the Ironwolf next time round!

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Dave Rice]

I should mention the diagnostics are only for 4TB and larger. I see E-Buyer are putting SMR or CMR in their WD Red descriptions now.

[Author]

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