Long term storage, Best Hard Drive?

[shulkman]

I'm thinking of expanding my hard drive collection. I've been using 2 WD Blacks (1TB each, JBOD) and am thinking of adding in a 2-4 GB drive for extra storage. I have photos, massive video collection. I used a Samsung 840 Pro 256GB for boot and programs. I thought about getting a WD green for the power savings, but have read bad things about head parking and DOA disks... Now I'm thinking about blue... Anyone else have ideas, thoughts?

 

[USAFRet]

'Power saving' from a WD Green = maybe $2/year.

 

[popatim]

What do you mean by long term storage?
Powered or unpowered?

 

[shulkman]

What do you mean by long term storage?
Powered or unpowered?

I suppose saying "long term" was unnecessary. I do have a 1TB external drive for back ups, but what I'm looking for in internal, always on type of stuff. I have a lot of photos, and a ton of videos. Entire seasons of TV shows and whatnot. I've kept capacity down to 1tb so I didn't put all my eggs in one basket so to speak, but I'm thinking it's time to go to a 2TB, up to 4TB. Western Digital has done a good job so far... no crashes as of yet. I think going for a blue might be the best way to go... but I'm always open to other people's opinions.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there shulkman,

As you already have 2 WD Blacks and a SSD for running programs and games off them, WD Green may be a good option for just storing your data. It is designed to be used as a secondary storage drive and offers bigger capacities( the maximum capacity of WD Blue is 1 TB).
Regarding the head parking thing you've mentioned, the WD Green parks the head faster due to its power saving characteristics.

More on WD Green: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=BjpcRK

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

 

[popatim]

I concur. I have several brands of 2TB in my home server and the Greens have done admirably well. Add in in WD's excellent warranty coverage, I would not hesitate to recommend them.

As for backup policies. I prefer a 3 backup minimum so that if one device fails I'm not reduced to having important data ONLY on one device. I too keep a hot backup on my pc (hdds) along with a several dvd backups one of which gets stored in my sisters basement in case something dreadful happens at mine. I've already survived 1 fire and 1 flood with no loss of data 🙂 Now I just hope pestilence isn't the computer kind. LoL