Was looking for a new hard drive to make sure my older ones won’t have anything on them if they start failing, but I’m not sure if I should get a wd blue or seagate barracuda or what, and I don’t plan to use raid, how much risk is there for the blue over the barracuda?

Plant to put it in an external enclosure and back up some files somewhat frequently, since I know it’ll get more use early on in transferring the files from my other drives before it goes to somewhat frequently updating backups every once in a while.

Maximum budget is $100-120 in case anyone may have some suggestions for a good drive above 4 terabytes

 

I got both WD Blue and Seagate Barracuda fail,
just get whatever is cheapest at preferably longer warranty and make sure you got your backups elsewhere too,
also avoid SMR drives (!!) and maybe consider lower rpm (5400-5900) drives if it's for external enclosure

 

Seagate BarraCuda 3.5-inch 4TB (ST4000DM004) €82.90 Details: Form factor: 3.5" Speed: 5,400 rpm Cache: 256 MB

It's not the fastest, and it doesn't last forever. It will eventually experience write and read errors.
You can't beat an SSD. If your budget is tight, you can't go past the Barracuda.

 

Ironically, my brother offered me a a deal on a 2TB WD HDD from him yesterday and I'm like "... eh... thanks, but... dunno... maybe?" I'm not rich (yet) so it's tempting to grab a deal, but my gut says to save for a Toshiba SSD rather than buy a brand that I've had fail on me before.
I've had a few WD fail and a Seagate fail, never had a Toshiba 1TB/2TB/4TB fail on me, and a 4TB is under a bill on sale.
All of the above mentioned were/are enclosed externals, but quality is quality.

 

Green is slower (lower rpm)
Blue is general use
Black is high performance HDD
Red is for servers
Gold is for high performance servers
Purple is for camera/recording servers

 

I guess I’ll have to save up get an extra a bit later as a backup, just need it to last a year at the soonest cause then I could get like three 6tb drives or something, I don’t need like 18 terabytes at this point but I do have to have a failsafe

 

I get enterprise exos seagate drives from ServerPartDeals and they haven't let me down yet.

 

I have around 20tb of wd blue ssds and about 10tb of Crucial blue ssd drives. In use most days, no problems with either manufacturer.

 

HGST CMR is solid.

 

If I needed a ton of terabytes within a few months I will consider them but they only have 16 terabytes and up which I wouldn’t need right now

 

understood. I have a load of stuff from over the decades and adhere to the 3-2-1 backup plan... so imaginably I require more space (and am a bit of a digital hoarder I suppose, as save all install packages, and photos, and whatever.)

But ServerPartDeals have been solid, those drives are rated for countless hours, and I haven't had one fail in years (or ever in that line, small sample set but...)... They certainly are better than the possible mix and match stuff you get in desktop packaged drives, and certainly better than any Barracuda or a slow blue etc... (although sometimes you can get binned exos 20's or whatnot in those desktop units depending...)..

If you are looking for just a small 2.5 portable that is 4 or 5tb hdd, the WD ones have been good for me, even with a lot of use... but they are probably 5400rpm, no fans and whatnot, and not as solid as a 3.5 in an enclosure etc one would think... but I use those mostly as portable drives or ancillary as everything else is backed up and cloned early and often.

Unfortunately due to many reasons, the pricing structure on all drives has increased over the last 2 years... and I will be happy if and when they come back down to more reasonable. And glad I got a lot before, but getting to the point where I wish I had gotten more...

 

Just for your information if you want to change your strategy:

The Toshiba Canvio Flex 4TB currently leads the CHIP best-of list thanks to its excellent performance.
The external hard drive is currently available from Notebooksbilliger for €97.90.
146 MB/s read and 144 MB/s write speeds.

Advantages
- Outstanding performance
- 4,000 GB storage capacity
- Two USB cables (USB-C, USB-A)

 

I can also vouch for Toshiba HDDs, as I've never seen one fail so far. The 4 Toshiba drives I have are quite old... maybe 10y+. 2 are 3.5" and 2 2.5". They seem most reliable of the bunch. I used to use the 2 3.5" 1TB ones in my main computer for a long time, I recently relegated them to NAS usage.

The rules for buying a reliable HDD for archival purposes is low RPM (5400 or lower) with the least number of platters (1-2) and if using it in an external case be very gentle with it. Low power consumption is also possibly an indicative of a more reliable drive, but not a rule.

I don't even know how many HDDs I have anymore... about 15? I have 5 in NAS that gives me 8TB of NAS storage for Samples, Plugins, OS images and backups. All in all 2 WD, 4 Toshiba, and the rest Seagate. 3 10y+ old 500GB Seagates are one foot in the grave but still holding for archival of... "documentary" films I like to watch, so if they go kaputt it's no big deal.

 

Last edited: Jun 2, 2025 at 10:29 AM

+1 for Toshiba.

 

Every WD blue and Seagate HDD I've used has failed within a couple of years. While I have black drives that are still going after like 12 years of light use for storage. It's not worth the minuscule savings, spend a little extra for black or NAS drives.Toshibas that I had in external drives have also been good.

 

Yeah, you are right, I have Toshiba 2.5 HDD's from well over a decade ago that have been ridden hard and put away wet kinda thing, and I don't believe I have ever had one fail on me amazingly.

 

Had a Toshiba 2.5" fail in a Macbook about 10years ago avoid them since then

 

People the future is SSD!!!

Crucial BX500 2.5" 2TB Internal SSD, 540 MB/s read transfer rate, 500 MB/s write transfer rate, 2,000 GB, SATA III (SATA 600), 2.5"

€107.97

 

Of course it is for working with audio in use etc, but a lot of us have more data than can reasonably be afforded to house on ssd.

-it's always recommended to keep your backups in at least 2 different formats the 3-2-1 plan. All my ssd's are backed up to spinners.

-and 'sata' probably isn't the future, but can work with the past/present just fine for most. 500 MB/s is absolutely functional, but for real speed, NVME/m.2 etc are leaning into the future.