Recommendations HDD for WinX desktop, mostly or media storage & archive?

[Frank E]

I'm looking for a new media HDD for my desktop PC. I had a 2TB green one from several years ago which was erroring. That's laid aside and the important stuff migrated to my current 1TB media HDD which is now full because I downloaded a load of lectures from Berkeley before they withdrew them from the public.

It's principally for my music library, for streaming WAVs to my network player, recording and playing iTunesU courses on my desktop.
Secondarily infrequently used files will be stored there e.g. installers, ISOs, ad-hoc backups. I'll park some rarely-used VMs on there too.
I'll have it configured like other data drives to power down after X minutes of inactivity.

Would a NAS drive eg HGST HMS5C4040BLE640, HGST HMS5C4040ALE640 be fine in a desktop? They seem to be relatively reliable per data from Backblaze.
Any alternative recommendation please?

Many thanks

[DanceswithUnix]

A NAS drive will work just fine in a desktop, a NAS drive just has a much shorter timeout in the case of errors and should have better bearings.

The HGST drives were superb, but that isn't any guarantee that they are still built to that standard today as it is a cut-throat business so I would expect designs to be changing all the time. Best you can usually do is look for the warranty length, see how long the manufacturer trusts the drive for. Note that in the smallprint it usually says that the quoted MTBF for a drive is only valid during the warranty period.

Have you considered a NAS?

[Frank E]

A NAS drive will work just fine in a desktop, a NAS drive just has a much shorter timeout in the case of errors and should have better bearings.

The HGST drives were superb, but that isn't any guarantee that they are still built to that standard today as it is a cut-throat business so I would expect designs to be changing all the time. Best you can usually do is look for the warranty length, see how long the manufacturer trusts the drive for. Note that in the smallprint it usually says that the quoted MTBF for a drive is only valid during the warranty period.

Thanks. That's a good tip to go with the warranty.

I think I'll go with the 4TB HGST. If I ever decide to buy a NAS I'll stick it and others in there.

Have you considered a NAS?

I've thought about it too much, more than I'm comfortable with, considering I don't really need one.

There's only me in the house and when I'm in, I'm generally at the desktop and my streamer is in the same room. I've been offered enterprise NAS devices and servers from my Brother-in-Law but decided it wasn't worth the energy.