What's the best 2TB mechanical hard drive?

wildquaker · Jun 22, 2017

I currently have a 250 GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD and a 1TB Western Digital WD Blue HDD. My HDD is almost full and I'm looking into getting a hard drive with a bigger capacity. I'm planning into transferring the games on my current HDD into the new one making my current hard drive as storage for my personal files.

Which one of these below would you recommend for this?

- Seagate BarraCuda (ST2000DM006)
- Hitachi Ultrastar 7K3000 (0F12455)
- Hitachi Ultrastar 7K4000 (0F14685)
- Toshiba P300 (HDWD120EZSTA)
- Toshiba DT01ACA200
- Western Digital WD Black (WD2003FZEX)

If you have recommendations by other brands that would be of much help.

Slow Pri · Jun 22, 2017

Seagates have a very good warranty with there hard drives. However, using WD Black drives have really good reliability. I'd recommend which everyone hits the budget. Ideally I've had many toshiba drives fail and Hitachi isn't as good in my experience.

BlueCat57 · Nov 22, 2017

Check out the Backblaze hard drive review. They do one every year. I think 2016 is their most recent.

I've been happy with my refurbished Hitachis and my 7-year old WD Blacks.

Note that Hitachi is a Western Digital company. You can get bogged down in the manufacturer debate and throw in the country where they are made and you could spend days analyzing differences. Right now I can't even figure out what the difference is between the Hitachi 7K3000 and the 7K4000.

As a consumer, even a heavy gamer, I doubt you could DO anything to a hard drive to cause it to fail. You could NOT keep the environment it is in clean and dry and that would cause failure. "Dirty" electricity might cause failure as well. Rough handling might do it too, but not many people move their desktops around constantly.

Electronics tend to fail immediately or last a long time. Warranties are nice, but a bigger, faster new drive every few years is even better. I've seen both 1-year and 5-year warranties on Hitachis depending on the seller. The most important thing is TO BACKUP YOUR SYSTEM REGULARLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Then if you do experience a failure you should be back up and running as soon as that bigger, faster hard drive is installed and restored to.

Right now 2TB drives are the "sweet spot." In the US you can pick them up for around $60. I used to think you didn't need a BIG hard drive, but now I've filled up several TBs since I never delete stuff. I routinely have to weed out my TV recordings because quite frankly I'm never going to watch the hundreds of hours of recordings I have on my drives much less review the tens of thousands of photos I've accumulated.

Bigger is better.

jankerson · Nov 22, 2017

Here is a great hard drive, Enterprise Grade Seagate Constellation 2TB.

I am currently running 3 Constellations, had one last 60,000 hours before it went bad, another is at 40,000 hours now and one is like 6 months old.

Have 2 new ones running currently and one that is 6 months old.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Storage: Seagate - Constellation ES 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($54.99 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Total: $54.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-11-22 12:07 EST-0500

jaguarskx · Nov 22, 2017

When it comes to hard drives, my personal preference is WD Black. However, if Seagate HDDs are on sale for around $30 (or more) less than a comparable WD Black, then I would be more inclined to buy Seagate.

I am actually looking to buy a 2.5" 2TB HDD for one of my laptops. Too bad 2TB 2.5" WD Black HDDs do not actually exist so I guess I will be buying Seagate.

jankerson · Nov 23, 2017

jaguarskx :

Haven't ran a Barracuda drive in a long time or a WD drive for that matter.

Started running Enterprise drives along time ago starting with the Cheetah SCSI and ended to With the Constellation drives once I moved over to SATA.

So I dunno about the regular HD's these days.

The Paladin · Nov 23, 2017

Western Digital WD Black (WD2003FZEX)
period.

Hitachi speed are usually less than "rated" for in many of my tests I have done before.
and for a laptop you don't need a WD black , just get a WD 2Tb Blue instead it will do just as well until the 2TB SSSD come cheaper

jaguarskx · Nov 24, 2017

The Paladin :

The 2.5" 2tb WD Blue HDD is not an option. It's height is 15mm. The laptop's drive bay is only compatible with 2.5" drives that are 9.5m thick or thinner.

The Paladin · Nov 24, 2017

other suggestion: get 250GB/500GB SSD in your laptop and use an USB external full size 2TB drive.

jaguarskx · Nov 24, 2017

Nah. Need high internal capacity without the need to carry anything else. I already have a 6GB external hard drive.

BlueCat57 · Nov 28, 2017

Just out of curiosity, why are we talking about LAPTOP drives? The OP doesn't say anything about laptops.

BlueCat57 · Nov 28, 2017

Regarding 60,000 before going bad. That is almost 7 years of 24/7 spinning. I leave my HTPC on 24/7 and have drives in there that are several years old, BUT they do not read/write 24/7. Unless you are gaming or recording 24/7 your drives will sit idle the majority of the time. I doubt a drive in a consumer PC ever runs more that 12 hours a day average if even that.

I again recommend BackBlaze's Hard Drive analysis. Here is a post entitled "Enterprise Drives: Fact or Fiction?".
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/enterprise-drive-reliability/

I'm frugal. You can pick up a refurbished Hitachi 2TB 7K3000 for $50 and a new one with a 5-year warranty for $64. I'd use those price points to measure other drives. You basically can't go wrong with a name brand drive. Hitachi is a WD company and Seagate is a well established brand. I used to work for a hardware manufacturer, our goal was 98% plus reliability. A few years back I saw a statistic that the US Post Office had a 1st class delivery rate well above 90% on-time and accurate. But they deliver 20 BILLION pieces of 1st class mail in a year so chances are every single household in the US will have an issue with the post office EVERY year. https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-facts/decade-of-facts-and-figures.htm Same thing for hard drives. The people most likely to write a bad review are the ones that get a drive DOA or one that fails within a month or so of delivery. I'm not going to got write a good review on my 5-year old hard drives.

I doubt the "speed" difference between any two hard drives, or even SSD vs HD, would be noticeable, or if measurable, valuable, in even a high stakes gaming environment. There are 31,536,000 seconds in a year. Saving 120 of those with each system boot would save you a day's worth of time if you booted your system twice a day for a year. Of course, since you would be waiting about 120 seconds for your system to get ready for you to use it would be a wash. (OK, spot the logical fallacy and earn a star.)

jankerson · Nov 28, 2017

Backblaze doesn't have any real data on the Enterprise drives yet as they said in the post.

For me over the past 20+ years the only hard drives I have had actually fail on me have been consumer drives. That's early failure, not old drives that have just worn out etc.

One of the main reasons why I started going with the enterprise drives in the 1st place was I got tired of hearing the click of death after a year or two with the regular hard drives. I always leave my systems on 24/7/365, always have.

The only regular drives I ever had that lasted have been Seagate Barracuda, I still have 3 of them, 2x SATA and 1 IDE. They are old like 13+ years old now, but they still work although not in use now and haven't been for awhile. I use them for older machines now and then like old Core 2 Duo boxes etc.

USAFRet · Nov 28, 2017

Regarding drives and reliability:
Know and embrace this one fact. Drives die. All of them.
It does not matter if this Seagate model lasts 10% more than that WD model. If your particular drive is one that fell off the short bus...it simply died earlier than its brothers.

Devise, implement, and test a comprehensive, automated backup plan.
If a drive dies, your data is safe. If it dies within the warranty period, you get a free replacement. If it is outside the warranty, it was old enough to be replaced anyway.

Speed?
You'll not notice any difference between any of the 7200RPM drives fromt he major players.

BlueCat57 · Nov 28, 2017

jankerson :

Time for a dumb question: Do drives spin 24/7 if the system is on? I've been using hard drives since the early 80's and I can't definitively answer that question without looking up the answer. My understanding is that when not in use the drive will idle. I guess "idle" means spinning. I also vaguely recall something about drive heads being "parked" which would imply not moving over the spinning platter.

You are right, Backblaze doesn't have Enterprise data because, if I recall correctly, they don't think they are worth the price premium. Remember though that Backblaze is using Consumer drives in their Server Farms. Of course they have all sorts of failsafe protocols in place so drive failures are immediately remediated without loss of data (or minimalized).

A $10 premium for one or two drives for a home PC isn't much. Skip lunch out once or twice. So I'd say use an enterprise drive if it gives you peace of mind. Note: the Hitachi Ultrastars are enterprise drives. (No, I don't work for Hitachi but know people who have worked for Hitachi, WD and Toshiba. Maybe even Seagate. I used to work for MAG InnoVision and Simple Technology in Southern California and interfaced with numerous PC distributors and resellers.)

USAFRet reiterates the most important hard drive "feature": A REGULAR BACKUP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Can I scream that loud enough?)

And just to add some spice to the discussion, (This may be considered "off topic," if so then disregard.) let's toss RAID into the mix.

1. Would any form of RAID significantly improve performance for gaming (For which the OP is planning to use this new drive.) or consumer photo management?

2. Would RAID be a better solution than an external drive for backup?

As a side note, my daughter is routinely filling up a hard drive with game "crap." When she fills it up, she just goes in and cleans out the stuff she isn't using and frees up 50% of the drive space. If she goes back to those games in a couple of months she just downloads the stuff she needs. That's what I call "frugal computing."

jankerson · Nov 28, 2017

I do backup my data over my network, but never keep anything really important on my pc's anyway for very long.

USAFRet · Nov 28, 2017

BlueCat57 :

No and no.
1. A RAID 0, striped, is faster than a single HDD on its own. But that only helps in level load times. It does zero for FPS.
And a single SSD handily beats 2 or 3 HDD in a RAID 0.

RAID 0 has been vastly overhyped in the consumer space as a way to speed things up. At the cost of more complexity, and greater potential for data loss.
In a RAID 0, if any drive dies, or the RAID controller goes south...all data is lost.

2. RAID of any type is not a backup. A RAID 1 and up is useful if you actually need 24/7 continued operation. Like if you were running a webstore, and actual downtime meant lost sales. $$$.
In the even of a dead drive, the system can limp along until you can fix/replace.
It does nothing for all the far more common causes of data loss. Virus, accidental deletion, corruption.
A RAID 1 simply means it happens on two physical drives at the same moment.

Let me reiterate that...RAID is not a backup.
There should always be a backup. And if you have a good backup situation, you don't need to suck up a whole other drive with a RAID 1.

If you can suffer the "extreme pain" of 30 minutes to recover, there are far better ways to safeguard your data.
Read here for my personal method, and others:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3383768/backup-situation-home.html

jankerson · Nov 28, 2017

Never liked Raid and think it's overhyped especially Raid 0.

Now I can see the being useful in huge server farms, but for home pc's I think it's a waste.

For really important stuff put it on DVD, Tape or Some sort of Solid state drive and put it in a safe etc or in a safety deposit box.

And obviously separating the OS and the data on separate drives is always a good idea in case the OS takes a dump or the OS drive.

These days it's takes all of about 10 mins to install Windows 10 on a fast machine with an SSD in it and a flash drive.

I just keep the latest vers of Windows 10 on a flash drive, I update it once in awhile to make sure I have the latest.

So all I have to do is install Windows and Office, then import my favorites email etc and I am pretty much done and back up and running.

The Paladin · Nov 29, 2017

Jankerson, you made my point earlier, if you keep your important data (as all should store on a separate network drive or back up on usb, why would anyone need 2TB drive in a laptop?

Yes I realize games can take a lot of place, but I run a 500GB SSD for OS/main apps which 361GB Free, 500GB SSD for games, 300GB Free, and a 1TB for data which has 815GB free, ( 2TBNAS backup + 500GB USB backup for work data) and I run a lot of office products, VMware with 6 OS, MS office, Photoshop, 12 Identification System Software (work) and others, like I said 9 or so games, (pubg, STO etc) and out of 2TB I have little under 1.5TB left free. and this is on my main desktop.

I cannot phantom someone running everything on a laptop especially a gaming one. of course if someone is watching a lot of downloaded movies /tv series and such the drive could quickly load up. (why I have a 6TB NAS drive for that)

also yes a desktop runs 24/7 and goes idle/spins out (if you don't have it in performance mode or told it to) mine spins 24hrs/day 6 days a week then get a nights rest. my point is, when you have a laptop your constantly starting/stopping the drive spin up to save battery power and start/stops like that cause more wear and tear than a drive spinning at constant speed all the time.

Seagate, Western digital or other, all are competitive in quality and prices, but in my 30 years experiences, and IMHO and mine alone, WD has a better product, failures are never "suddenly my pc isn't recognizing my HDD or SSD syndrome", like I have seen a number of times with Toshiba and Seagate Hdd and SSD, Sorry this may go against someone else's experiences, but it mine and WD never had catastrophic failure like the other have, why WD has my vote.

jankerson · Nov 29, 2017

The Paladin :

Didn't know we were talking about laptops so I am confused.

Personally I haven't had a use for laptop since around 2005, still have that one in storage. Yeah one of those LOUD, HEAVY, HOT running P4 laptops.

Anyhow, I never had a Seagate drive fail prematurely on me personally, and that's Barracudas, Cheetahs and Constellations.

However I have had WD drives fail, actually all of my premature hd failures have been WD drives, reason I stopped using them a long time ago and went all Seagate.

Now that's not to say that they don't make good drives today as I am sure they do, but I dunno personally because I haven't used one in so long I can't remember when the last one was.

The Paladin · Nov 29, 2017

Funny how life experiences took us both on opposite side of the results.

jankerson · Nov 29, 2017

The Paladin :

Yeah I know.

What's the best 2TB mechanical hard drive?

Reputable

Respectable

Distinguished

Judicious

Titan

Judicious

Polypheme

Titan

Polypheme

Titan

Distinguished

Distinguished

Judicious

Titan

Distinguished

Judicious

Titan

Judicious

Polypheme

Judicious

Polypheme

Judicious

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