When buying a new bigger hard drive... What do you do??

[phill]

This I think has a little merit since we have had a couple of posts about size of game installs and such like over the last few days here, that I was wondering what sort of thing any one looks for when buying storage.

I'm in a similar boat as I'd like to replace my NAS (Synology or XPEnology) storage with something else (bigger mostly) but I'm just curious what ever one does when it comes to upgrading the storage they have...

I would normally look at buying the biggest drive I could at the best price to Gb ratio, so if an 8Tb drive was best priced/size, I'd go for that.. In a way though I do wonder if I should ignore that and just buy the biggest drives I can (but that's going to be very expensive....) Currently I've 6 4Tb drives in my NAS system, with a load of 4k rips I need to find a home for (at the moment spread across shall I say, more than a few 500Gb drives) I'd like to get them all in one place..

So, I was curious and hoping for other opinions on it

For clarification, when I mean storage I mean spinning drives mainly but again SSDs can also be included in this if that's all you use

 

[mashie]

I'm running software RAID6 on my Linux workstation, currently at 7 x 10TB and can just expand it as time is going on.

 

[Mussels]

If i'm not doubling capacity or performance, i'm not upgrading.

 

[phill]

I'm running software RAID6 on my Linux workstation, currently at 7 x 10TB and can just expand it as time is going on.

So that would give you approximately 50Tb to use (minus all the formatting for file allocation etc etc..??) Maybe closer to 40Tb actual space?

If i'm not doubling capacity or performance, i'm not upgrading.

I was definitely thinking of this as a minimum, it seems that 8Tb drives aren't massively pricey second hand if you'd trust that but they do offer a fairly decent Gb/££ or $$ ratio.. I do think I'm more inclined at the moment to buy Server grade drives since they are meant to last longer etc. and they do seem to be actually cheaper than the NAS drives such as IronWolf and the Pro versions I've been looking at as well

It's definitely interesting times for me with storage... Yes I'm that geeky lol

And thanks guys for the replies Very appreciated

 

[mashie]

So that would give you approximately 50Tb to use (minus all the formatting for file allocation etc etc..??) Maybe closer to 40Tb actual space?

I get 46Tb once formatted to EXT4.

 

[64K]

My 4 TB HDD isn't big compared to a lot of people here but it is more than enough for this build I hope. I had a 2 TB before this and a 1 TB before that and with each one I thought they would be enough to hold all of my library of games that I haven't played yet (which is considerable) and my games that I replay at times. No doubt there will come a day when 4 TB isn't enough for that because games just keep getting bigger and bigger. I guess the next step for me will be 8 TB 3 years from now when I do my next build.

 

[Voluman]

The biggest i can afford at the time and bigger than previous one, because i usually fill it up before it goes wrong, so usually an upgrade not a replacement (fingers crossed).

 

[1000t]

I buy HDDs or SSDs at around 100€ and choose depending on capacity or speed. Because I don't upgrade or need more storage that often, my new SSDs have much more capacity that old ones.

Curiously, HDD price/GB ratio has not changed much since 2011. I've got an 8TB HDD few months ago for backups (double what I was looking at first) and I'm not content with it. It's a stupid Seagate Barracuda with shingled recording. I checked the manual before the purchase, but there is no mention of this fact.

 

[Lorec]

So the standard is small ssd for system and big hdd for software.
I never ever used that 1000gb to its entirety.
So I changed it to second ssd! jf i will sit on 50% usage for next couple of years... might as well do it at full speed
I delete stuff.
I dont keep pictures of my ex girlfriend etc lol

 

[Splinterdog]

As much storage space as I can reasonably afford, especially with the size of game installs nowadays.
I recently bought a 2Tb WD Blue, but I always leave plenty of space free on the M.2 boot drive.

 

[NoJuan999]

I currently have 7 TBs worth of storage space (4 SSDs and 4 HDDs) in my main PC.
I tend to add SSDs or HDDs as needed and when my budget allows it.
I recently installed a 2 TB HDD to use for backups.

 

[kapone32]

When I look for storage it has to be price/performance and size based. I usually buy during sales or events. Purchases that come to mind.

Seagate 2.5 SSHD 2TB $74.99 (Canadian) Black Friday 2017
Sandisk Ultra 2 960GB SSD $199.99 (Canadian) Cyber Monday 2016

There was another rule I applied when looking for HDDs. I have always had Seagate. I noticed that their expansion line of externals were consistently cheaper than the internal variant. I remember buying a 3TB for $99. After 3 weeks the drive failed. I opened the enclosure to find a 3TB 7200 RPM drive, plugged it into SATA power and MB connector and voila 2.7TB ready to go. I don't know about other lines but I know for a fact the Expansion line uses SATA drives. Actually all of my internal HDD(s) including my 5TB HDD came from Seagate Expansion. I know they do fail as externals (it has to be the USB controller) and it helps to keep the price in line.

 

[oobymach]

If I'm buying an hdd, western digital black. I have 8tb of wd black hdd's (1x 4tb and 2x 2tb) plus a 1tb m2 ssd for games.

 

[dirtyferret]

If i'm not doubling capacity or performance, i'm not upgrading.

I look to at least double the size and maintain or increase performance. I just recently replaced two 256 GB SSD drives with one 1TB SSD drive in my gaming PC. I sold one 256GB and installed the other in my wife's PC.

 

[GamerGuy]

I have pretty big external storage - Probox with 4x 6TB HDD, and a WD My Book Duo with2x 10TB HDD - for storing vital data. For my gaming rigs, previously used combos of 1TB to 4TB HDD's (Seagate, and WD), but for my recent Ryzen build, I decided to add SSD's for game storage as well, previous builds only had 2.5" 250GB SSD for OS, so I went with a 4TB SSD and a 2TB SSD (using a 256GB NVMe M.2 SSD for OS) and a 6TB WD Black for games I don't play that often. I figured 12TB total storage for games should be sufficient for now.....but should I need more, my mobo has 2-3 more SATA slots to fill.

 

[Solid State Soul ( SSS )]

I smash my head on the wall and consider buying an SSD instead

 

[phill]

Wow this thread became popular all of a sudden!!

Thanks to everyone for the input and replies guys I can see the way things are headed that's for sure, so I'm very glad to have put the poll up I'll try and reply better in the morning... It's 1am and I'm flagging badly...