Best HDD for under £100

[dave87]

I think it is perhaps worth contemplating 'tiered' storage.

Stuff that benefits from fast storage goes on to SSD/fast drives, stuff that it makes marginal/no difference on to large SATA mechanical drives.

For example:

SSD for Boot/Steam/Games
HDD for Office/Applications/Music/Films

The other thing is to move games that you are not currently playing off the SSD - I'm sure there are a core of games which get played regularly, and a number which are played infrequently. SSDs are only a benefit if you are using the files stored on them frequently.

[chrestomanci]

Are HDDs in RAID0 typically any less reliable than those which aren't?

You double your chance that a drive will go wrong and you will loose your data.

Also, if after one of the drives has died, you decide to spend money on specialised data recovery to get it back, then data recovery on RAID-0 data is substantially harder than on normal drives, and so will be correspondingly more expensive.

My advice would be to avoid RAID-0 unless the data is strictly temporary, or you have a good backup elsewhere. If that does not apply then use RAID-1 which greatly reduces your chances of loosing data, or if you need the full 4Tb of space, then format them as separate drives and mount them in windows as separate drive letters. That way if one dies, then with luck the important data will be on the other one that did not, and if necessary data recovery will be cheaper than if the data was on RAID-0.

Agree on the WD Reds.

Second that. I have 12 of them in a RAID-6 array at work. They have been running flat out for the last 6 months or so without any problems.

If you are paranoid, it can be a good idea to get the two drives from different suppliers so that they don't come from the same batch. That way if there was some sort of manufacturing glitch that caused a batch to be unreliable you will be less likely to have both drives fail at the same time.

[kmac]

You could just get two 2TB or 3TB WD red drives and back-up all data from one drive to the other

[Huzi7868]

I agree with dave87. I have my SSD for boot and steam, and all my files are stored on two HDD's. Slightely off topic but you can remap your my documents onto a HDD (from the original SSD) so that all your files will save automatically onto your HDD, whereas the actual boot is on the SSD...

Also, games on SSD's don't really affect the performance of the game, you wont notice a substantial increase decrease in FPS, it just helps with loads. e.g. Skyrim is a pain in the loading between area's. SSD will help their.

[Huzi7868]

Second that. I have 12 of them in a RAID-6 array at work. They have been running flat out for the last 6 months or so without any problems.

I third that. WD Digital RED's are probably the most reliable HDD's in the market. plus they are energy efficient too.

[chris_summers1994]

i would get 2 wd black 1TB, they are approximately £70 each which is well within your budget, they are extremely fast and reliable and come with 5 year warranty i believe

[Mehta23]

If you're interested by the WD Black's 5 year warranty then fine. I have one and can say its a pretty good drive.
I also have a Seagate Barracuda which is much quieter, faster, cooler cheaper and fragments much slower too (although I don't know if that's just because I use the WD more)

[DanceswithUnix]

Second that. I have 12 of them in a RAID-6 array at work. They have been running flat out for the last 6 months or so without any problems.

ISTR when I bought mine that the spec sheet said they were good for 4 drive arrays.

I don't believe they have any proper anti vibration support (unlike proper enterprise drives), so too many in one place and they may shake themselves apart

Not bad drives though, I have two in a raid 1 set at home.

[chrestomanci]

I don't believe they have any proper anti vibration support (unlike proper enterprise drives), so too many in one place and they may shake themselves apart

That's more or less what the server vendor told me when I was specing up this storage server. He wanted me to spend 3x as much on 2Tb enterprise class drives, and drive the cost up too high.

I stuck to my guns and insisted on cheaper desktop drives, and so far everything has been fine. The server actually has 36 drives in it. (The other 24 are Hitachi ones), and the whole thing has run without problems for ages. The server vendor was convinced that I would at least see drives dropping out of the RAID array from time to time because they took to long to respond, but even that has not happened.

One relevant factor is that I am using Linux software RAID, instead of a hardware controller. Apparently dedicated RAID cards tend to be less forgiving of drives that don't respond instantly.