Looking for an Internal Drive for Storage

[ScottNY]

Looking for advice and opinions on a hard drive for my new build. I already bought an SSD for the OS and programs, but I'm thinking a 2 TB, 7200 rpm, and 64mb cache would be great for storage - files, etc. Backblaze seems to have the best success rate with Hitachi [HGST] drives. I have old Hitachi and Samsung drives that have never given me a problem. Any thoughts? What would you experts recommend?

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/

 

[captaincharisma]

if you're looking for a drive with great performance look into the western digital Black label drives. i tend to stay away from seagate drives

 

[bajgur]

why don't you buy 2 1tb drive and mirror (RAID) them...
btw. i got HGST drive fail under 1 year, lots of SEAGATE over years, also WD drives... there's no such thing as reliable drive/storage (please CMIIW)...

 

[elmo2006]

IMHO and as mentioned by "bajgur" there is no such thing as "best" drive. HDDs are mechanical and lets face it anything can go wrong.
Your best bet is to mirror multiple drives together or simply leverage the use of multiple drives to accomplish the same effect in this case to ensure dual redundancy - i.e. have two 2TB drives perform duplicate backups.

 

[ScottNY]

Thanks guys, I like the RAID idea. I can do a RAID set-up if I have two storage drives, but I can exclude my SSD with my OS and program files on it, right? I do use BackBlaze so the important files from the SSD would be backed up.

 

[elmo2006]

You can use the built in functionality of the OS i.e. in Windows 8/10 you can convert the drives to Dynamic and then create the mirrored set. This way if you blow away the OS, the mirror retains its integrity. I currently have two drive mirrored via storage spaces and have re-imaged my system many times retaining the mirror.
Usually the system drive is not part of the raid set unless you specify but this becomes a bit of a chore and administrative nightmare if one is not familiar.
There are many available backup solutions that you can leverage for free including the built in backup solution to Windows.

 

[captaincharisma]

Thanks guys, I like the RAID idea. I can do a RAID set-up if I have two storage drives, but I can exclude my SSD with my OS and program files on it, right? I do use BackBlaze so the important files from the SSD would be backed up.

just remember if you decide to do a RAID 0 setup where you are combining the space of 2 separate hard drives, if one of the drives fail you will lose all your data that you had on both drives

 

[ScottNY]

Thanks for that. I am still learning about RAID, so now I know I at least don't want RAID 0. My goal would be to have a mirror image of my storage drive, not combine the space of two.

 

[bajgur]

Thanks for that. I am still learning about RAID, so now I know I at least don't want RAID 0. My goal would be to have a mirror image of my storage drive, not combine the space of two.

here you go.

 

[ScottNY]

Thanks for the link. It looks very comprehensive.

 

[USAFRet]

Be careful with that RAID 1 concept. It only provides protection against a physical drive fail.
There are many other ways to lose your data, that it does nothing for.

 

[ScottNY]

Thanks, USA. I really only am worried about a physical fail. I am very careful about security, so although I realize if I get a virus, one drive will poison the other immediately, I am not overly concerned. Aside from hardware and software firewalls, I always keep my internet security programs up to date. I could upload everything to BackBlaze, but as I digitize my enormous CD collection to FLAC, it is almost too much. I am hoping with a mirror-image RAID, aside from regular backups, I won't ever lose my digital music collection - especially since I sell most of my CDs after converting them to FLAC.