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Considering a large capacity HDD, need advice.

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I've been in the habit of backing up my large capacity files via a DVD burner, but it's starting to get time consuming and tiresome. Even though I take pretty good care of my discs and have had them last several years, the price and convenience of todays' large capacity HDDs is tempting.

The negatives I can see are 1, reliability seems to go down the larger the capacity drive you have, 2, speed seems to suffer somewhat on the larger capacity drives (esp seek time), and 3, with LOTS of files backed up on one 3 or 4 TB drive, you risk losing a lot if it goes bad.

I've looked at WD Black 2, 3 and 4 TB HDDs, Hitachi Desktar, and a Seagate XT 3TB, which is no longer made but performs better than their current drive. I was tempted after reading some tech site reviews on the WD Black 4 TB to get the Seagate XT 3TB, because it's pretty fast, cool, quiet and affordable.

As mentioned, the Seagate XT 3TB is no longer made though, and the only way I can get it at a good price is OEM . An Amazon sub vendor called New World IT has it for $133, and the product page claims a 5 yr warranty on it, but when I called Seagate, they seem very adamant about warrantying it.

Seagate doesn't even list authorized resellers except on the product pages of current models. Furthermore, despite claiming they can distinguish brand bought and prepped drives that are purchased by Dell, HP, etc, they say they don't warranty any OEM drives period.

It's bad enough you hear horror stories about faulty Barracuda XT drives even from retailers setting up small businesses with servers, where new drives that failed in a short period of time were replaced with refurbished models, but their phone staff seem apathetic as well.

So at this point I'm wondering if I should just keep using burned discs as my backup and not trust a large capacity HDD, whether the warranty, if there is one, is trustworthy or not. Getting a replacement does not get you back your 3TB worth of files.

[Just an update]
I called New World IT, whom have their own separate website and business. They said the warranty on the product page is printed by Amazon and incorrect. It's warrantied by Seagate but according to manufacture date, which expires Mar 2016.

Seriously Seagate? A brand new OEM HDD sitting in an anti static bag on a shelf is going to degrade? Clearly this is just their being apathetic and cheap. They don't want to do what it takes to refurb or replace discontinued items, period.

I've bought a refurbed Sapphire GPU off eBay that was warrantied to manufacture date that had a 2 year warranty. I expect better when buying a brand new item.
 
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It is time consuming, it is true... I spent hours backing up my 20GB of personal data and burn it to 4 DVDs (compressed it goes down to 18GB).

You can put your data on HDD, but I'd consider more than 1. 3 or more is recommended in case of 1 fail you have others.

But I'd get a "blue rays" burner instead and burn them to 25GB or higher capacity discs.

Good luck!
 
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As Blue Knight pointed out BD-R hold 25gb of data, I was going to recommend that path.
How often do you back up system? you could always buy a 4-5tb external drive, pre-built or assembly yourself and it will last a lot longer because it is not running 24/7, only when you need it. I have a 1tb external I do that with now for my music and photos.
 
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LOL, it's funny, I was thinking I would get people giving testimonials and advice on their preferred HDDs, since last time this topic came up, I was the one considering going BD 25GB discs, and others were advocating the "Steam" trend of just buying more and more HDDs. Seems either way there's tradeoffs, but BD might be the best middle ground.

This is specifically for storage of large media files though, not system backup or any other utilitarian use. I have my OS on it's own 30 GB partition on my SSD, so it will be pretty easy to format if need be. It's never been necessary since buying the SSD though. I keep my sys maintained pretty well.

I've seen some good deals on Blu-ray burners. there was a top rated Pioneer for $55 at the time of that last discussion, but mostly Lite-Ons and such since then. The thing is though, 16x BD burners are fairly common now, but I think the BD media is still stuck at 6x. I don't generally push the burn speed of my dual layer DVD burns too much though, so 6x shouldn't be too bad.
 

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If you are worried about a hard drive dying, buy two and keep two backups. And if you are using these for backups why the hell does speed matter? Buy a couple 3TB WD Red drives and be done with it.

Seriously Seagate? A brand new OEM HDD sitting in an anti static bag on a shelf is going to degrade? Clearly this is just their being apathetic and cheap.

That is the standard with any warranty system that goes by the serial number. ASUS does it, WD does it, AsRock does it...I could go on and on. I also know from experience that Seagate will honor the warranty based on when the drive was originally purchased if you can provide proof of purchase from an authorized retailer.

Also, they will warranty OEM drives, I've sent a few back, they won't warranty drives that come in a pre-built system.
 

eidairaman1

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I used to use Hitachi and Seagate myself. Im in the market for a 2GB drive myself.
 
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I would get only WD 1 or 2 TB drives. A lot of higher tb drives have high failure rates.

This is from my own findings reading and such.
 
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Higher capacity generally increases chance of both failure and performance drop compared to 1TB drives. It's why I've stuck with 1TB drives other than less risk of HUGE data loss. Some go bang for buck, like Seagate's standard 3TB is cheap, fast and uses only 3 platters so has decent seek time, but one look at the customer average rating will scare most looking for long term reliability away. Plus it doesn't have much of a warranty.

I've looked at both WD and Hitachi 3-4 TB models, including the NAS units, but WD's NAS are just 5400 RPM, and even their Blacks have higher latency than a Green 2TB. HDDs, esp since the financial impact of the flood, and speed and appeal of SSD, have gone the route of specializing in one task or another. It's a frustrating conundrum. Almost no HDD anymore will give you most of what you're looking for.

While buying two identical HDDs and putting identical files on each may seem interesting to some, it somewhat defeats their cost effectiveness and makes using them as time consuming and frustrating as burning discs, and there's no guarantee all those files you put on the backup drive won't suffer the same fate.

It occurs to me the most appealing thing about HDDs is the durability of the platters themselves. It would be really cool if you could get blank media like that and instead of HDDs, have HDD recorders you could insert the platters into.

The obvious hurdle to that though is dust. No matter how durable a disc, if it's tracks are small enough to fit 1TB on a single platter, then even the tiniest of dust particles would cause problems. They wouldn't HAVE to go that large a capacity per disc for a recorder HDD though.

So, at this point I'm still undecided. Still tempted by a BD burner and the 25GB discs, and there's still some good deals on those. It's roughly twice as much storage price s even a 1TB drive though, and a lot more work.

As for warranty policies, I thought Seagate would normally put their standard warranty per time of production even on discontinued OEM drives, but one call to their customer support and a site that does regular business with them told me otherwise. They seem to have changed a lot since the flood. WD make their policy clear though, can't say the same for Seagate.
 
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Well, went ahead and ordered another WD Black 1TB. Couldn't resist when I saw it on sale at Newegg for $70 with free shipping. Going to have to shuffle my HDDs around a bit. Trying to leave the upper 20mm fan of the 3 front intakes as open for cool air flow as possible, so it's where my SSD sits. The 3 HDDs will have to be stacked fairly close together on the bottom. I have a side fan cooling my GPU though.

Next time if I go the HDD route again I'll probably have to pull the Seagate HDD, the older of the 3, which also has the older games on it I don't play much anymore.
 
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Im considering to buy a hdd for storage movies-games and stuff , i wanna ask if you had good experience with the WD black.
I was thinking of getting the hitachi deskstar nas 3-4tb as it seems to get great reviews but i'm not sure , any suggestions ?
Thanks.

Edit: I want something reliable over speed.
 

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How much of a price difference?
 
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For the 3TB's the deskstar nas is 122 and WD black is 165 euro so about 43 euro difference ~~ 14.3euro per GB
 
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