Which 4 TB drive should I buy?


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Early on in this thread Hitachi came out as the more reliable 4TB drive, typically at a higher price. This appears to continue under WD as the HSGT drives are widely reported to have lower failure rates and marginally higher prices.

 

Then comes the hotly debated "specialty" drives. These are NAS, RED, or other labeling to indicate they are different than commodity desktop drives. Without a doubt these drives are different. They often have a different warranty period, slightly higher than commodity pricing, and are expected to deliver different performance. Reliability is open as they are still new. A lot of the frustration around these drives is the expectation of higher reliability, but drives still fail. Drives will always fail.

 

True commodity desktop drives are the final group. Typically the lowest price/TB, short warranty. Those that purchase drives from this segment understand that drives fail and are prepared. Due to the lower drive cost these preparations are less expensive.

 

First choice, HGST on sale at Seagate external pricing, rare, but happens. I always buy the lowest $/TB drives. Been very happy with the $100 4TB that have been popping up recently.

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  • 4 months later...

The HGST 7200rpm 4TB NAS drives are very well rated ... I'd think they're an excellent choice.  Personally I prefer the lower rpm drives since they run cooler and are plenty fast enough for my needs -- but you'll indeed have somewhat faster performance with the 7200rpm units.

 

I'm assuming this is a good choice for a parity drive...correct?

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I have a mix of 7200 and 5x00 (Coolspin) HGST drives. They all work very well. The 7200 RPM drives are a bit perkier, and I tend to use those for routine tasks and occasionally move data in bulk to fill the Coolspins with archive data.

 

It used to be the Coolspins were much cheaper, as you could imagine the engineering is not as intense as the faster drives. But of late the Coolspins are at a premium. All things being equal, and even if at a small premium, I go with the faster drives.

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  • 4 weeks later...

since almost every article said 4TB has better failure rate than 3TB, I'm thinking of grabbing 4TB

my biggest drive are 3TB (3 of WDC RED; bought them when 4TB is still new and very expensive)

still confuse whether to grab HGST NAS(7200rpm) or WD RED.

does HGST consume a lot more power ?

I read on other forum the different can be 4-5W/drive. Is it true ?

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  • 4 weeks later...

I still like wd reds plenty good.  I've had 15 4TB reds running for about a year now.  No doa and perfectly clean smart data on all of them.  I see really no need to use 7200 rpm drives in unraid.  They'll just run hotter and suck more power.  I wouldn't fault anyone for using them though, and they would probably speed up parity checks a bit, but for me personally I will stick with wd red.

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  • 2 months later...

I am about to upgrade my parity drive to a 4TB will this HDD do the job?

Seagate Desktop HDD.15 ST4000DM000 4TB 5900 RPM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178338

 

It will work, but I'd spend a bit more and get a NAS quality drive ...

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178393&cm_re=Seagate_4TB_NAS-_-22-178-393-_-Product

 

or

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236599&cm_re=4TB_Red-_-22-236-599-_-Product

 

or

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145912&cm_re=HGST_4TB-_-22-145-912-_-Product

 

Personally I prefer the WD Reds, but any of them would be fine.

 

 

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I am about to upgrade my parity drive to a 4TB will this HDD do the job?

Seagate Desktop HDD.15 ST4000DM000 4TB 5900 RPM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178338

 

Nice price. I'm partial to HGST drives. But due to price I also have three of the ST4000DM000. You have to decide if you want to prioritize price, speed or reliability. If you trust Backblaze https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q3-2015/ (and I do) HGST wins on reliability. My ST4000DM000s are faster than my HGST 5K4000s though.

 

A good source for pricing:

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/internal-hard-drive/#S=4000000&sort=a7&page=1

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  • 3 months later...

I was looking for low priced 4TB and found this on Amazon:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Portable-External-Storage-STDR4000100/dp/B00ZTRXFBA/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1457807387&sr=1-1&keywords=4+tb+seagate#Ask

 

It appears that it is a 2.5" drive inside a USB3 case without power supply.  It surprises me that there is a 4 TB drive in a 2.5 inch format, and I wondered if this is an option for the Unraid server, maybe for archive data.  I do have three unused 2.5" bays...

 

 

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I was looking for low priced 4TB and found this on Amazon:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Portable-External-Storage-STDR4000100/dp/B00ZTRXFBA/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1457807387&sr=1-1&keywords=4+tb+seagate#Ask

 

It appears that it is a 2.5" drive inside a USB3 case without power supply.  It surprises me that there is a 4 TB drive in a 2.5 inch format, and I wondered if this is an option for the Unraid server, maybe for archive data.  I do have three unused 2.5" bays...

Were you able to find any info on the drive inside? There could be a nasty surprise waiting, the USB3 connector could be part of the drive instead of a SATA connector. Not saying that's what it is, but I've seen other external drives configured that way.
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I was looking for low priced 4TB and found this on Amazon:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Portable-External-Storage-STDR4000100/dp/B00ZTRXFBA/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1457807387&sr=1-1&keywords=4+tb+seagate#Ask

 

It appears that it is a 2.5" drive inside a USB3 case without power supply.  It surprises me that there is a 4 TB drive in a 2.5 inch format, and I wondered if this is an option for the Unraid server, maybe for archive data.  I do have three unused 2.5" bays...

Were you able to find any info on the drive inside? There could be a nasty surprise waiting, the USB3 connector could be part of the drive instead of a SATA connector. Not saying that's what it is, but I've seen other external drives configured that way.

 

The Seagate Backup Plus has one drive = ST4000LM016, a 2.5 drive 15mm height.

The Seagate Backup Plus Fast has two drives = 2 x ST2000LM016, 2.5 drive 9.5mm height.

 

These STxxxxLMyyy are Seagate's Laptop Mainstream drive, like the STxxxxDMyyy is Desktop Mainstream.

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  • 8 months later...

The Seagate is fine -- remember, UnRAID is fault tolerant; so if it happens to fail, you can simply replace it.

 

Personally, I'd spend a bit more and get a NAS-rated drive; but it's entirely up to you ... a lot of folks just buy the cheapest drives, since UnRAID makes it easy to replace any that fail.    That's not necessarily a bad choice ... especially if you're using dual parity.

 

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  • 9 months later...
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