Question Is an Enterprise drive (Exos) a better purchase than a Desktop one in the same price?

[Glass777]

I was about to get a Seagate Barracuda 8TB (ST8000DM004) when I noticed I can find the Seagate Exos 7E8 8TB (ST8000NM000A) at around the same price. I understand this is an Enterprise drive (Server/NAS etc.) and my intended usage is desktop/consumer (media storage/loading audio sample libraries) but the fact they are considered better, faster drives and especially the 5 year warranty are hard to ignore. Should I just go for it or the potential Enterprise caveats (extra noise, 24/7 usage, power consumption) would make it the worse purchase between the two?

1. "Noisy" can be subjective but is it really that bad? My old WD Caviar Black gets noisy but only when actively using it, so if it’s not worse than that, it should be ok. Will that noise level be constant?
2. Since they are designed for operating 24/7, could the routine of powering off my PC at night as well as putting it to sleep 1-3 times daily be bad for its expected longevity to the point it might (statistically) fail sooner than the Barracuda?

Thanks.

 

[hotaru.hino]

1. "Noisy" can be subjective but is it really that bad? My old WD Caviar Black gets noisy but only when actively using it, so if it’s not worse than that, it should be ok. Will that noise level be constant?

They're probably not much noisier than a Black drive.

2. Since they are designed for operating 24/7, could the routine of powering off my PC at night as well as putting it to sleep 1-3 times daily be bad for its expected longevity to the point it might (statistically) fail sooner than the Barracuda?

No. Not using a hard drive won't kill it faster.

 

[fzabkar]

ST8000DM004 is an SMR model.

https://www.seagate.com/www-content...a-fam/barracuda-new/en-us/docs/100805918n.pdf (Barracuda)

https://www.seagate.com/www-content...city-3-5-hdd-10tb/_shared/docs/100840703d.pdf (Exos)

 

[Viking2121]

Not much of a difference between a higher end consumer drive and Enterprise drive noise wise, My 1TB black drive I got in an encloser is rather noisy, same with my HGST enterprise drive, I'd say they are pretty close to the same level of noise.

Though Enterprise drives should generally be more reliable, I run a few myself and the only issues I have with Enterprise drives is some PSU's do not like them, My system in my sig the PSU wont work with both Seagate and HGST enterprise drive unless I use an adapter to pretty much eliminate the 3.3v wire, I got a Seagate 500 watt PSU I use in my server it has no issues with them at all without an adapter. So keep that in mind if you do get some Enterprise drive.

Good Luck!