OK FELLOW NERDS!
GIve me your buying tips/deals for the most cost-efficient (highest capacity) hard drive for long-term archival purposes! General advice or specific Canadian sources/able to ship to Canada appreciated!
aaaannnd GO!
#buying #harddrive #HDD
So long as chassis/shelf space is not your biggest concern, you will always pay a premium for data density. I.e. $/TB will be more for an 8TB drive than a 4TB. You can _always_ copy small drive contents to larger drive contents as needed so go with the size that gives you most TB / $.
1/
Drive makers have tiers. Ill use WD's classification but others have similar.
- black - high performance, lots of cache, super fast. less reliable. for games
- blue - better reliable, data retention, good performance - for bizness and servers
- red - rock solid reliable, performance OK - for longevity and long term storage. typical "NAS" drives
Each with variying level of MTBF, cache levels blah blah.
2/
I buy WD Red 4TBs when I have a free $150, and I shove them into a 5 bay USB 3.0 enclosure. I'm on my second (enclosure) now. When the 8TBs hit the TB/$ sweet spot, Ill switch to those and I can always add more encl. Unplug em throw em in the closet, or safety deposit box whatever. Move to that new server Im building. External enclosures for the win so long as you don't bottleneck yourself by putting a SATA 6 drive in a USB 2 enclosure or plug a USB 3.1 enclosure into a USB 2 A slot.
@chris Seems about right. Last 4TB Red I bought was ~$130. I've got a few from Amazon (boo!) for $120 right on that price pt., but Canada Computers which I prefer, sometimes has some on sale for that.
You're gonna be bombarded with a lot of info about cache and rotation speed etc. but unless you can actually explain what each of those things actually _mean_ and under what circumstances they might affect your usage performance of said drive, then trust me - just go for most storage for buck.
And if you go for an external USB or e-SATA enclosure make sure you pair capabilities. SATA 6 drive in a USB 3.x+ enclosure plugged to a USB 3.x port, otherwise you're introducing an artificial bottleneck somewhere.
Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸
Third spruce tree on the left