WD Black or Ultrastar 7K4000 for daily storage/Steam

RickyJ

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Well after 6 years my trusty WD Black 1TB Black is calling it quits. I have everything backed up, but the bad sector wormhole is growing so it's time to go. This is my intermediate drive, between my SSD and WD Green, and is used for my documents/Outlook.pst/photos/games. I keep any current big game I'm playing on the SSD, but the rest of the games are stored on the Black. The drives are mounted on rubber bushings in my cage, and the case panels are foam lined, so the Black noise is reduced to a whisper.

I'm looking for 2-3TB of fast daily storage, and my budget is $200cdn for a trusty long-term drive. Here's my options so far:
2TB WD Black WD2003FZEX $159.99cdn on sale
3TB WD Black WD3003FZEX $199.99cdn on sale
2TB HGST Ultrastar 7K4000 Enterprise HUS724020ALE640 $172.23cdn (must be on non-advertised sale, way cheaper than other ones I've seen)

WD has been my go-to for 6 years, ever since I went through a 7200.11 massacre at work. I've seen the Backblaze report and the stellar reliability of the HGST drives, but they don't use the Blacks so there's no comparison. I don't trust my Greens, I've had one 2TB replaced under warranty and got a refurb 3TB as a replacement (now in an external enclosure for backup), and I have friends who have had theirs drop out too.

With respect to performance, both Black drives are apparently using 800GB platters, but all I can find for the 7K4000 is that they use 5 platters. Do the 2TB 7K4000's use 5 smaller platters for shite performance, or do they drop the platter count to 3 like the 2TB Black drive? I haven't seen any talk about platter count or performance on the 7K4000 at capacities lower than 4TB.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Thanks! :)
 
Hgst is the most reliable. WD reds and red pros are good if you are worried about noise but it sounds like that's not a concern.

For my new gaming build, I used a 2tb SSD. For my HTPC I'm using red pros (fast, quiet, 5 year warranty).
 
HGST or WD Black to me are the 2 safest bets

I use only HGST 1TB and 2TB drives in storage systems at work and over about 7 years i had to replace 1 HGST drive during that entire time out of i think...20 or so total drives?
 
HGST drive he listed is a 5 year warranty

I also use a lot of WD drives, this system ha sa 4TB black and so far so good, but my NAS will use all HGST drives and I will likely go with their brand moving forward. Hard to argue with solid data.
 
Either the WD or the HGST should be decent, but I would look at Intel SRT caching as opposed to worrying too much about performance differences between the drives - SRT negates the drive performance failings quite well.

For my general/steam storage, I have a striped raid 0 of 2 x 2tb HGST and a second 64gb SSD for caching. The most used parts of my most played games end up cycling onto the SSD cache for super speedy loads, and when I change tastes, the cache catches up soon enough :)

(Everything I want to keep I stick on the NAS instead, with redundancy).

I'd look at a second of whatever WD green you have, stripe it, and SRT cache it.
 
How do the Deskstar NAS drives compare to the 7K4000 series or WD Blacks? Newegg 4TB for $210cdn.

I would suggest you lookup the performance numbers on the manufacturer websites

NAS purpose drives take less time trying to recover from surface defects before giving up and tend to have more tech to withstand vibrations because they expect you to have a bunch of them all in the same enclosure and to have them running 24/7. A lot of them tend to be 5400RPM for less power and heat

As far as performance I would expect that the 7200rpm versions of NAS drives will run just as good as the normal 7200rpm desktop HDDs


If you like WD then stick with Black or Red Pro, they both have 5 year warranties and good track records.

HGST NAS drives have a really good rep right now, I do not know if all HGST drives are made to the same quality

Also take the drive reports from places like backblaze with a grain of salt. They have massive drive arrays and you don't know what specifically caused the drive failures. It could be heat or vibration related which is situational. So what I am getting at is in your average persons single box with 2 - 3 drives, good airflow and very little usage you might find all the drives are good enough to handle that for many years without issue. A lot of us tend to overbuy for what we need.
 
Either the WD or the HGST should be decent, but I would look at Intel SRT caching as opposed to worrying too much about performance differences between the drives - SRT negates the drive performance failings quite well.

For my general/steam storage, I have a striped raid 0 of 2 x 2tb HGST and a second 64gb SSD for caching. The most used parts of my most played games end up cycling onto the SSD cache for super speedy loads, and when I change tastes, the cache catches up soon enough :)

(Everything I want to keep I stick on the NAS instead, with redundancy).

I'd look at a second of whatever WD green you have, stripe it, and SRT cache it.

My X58/ICH10R doesn't support SRT, unfortunately. I know I'm missing out on a lot of modern features by continuing to use this platform, but the gains per dollar just aren't there yet. :(

So far the only downside of a NAS drive is the TLER is lower and expects the controller to take over, which may not be optimal for a normal controller like my ICH10R? I still haven't found any good comparisons between the Deskstar NAS and the regular 7K4000. A reliable 4TB for $210cdn is sure tempting if it's on the same level.
 
I would suggest you lookup the performance numbers on the manufacturer websites

NAS purpose drives take less time trying to recover from surface defects before giving up and tend to have more tech to withstand vibrations because they expect you to have a bunch of them all in the same enclosure and to have them running 24/7. A lot of them tend to be 5400RPM for less power and heat

As far as performance I would expect that the 7200rpm versions of NAS drives will run just as good as the normal 7200rpm desktop HDDs


If you like WD then stick with Black or Red Pro, they both have 5 year warranties and good track records.

HGST NAS drives have a really good rep right now, I do not know if all HGST drives are made to the same quality

Also take the drive reports from places like backblaze with a grain of salt. They have massive drive arrays and you don't know what specifically caused the drive failures. It could be heat or vibration related which is situational. So what I am getting at is in your average persons single box with 2 - 3 drives, good airflow and very little usage you might find all the drives are good enough to handle that for many years without issue. A lot of us tend to overbuy for what we need.

I'm always guilty of that last point, but my upgrade patterns lean towards buying better gear for longer term use. I don't leave my machine on all day, it's only on while I'm using it or occasionally if it's working while I'm away.
 
I just ordered the 4TB Deskstar NAS drive. I couldn't remember if my X58's SATA ports would work with 2.2TB+ so I took the 3TB Green out of my external enclosure and tried it out (success). Hopefully Newegg doesn't destroy it, at least with the retail packaging it should have adequate protection.
 
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