How to select a Hard Drive

[satimis_06]

Hi all,

I'm prepared to purchase an internal 4TB WD HD for home use.

There are 3 models

1) WD Gold WD4002VYYZ 4TB SATA3 6Gb/s /128MB Datacenter 7x24 HDD
2) WD Red NAS Hard Drive WD40EFRX 4TB SATA3 6Gb/s /64MB HDD
3) WD Purple WD40EJRX 4TB SATA3 6Gb/s /64MB HDD Monitoring hard drive

I have no preset budget. Would 128MG cache be an advantage?

Please advise which model shall I select. Thanks

Regards
satims

 

[RARRAF]

that is the model you want WD40EZRZ in the uk they are not stocked by many places
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/4tb-wd-wd40ezrz-wd-blue-35-hdd-sata-iii-6gb-s-5400-rpm-64mb-cache

 

[cryoburner]

What do you intend to use the drive for, just bulk storage, or things that require more performance, like storing applications and games?

The first is an enterprise drive, and as a result costs a lot more than consumer drives with similar performance. The other two are slower 5400 RPM drives, primarily intended for storing data in situations where performance (particularly random access performance) doesn't matter so much, such as bulk video storage or backups. The one RARRAF linked to is also 5400RPM, but appears to have relatively good pricing going for it.

As for the cache itself, it's not likely to make much of a difference in most usage scenarios. The RPMs will though, so if you're looking for optimal performance, a 7200RPM drive will tend to be a bit more responsive than a 5400RPM one. Of course, all hard drives are far behind SSDs in terms of performance. If performance is a major concern, you'll want to make sure that your OS, applications and anything else that will benefit from higher performance are stored on a smaller SSD, and that the hard drive is relegated to the role of providing relatively inexpensive bulk storage for things that don't need so much performance.

 

[satimis_06]

For Blue label only 2TB is available here

WD Blue WD20SPZX (7mm) 2.5" 2TB 5400rpm 128MB Cache SATA3 HDD

 

[satimis_06]

Hi cryoburner,

Thanks for your detail advice.

The HD is solely for storage of files and the images of VMs of VirtualBox and no gaming. The OS is running on SSD including VirtualBox.

You're right. I expect having optimal performance therefore a 7200RPM HD will be my choice.

Regards
satimis

 

[failboat]

WD has the worst reliability now.

seagate and hgst are much better.

 

[RARRAF]

I am interested as to were you get this info from failboat.

 

[failboat]

backblaze stopped buying WD for the most part many years ago.
seagate models from the last 2 years or so have been <2% failure. You do have to be careful buying some of their 5+yr old stuff. they had some very bad models at that time.
hgst has been <2% for a long time.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-q1-2018/

 

[RARRAF]

thank you for that information been a long while since I had to buy one but my WD 2tb drive failed on me just recently and was in the market for something new.

 

[failboat]

HGST is rock solid. I have 4 megascale while labels and they have been great.
I just had a 10yr old 1.5TB WD start to give errors. They used to be great. I think it's why they bought hgst not long ago.

backblaze has said that in the past they still went with seagate despite the larger failures because it still had the best value. now their newer drives are very reliable.