[SOLVED] Which Western Digital HDD is the most reliable

[w.cattermoul]

Hi everyone. I am looking to buy a massive hard drive (3TB) to store very important documents and videos (Irreplaceable footage from throughout my life) and i wanted to know which color drive was the most reliable; Blue, Red, Purple Green, Black or Gold. Now i am aware there are lots of forums explaining the differences between them, but so far i haven't com across any comparison of long term reliability. I was looking at some WD purple and Red drives, but im pretty much stumped :/
thanks for any help

 

[13thmonkey]

it doesn't matter, what matters is that you have the data stored in more than one place, so don't plan for 1 drive, plan for 3. 2 internals that you store the data on both of them (don't bother with raid or similar just have 2 drives) and a 3rd portable drive that you store elsewhere. Or an offsite backup solution, g-drive/dropbox etc.

And the reason it doesn't matter is that if it fails then it's failed, doesn't matter if it is a 0.05% chance per year, or 0.1% per year, once it's gone it's gone. If 2 blues cost the same as 1 gold then 2 blues are several orders of magnitude safer than 1 gold.

 

[gasaraki]

If it's irreplaceable stuff and you want to stick with Western Digital, I would get something like this.

https://www.wd.com/products/external-storage/my-book-duo.html

It comes with the RED drives and has RAID1 so if one drive dies, you won't lose all your stuff.

 

[captaincharisma]

the western digital drives for desktop and laptop computers are the blue and black series. the others are not meant to be used as a HDD for a home or gaming PC. of all the HDD over the years i never had a western digital drive fail on me yet but i have seen a lot of seagates fail.

mind you there will be people who will have the opposite experience

 

[w.cattermoul]

it doesn't matter, what matters is that you have the data stored in more than one place, so don't plan for 1 drive, plan for 3. 2 internals that you store the data on both of them (don't bother with raid or similar just have 2 drives) and a 3rd portable drive that you store elsewhere. Or an offsite backup solution, g-drive/dropbox etc.

And the reason it doesn't matter is that if it fails then it's failed, doesn't matter if it is a 0.05% chance per year, or 0.1% per year, once it's gone it's gone. If 2 blues cost the same as 1 gold then 2 blues are several orders of magnitude safer than 1 gold.

Thanks for your answer, but if i were to get a color drive, which on would you recommend?

 

[13thmonkey]

Blue or green, this is infrequently accessed data, therefore low power slow spinning media is perfectly fine. Blacks are optimised for read speeds, purple for constant writing and reds for nas storage.