Looking for a long lasting HDD

i‘m looking for a long lasting hdd to store my documents and pictures on it.
Space is not an issue 1tb will do just fine.

I have samsung hdds still runing since nearly 10 years and i‘m looking for a current brand/type which will do the same.

Any recommendations ?

brand isnt always a thing that is most important.. even proper psu is more important.. non of the hdds lasts long if u give bad power to it Do raid with 2-3 hdds or go with cloud?

Any hard drive or SSD can and will fail - BACK UP YOUR DATA.

The hardest thing on a hard drive is temp swings and power cycles.
They like to run well cooled and stay on 24/7.
That said, for 1TB and no RAID, I’d be buying a Samsung 1TB SSD and backing it up.

Duplicati, cloud storage provider, redundancy, cold storage.

my current setup for storage is a internal 2,5" 256gb samsung disk which i regularly back up to two external hdd.
OS disc is a samsung ssd.

i'd like to keep the storage disc a 2,5" one for it's quieter operation.

(maybe i'll should switch out the backup discs as well, i think i bought them 2009 or 2010)

For an internal drive, small and 1tb in size, go with a WD Black 1TB 2.5'' model (7200rpm). 5 year warranty, for $65 or so. If quiet is an absolute must, maybe go down to a WD Blue or Seagate Barracuda.

Pro Tip: Toshiba 3.5" drives are typically re-badged Hitachi, which last practically forever and are cheaper than buying a Hitachi branded drive. If you are talking consumer SATA 2.5" drives, there isn't any long lasting mechanical. All junk IMO

Ive always had luck with Western Digital. I've been using a 750GB drive for about 8 years now, I expect it to die at any moment but it just wont.

If you want a review of how long a hard drive might last:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-2017/

VIC-20 said:

Pro Tip: Toshiba 3.5" drives are typically re-badged Hitachi, which last practically forever and are cheaper than buying a Hitachi branded drive. If you are talking consumer SATA 2.5" drives, there isn't any long lasting mechanical. All junk IMO

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Some of the smaller versions are Hitachi, but not all of their models. I owned several 5TB Toshiba versions in the past bought at different times from different places and all of them developed large amounts of bad sectors in under 6 months. I can safely say those drives were the most unreliable pieces of junk I've ever come across. No my setup had nothing to do with it.

shadowlord said:

i‘m looking for a long lasting hdd to store my documents and pictures on it.
Space is not an issue 1tb will do just fine.

I have samsung hdds still runing since nearly 10 years and i‘m looking for a current brand/type which will do the same.

Any recommendations ?

Click to expand...

Hello shadoworld. The BarraCuda is a drive that fits your criteria. It comes in several sizes and is backed by a two year warranty. There is even a link to find a retailer. We thank you for considering Seagate no matter what brand you choose to purchase.

3 is 2, 2 is 1, 1 is none. If you trust one place for your data you deserve to lose it.

It should be noted that good SSDs (aka tier 1 oems) are more reliable than any spinning rust, this has been proven by years of results in the datacenter world.

rive22 said:

Some of the smaller versions are Hitachi, but not all of their models. I owned several 5TB Toshiba versions in the past bought at different times from different places and all of them developed large amounts of bad sectors in under 6 months. I can safely say those drives were the most unreliable pieces of junk I've ever come across. No my setup had nothing to do with it.

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Those were likely WD Blues, as there was a cross fabbing deal with Toshiba/Hitachi and WD. But its easy to tell, just match up the appearance of the drive stamped out shape. The Toshiba Hitachi drives look like an Hitachi with a Toshiba sticker.

Beware of the HGST 6TB NAS drive if you intend running it in a desktop system.
They are a good price but are really noisy! (rumble and seek)
They also power down when not in use, regardless of the OS power saving setting, it can take 5 seconds or so to become available.

Seagate_Surfer said:

Hello shadoworld. The BarraCuda is a drive that fits your criteria. It comes in several sizes and is backed by a two year warranty. There is even a link to find a retailer. We thank you for considering Seagate no matter what brand you choose to purchase.

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No. Just no. I used two of the recent 2TB barracudas, and one started throwing smart errors within 2 weeks, the other in 3 weeks.

Yeah, keep away from the Barracudas.

I'm a fan of HGST for longevity. They also rank near the top from BackBlaze's stats, too

what confuses me is that amazon sells hitachi brand hard disks and hgst ( hitachi global storage technologies) hard disks.

Whatever you choose get three for double redundancy. Decent 1tb spinners are fairly cheap these days. Maintain a back up schedule and never have all three connected at the same time.

Probably complete overkill. I keep extra redundants in anti-static bags inside an ammo box with a bit of desiccant.

shadowlord said:

what confuses me is that amazon sells hitachi brand hard disks and hgst ( hitachi global storage technologies) hard disks.

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I recently ordered a bunch of drives, 2x HGST 10TB 7200rpm, 10TB WD Purple and 18x 8TB my books (all shucked) all seem very similar the PCB and the case/design, probably there are differences in the inside but from the outside is more the labels. Also WD is starting to fase down the HGST branding,

Western Digital moves away from the HGST branding

Abula said:

I recently ordered a bunch of drives, 2x HGST 10TB 7200rpm, 10TB WD Purple and 18x 8TB my books (all shucked) all seem very similar the PCB and the case/design, probably there are differences in the inside but from the outside is more the labels. Also WD is starting to fase down the HGST branding,

Western Digital moves away from the HGST branding

Click to expand...

They had a choice, reduce HGSTs quality or ditch it.

Looks like they are doing both.
My new HGST 6TB NAS powers itself down when told to run permanently, a sign its no longer as capable.
And its really loud! Another sign they cant manufacture to HGSTs older tolerance.
My 4TB version of the same drive is very quiet and stays running.

since the disk i want to replace is already showing a SMART warning, i bought a Hitachi 5K1000 1tb drive at a local retailer.

i still have to think about my current backup strategy.
i backup to two different drives but both are old ones as well.

The important data (which i backup) is only around 32gb and i wonder what is the optimal medium for this small size.

For such a small amount of data, utilizing an online backup mechanism like Backblaze itself should be pretty easy.

As for buying reliable drives, as others have pointed out, all drives can fail. Even the statistics pointed out by backblaze are pretty useless when dealing with single digit drive quantities, since at that low of a quantity even a single failure would be anomalous. However, that doesn't mean it won't happen, it just means you can't use their statistics to predict which brand or model it will happen to, since any single drive failure would be a deviation from their statistics.

Hard drive brands are like car brands. You meet people where every Chevy they've ever driven is full of problems and the transmission goes out every six weeks and so now they buy Ford and never have any problems. And then the next guy you meet has had the wheels fall off of his last six Fords so now he only buys Chevy and has no problems. Their experiences aren't invalid, they're just anecdotal and don't actually indicate a global trend that might reliably inform a third party's purchasing decision. Hard drives are the same, most of the time. One of my coworkers swear by Western Digital, except my boss who hates WD with a heated passion because he's had a bunch of them die on him over time. He buys Seagates, which my coworker won't touch with a ten foot pole due to his personal experiences.

That's not to say there can't be legitimate problems with a particular model- the Seagate ST3000DM001 comes to mind, or the IBM Deathstars back in the day - but it won't be a whole brand that "isn't reliable" because if an entire brand like Seagate "wasn't reliable" then they wouldn't still be in business, or they'd have an obvious shit reputation because they'd been globally recognized as unreliable for X number of years and nobody would buy their stuff anymore.