Best HDD for multimedia storage?

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Ycarcomed

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Oct 27, 2014
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I was looking at various drives, and was wondering what the best drive for my situation would be. I only need a 4tb drive, and the only thing put on it will be various multimedia (various types of audio/video types.)
Stability and longevity is my biggest concern, and I only stream within my home (so very little traffic, single file at a time.)
Is there a noticeable difference between the normal HDD and the NAS HDD? The speed is of little concern because as I said, it's typically a single read/write project without multiple access points or anything.
 
I can only recommend Hitach aka HGST devices for mass storage, they're the only brand that has never failed for me in my own personal use nor in any use by any clients that I'm aware of over the past 20+ years - back then long ago it was IBM, actually, but they sold their drive division to Hitachi long ago, who then merged into HGST, and now Western Digital owns them but they still operate as a separate entity so HGST drives != WD drives, thankfully.

NAS drives I wouldn't attach any special significance towards aside from the "NAS" branding and marketing and perhaps a slightly longer warranty, and maybe just maybe a small bump in the pricing, that's about it but I'm sure others will tell me I'm insane, whatever. A hard drive is still a hard drive, and again the only brand I care to recommend is Hitachi/HGST since there's never been one in my ownership or experience that's died.
 
That's why I'm asking, In my experiences in the last ~15 years of building I've had about every brand of everything die early on me. The drive I'm replacing is a Seagate 4tb that had no errors within a month prior to its dying (or near death, hopefully I can get some of the data off but it's iffy.) I've had multiple bad WD and Seagate drives but never a Hitachi (although I've only ever bought 1 or 2 of them to be fair.) I figured the NAS thing wasn't a big deal, but wasn't familiar enough with them to be confident without asking. I'm sure the they're better with long uptime and (maybe) better with heat and all that, but none of that concerns me since it's just a home multimedia drive. Thanks for responding!
 
HGST followed by WD Red as these fellows have said. I strongly advise investing in Hard Disk Sentinel which is what I use on all of my machines.
 
The WD Red NAS was on sale about $50 less than the comparable HGST so I got that. Thank you all and I will look into Hard Disk Sentinel as well. I occasionally use free HDD monitoring/scanning, but either my previous HDD had a failure to sudden to account for or it was simply unable to be picked up a week or two prior.
Thanks for all the input!
 
buy 2 and mirror them, otherwise, always know that you can loose all of your data to hw failure.
 
buy 2 and mirror them, otherwise, always know that you can loose all of your data to hw failure.
Click to expand...

I would recommend backups instead. Mirroring does not mean your data is protected. Although mirroring is a simpler solution (as far as it doesn't require user intervention) if you understand the risks.
 
+1 on HGST. I have a couple WDs and Seagates for xbox and other stuff but for main storage its HGST + drivepool and scanner.
 
I went with 10TB WD Gold - Helium Drive. I think it is an HGST drive underneath but I am not 100% sure.
 
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