6 TB Recommendations

[TODDLT]

Can anyone recommend a good 6 TB NAS drive?

 

I looked at reviews on Seagate, WD, Toshiba, and HGST all NAS drives.  The overall ratings are usually 4 star/egg (of 5), but the 1 star reviews ran from 20-40%, particularly when you narrow the window to the past 6 months and all of them seemed to be worse more recently with a high failure rate.  I think things step up a little if you go to a "pro" or enterprise grade drive, but those are out of my price range.  I"m really not sure how you crunch out a 4 star rating when 40% of the reviews are 1 star in the past 6 months. 

 

I can put this off a little while but eventually will buy 3 drives at a time to replace my 3TB parity drives and one of the data drives when I come across a good deal. 

[SSD]

I'd recommend HGST. I have owned 2T, 3T, 4T, 6T, and 8T varieties (probably 20 drives in past 7 years), and never had a failure.  I've bought far fewer other brands and had 3 fail.  HGST typically garners top marks in the backblaze quarterly updates. If you can find another brand that is cheaper, you might consider it. For example if I can buy three cheaper drives for the cost of 2 HGST, and the cheaper drives get good reviews, I will buy the cheaper ones. 

 

YMMV.

[SSD]

One more thing, i don't think 6T are at the sweet spot for lowest cost per TB. I was able to buy 8T (externals that required shucking) at between $170-$200 at end of 2017. They were by far the cheapest/TB. But we now have 10TB and 12TB drives. I loaded up on the cheap 8Ts and won't need to purchase another drive in the foreseeable future, so haven't really kept up on current offerings and pricing, but I always look at $/TB as one of my criteria. I will pay a little premium for larger disks just because it keeps my total disk count lower. And I don't care about anything under 6T. They would be too small for now.  (And I'd even be picky about 6T, as they are approaching too small statues for new drives for me.)

[ijuarez]

i have 4 to 6 2TB to 3TB WD Black that are still spinning even after serveral years. when i replaces them i still to hitachi or seagate.

[SSD]

31 minutes ago, ijuarez said:

i have 4 to 6 2TB to 3TB WD Black that are still spinning even after serveral years. when i replaces them i still to hitachi or seagate.

 

Seagate quality has improved over past couple years. They were sued successfully over their advertising of quality that was not consistent with the facts.  Seagate in the 2T and 3T years, had by far the greatest failures I've ever had.  And very weird behavior in their failing that were not readily apparent in the Smart settings. But I'd buy Seagate for 8T+ (and I have), but need to watch out. They will change the innards of some of their models to inferior disks with lower rates / duty cycles (gb/year). So long term they may get high marks,  yet recent purchasers may report higher failures in new drives. Caveat emptor!

[tdallen]

My 6TB WD Red's have done quite well. I had some odd issues, though, that may be unique to my configuration.  I resolved the issues by having the 6TB Reds spin all the time (I don't have to do that with my 3TB Reds).  While I'm philosophically opposed to that, in practice it's been fine.

[TUMS]

I've got a bunch of WD reds. Like around 20 or so. They're great. Never had one fail.

I've started buying HGST Ultrastar He drives though and they are great too They are 7200 rpm but they run just as cool as the 5400 rpm reds.

WD Gold is probably real good too. I haven't had one yet but I imagine they are very similar to HGST Ultrastar He drives.

[TUMS]

I wouldn't buy Seagate unless it was their enterprise capacity drives. Don't trust their desktop or nas drives. Barracuda, etc.  Iron wolf pro might be OK though too.

Edited June 28, 2018 by TUMS

[SSD]

I bought a mix Seagate and WD 8T. The Seagate's were the archive drives but 7200 rpm, and the WD were REDs at 5200RPM I think. Both have worked well for me, but the Seagates are substantially faster. 

[TUMS]

1 hour ago, SSD said:

I bought a mix Seagate and WD 8T. The Seagate's were the archive drives but 7200 rpm, and the WD were REDs at 5200RPM I think. Both have worked well for me, but the Seagates are substantially faster. 

 

All my Reds show 5400 rpm under the unraid drive identity tab.  That's one thing about Seagate though they do make some fast drives.?

[SSD]

When I bought the HGST were a lot more expensive. I could buy 3 Seagates or WDs for the price of 2 HGST. So I could experience a 33% failure rate and still break even with the HGST. That was enough for me to take a chance.