New 2tb Harddrve needed. What should I buy?

[K1Machine 10]

Hi again

Im looking to but a new 2tb hard drive for storage. I was going to buy this

https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-TB-Performance-Hard-Drive/dp/B00FJRS628/ref=sr_1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1551739454&sr=1-2&keywords=wd+black+hdd

But some of the reviews got me worried.

Can anyone recommend a fast, stable and reliable hard drive that wont break the bank and will be fast an reliable

Thanks in advance 🙂

 

[alchresearch 214]

If its just for storage, that one is overkill.

 

What about the blue one for half the price?

 

 

[K1Machine 10]

Cheers for your reply.

It will be for storage of stuff that I will access on a regular basis. Large video files, project files and stuff.

I have a 1TB WD Blue that I use for storage of item I rarely use.

[zach 234]

My last couple of HDDs were Toshiba X300. They are a couple of years old now and still working ok.

 

I have a mix of the above plus Seagate and WD. The last failure was 3 x 3TB Seagate over the space of 6 months. I'd look for a 7200 drive with decent warranty. 

 

Here's a link to some of the P300 ones, for a tenner more, I'd go for 3TB (Have a look at the £:TB ratio on all of them)

 

 

 

 

[K1Machine 10]

18 hours ago, zach said:

My last couple of HDDs were Toshiba X300. They are a couple of years old now and still working ok.

 

I have a mix of the above plus Seagate and WD. The last failure was 3 x 3TB Seagate over the space of 6 months. I'd look for a 7200 drive with decent warranty. 

 

Here's a link to some of the P300 ones, for a tenner more, I'd go for 3TB (Have a look at the £:TB ratio on all of them)

 

 

 

 

Thank you for that. Ive looked at the link and they seem a good price. However after finding some reviews, noise and reliability seem to be a bit of a concern,

Having given it some thought im considering going with a 1TB SSD for my working drive and sticking with the WD Blue I already have for my storage drive.

I know SSD's are expensive compared to mechanical hard drives but the benefits of fast transfer rate and silent running do appeal. Im considering the Samsung 860 EVO. The reviews are good, the price is high but it ticks a few box's.

My only worry is that it could be overkill bearing in mind its connected by SATA3 and the transfer rate isnt as high as the SSD is capable of. Well thats my understanding anyway.

Do you think it could be overkill and if so what other SSD (1TB or above) could you suggest?

[zach 234]

Every HDD or any other PC part for that matter will have negative reviews for one reason or another. Some are bad, others get bad reviews from people expecting far too much from the product or price they paid.

 

I put a 1TB SSD in my system for storage and a working drive (OS is on M.2 NVMe) It works much better than mechanical in all tasks but will show more of a par when moving big files too and from it. I'm just looking at a 2TB NVMe. Prices are still high but it will be on a much faster interface. SSDs just aren't an option for me on my NAS as it's running over 40TB... clunky drives for the next few years I think!

 

It's up to you but an M.2 NVMe for the OS and programs. 7200RPM mechanical for storage. Forgot to mention, the 1TB SSD I bought was a Crucial MX500. I did get it for £85 in the sales last November.

 

EDIT: I've never used one but here's a 1TB NVMe at just over £100. Link

Edited March 6, 2019 by zach
Added link

[K1Machine 10]

On 06/03/2019 at 09:29, zach said:

Every HDD or any other PC part for that matter will have negative reviews for one reason or another. Some are bad, others get bad reviews from people expecting far too much from the product or price they paid.

 

I put a 1TB SSD in my system for storage and a working drive (OS is on M.2 NVMe) It works much better than mechanical in all tasks but will show more of a par when moving big files too and from it. I'm just looking at a 2TB NVMe. Prices are still high but it will be on a much faster interface. SSDs just aren't an option for me on my NAS as it's running over 40TB... clunky drives for the next few years I think!

 

It's up to you but an M.2 NVMe for the OS and programs. 7200RPM mechanical for storage. Forgot to mention, the 1TB SSD I bought was a Crucial MX500. I did get it for £85 in the sales last November.

 

EDIT: I've never used one but here's a 1TB NVMe at just over £100. Link

Thank you for your reply and the link. Unfortunatly I purchased my NVME before I saw it but to be honest Im happy with what I bought even though its half the size of the one you linked to.

I got the 970Pro in the end. Its a bit pricey but seems really quick and I opted for the Crucial 1TB SSD for my frequent use storage drive and I have a 1TB WD Blue for my rarely used storage drive. All in all Im pretty happy with the setup and ill be having a play with the settings and stuff to make sure im making full use of the NVME's potential as I hear some settings in the BIOS need to be changed to make full use of its potential.

Cheers again for all your help matey

You're a good un.

[zach 234]

Glad you're sorted.

 

You'll be good with the parts you went for. If you run into any problems, just let us know.

[apelike 10]

2 hours ago, K1Machine said:

All in all Im pretty happy with the setup and ill be having a play with the settings and stuff to make sure im making full use of the NVME's potential as I hear some settings in the BIOS need to be changed to make full use of its potential.

Didn't have to mess with anything in the bios on my ASUS board but I suppose that could depend on what make the MB is and if the M2 also shares the IRQ with any used PCIE slots. The Samsung Nvme controller also seems a little bit faster than the Windows 10 default one for random Read and Writes. Maybe benchmark it using CrystalDiskMark with the Windows Nvme controller and then do the same again with Samsung's own controller and see if it makes a difference. Both can be downloaded from the Samsung site.

 

With the Samsung controller and CrystalDisk Mark I'm getting:

 

   Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) :  3552.020 MB/s
  Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) :  3251.644 MB/s
  Random Read 4KiB (Q=  8,T= 1):  1052.984 MB/s [ 257076.2 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q=  8,T= 1) :  1109.497 MB/s [ 270873.3 IOPS]
  Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   368.017 MB/s [  89847.9 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   242.114 MB/s [  59109.9 IOPS]
  Random Read 4KiB (Q=  1,T= 1) :    49.153 MB/s [  12000.2 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q=  1,T= 1) :   155.988 MB/s 

Edited March 7, 2019 by apelike

[K1Machine 10]

On 07/03/2019 at 18:54, zach said:

Glad you're sorted.

 

You'll be good with the parts you went for. If you run into any problems, just let us know.

Cheers for thatr matey. Having had a couple of days to play with the new parts all i can say is WOW

From the boot up times to the file transfer times to the program loading times, everying is incredibly fast. I cant get over how quick everything is. Im extremely happy with the parts ive bought so a big thank you to you and everyone who has helped my choose them.

You lot are diamonds 🙂

[K1Machine 10]

On 07/03/2019 at 20:37, apelike said:

Didn't have to mess with anything in the bios on my ASUS board but I suppose that could depend on what make the MB is and if the M2 also shares the IRQ with any used PCIE slots. The Samsung Nvme controller also seems a little bit faster than the Windows 10 default one for random Read and Writes. Maybe benchmark it using CrystalDiskMark with the Windows Nvme controller and then do the same again with Samsung's own controller and see if it makes a difference. Both can be downloaded from the Samsung site.

 

With the Samsung controller and CrystalDisk Mark I'm getting:

 

   Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) :  3552.020 MB/s
  Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) :  3251.644 MB/s
  Random Read 4KiB (Q=  8,T= 1):  1052.984 MB/s [ 257076.2 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q=  8,T= 1) :  1109.497 MB/s [ 270873.3 IOPS]
  Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   368.017 MB/s [  89847.9 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   242.114 MB/s [  59109.9 IOPS]
  Random Read 4KiB (Q=  1,T= 1) :    49.153 MB/s [  12000.2 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q=  1,T= 1) :   155.988 MB/s 

Nice one, Cheers for that matey Ill download it and have a look at what I get

Thanks for taking the time to post all those speeds and thank you for the advice youve given me on the parts

Youre a gent 🙂

[K1Machine 10]

On 07/03/2019 at 20:37, apelike said:

Didn't have to mess with anything in the bios on my ASUS board but I suppose that could depend on what make the MB is and if the M2 also shares the IRQ with any used PCIE slots. The Samsung Nvme controller also seems a little bit faster than the Windows 10 default one for random Read and Writes. Maybe benchmark it using CrystalDiskMark with the Windows Nvme controller and then do the same again with Samsung's own controller and see if it makes a difference. Both can be downloaded from the Samsung site.

 

With the Samsung controller and CrystalDisk Mark I'm getting:

 

   Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) :  3552.020 MB/s
  Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) :  3251.644 MB/s
  Random Read 4KiB (Q=  8,T= 1):  1052.984 MB/s [ 257076.2 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q=  8,T= 1) :  1109.497 MB/s [ 270873.3 IOPS]
  Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   368.017 MB/s [  89847.9 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   242.114 MB/s [  59109.9 IOPS]
  Random Read 4KiB (Q=  1,T= 1) :    49.153 MB/s [  12000.2 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q=  1,T= 1) :   155.988 MB/s 

I just run the crystalmark but dont seem to get the results you get

 

* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

   Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) :  3566.615 MB/s
  Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) :  2348.073 MB/s
  Random Read 4KiB (Q=  8,T= :  1363.242 MB/s [ 332822.8 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q=  8,T= :   982.262 MB/s [ 239810.1 IOPS]
  Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   372.367 MB/s [  90909.9 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   195.223 MB/s [  47661.9 IOPS]
  Random Read 4KiB (Q=  1,T= 1) :    59.695 MB/s [  14574.0 IOPS]
 Random Write 4KiB (Q=  1,T= 1) :   131.974 MB/s [  32220.2 IOPS]

  Test : 1024 MiB [C: 11.9% (56.5/476.