Howdy folks, I'm looking for some more storage as I am filling my HDD's quickly with videos etc and am about to embark upon more work that will double or even triple my storage needs. It's entirely for Video and .wav files that will mostly just be there but I will need to access them periodically so my Blu-ray backups aren't really enough as far as work efficiency goes. It seems the best price point for storage size is 3tb, I'm thinking 2 of these should last me in my 6 month experiment for the most part. The main reason for the post is what brand and class, I'd always though WD Greens were great but after some research on it today it seems for 24/7 use whether you're accessing or not they tend to wear themselves out quite quickly. Cheapest on scan is £75 for a Toshiba but I have no experience with HDD's except WD green 1tb's and Seagate a long Ignore time ago in my old agp Athlon rig. All help very much appreciated. -Regards
I was recently looking at updating/expanding my storage in my server, and in the end I went for 4TB drives, as (on Scan) they were cheaper per GB than the 3TB. I went for WD Red and Seagate NAS drives as they are "supposedly" better for always on environments. Although they are more expensive than the Greens...
My position is to (within a small margin) use the cheapest HDD available with a 2 year warranty. Anecdotal brand preferences and server based mass reliability stats aren't desperately useful for the home user in my opinion. Also paying significantly more for a 3 or even 5 year warranty isn't particularly useful when after 2 years the value of the drive will be somewhat depreciated anyway and I think (albeit without any strong evidence to back it up) a drive that has already lasted 2 years in a home environment quite likely go on working. This is rather assuming you have back up and a failure will be an inconvenience rather than a catastrophe, although nothing will really help that if you don't.
Aaah yes you are correct sir!, I think the last time I looked at these 3tb green or maybe blue was at 86 quid, It seems they've upped the price a little bringing 4tb for the price point winner. I'm now thinking (thanks to your sage info) of just 1 4tb Seagate NAS drive at £130 and see where it takes me, can always buy the second a little later. Anyone else have some experience with Seagate NAS drives? EDIT: Ooop I brain farted, the 3tb Seagate and WD Red are still best per gb value, 3tb being £30 per TB for Seagate and £32.50 per TB for 4TB Seagate on scan, similar with a price bump for WD Reds
I'm after peace of mind over just a warranty, id rather not loose one lol (I say that like anyone else is fine with it) no matter when it breaks, I will definitely lose irreplaceable footage as I won't make a backup the second I get a new 2gb file. I'm thinking, edit and encode on my second ssd, have my 1tb green for things I use a lot and the 4tb new drive for archiving
A raid solution such as UnRaid (and I'm sure others) will spin down drives when they're not being actively read/written to - this means there's a lag when accessing them after they've powered down, but it does mean that the drives are not being unnecessarily worn, and it lowers electricity costs for an always on server... just a thought.
It's debatable which of spinning 24/7 or spinning up/down regularly "wears" the drive more, but it will save power.
