Seagate 4TB/8GB vs WD Red 4TB for desktop use vs any other reliable HDD

Savvy

Distinguished
Nov 9, 2011
27
0
18,540
Hello Friends,

I need to change my Seagate 3TB 7200 HDD as it makes a beeping noise every now and then. I am considering a WD Red 3TB/ 4TB or 4TB SSHD.

I am looking to use it as a secondary storage to my 2 x SSDs . I really need something which is reliable and both come with 3 yr warranty and both cost nearly the same. I know WD red is made for NAS but would it be a good choice for a Workstation??

Any suggestion is much appreciated.

Many thanks for your time.
 
Solution
I can second the user above.

For secondary storage(personal files), speed is not always required.

Personally I use a WDC red 3TB as a secondary for one system and it is access across the network by my other systems. It has worked perfect so far(241 days, so still a rather young drive).

Some of the Seagate drives make a chirp when they park the drive head. They did release a firmware update for that. I was not a damaging issue, just annoying. You old drive may still be ok.

No matter what you do, you should have a backup plan for your data, 3/4gigabytes of data is a lot to loose. I have an external(off when not doing backups) 3tb for backing up the data off the red and another 2tb for other backups. I can not stress enough how...
I can second the user above.

For secondary storage(personal files), speed is not always required.

Personally I use a WDC red 3TB as a secondary for one system and it is access across the network by my other systems. It has worked perfect so far(241 days, so still a rather young drive).

Some of the Seagate drives make a chirp when they park the drive head. They did release a firmware update for that. I was not a damaging issue, just annoying. You old drive may still be ok.

No matter what you do, you should have a backup plan for your data, 3/4gigabytes of data is a lot to loose. I have an external(off when not doing backups) 3tb for backing up the data off the red and another 2tb for other backups. I can not stress enough how important backups are since hard drives and even ssds can fail without warning in some cases.
 
Solution

david_murray6

Reputable
Jul 20, 2014
2
0
4,510


I was reading the specs for the red on amazon and it boasts a 145mb/s throuhput seen by the host. The green and blue don't even give a number. There is also the purple which says 24/7 for video surveilance operations. Since you have a Red... can you confirm the speed?

 
I just did a quick HD Tune on the drive.

The drive is about 62% full and still a part of my network share(so the numbers may be off a bit).

Min 64.2
max 150.5
average 116.4
access 20.6ms (the real reason these are NOT performance drives and instead good for storage.)

CrystalDiskMark does not paint such a nice picture, With a partially full drive it makes sense because it hs to write the files to a slower section.

Seq read 127.4 write 124.4
512k read 33.11 write 68.69
4k read 0.339 write 1.017
4k qd32 read 0.851 write 0.963


24weu6g.jpg

2qvgi77.jpg