6TB HDD Choice? WD Black vs Barracuda Pro

The Pook · Nov 14, 2018

People who never lost important data never care about backups, I was the same way until I lost >2TB of non-replaceable stuff :upsidedwn

Now my backups have backups.

shilka · Nov 14, 2018

The data recovery service is only available if you register your drive with Seagate so what happens is you make an account if you dont have one already you register your drive and from that point onwards you have 2 years of free data recovery service and you can buy one more 1 year for $5 2 years more for $10 and 3 years more for $15

If your drive fails there is a form you need to fill out on your Seagate account from what i recall and then you just ship the drive to Seagate and they will attempt to save what data they can
There is no guarantee that they can save all your data but considering that 3rd party data recovery can cost as much as $1000 2 years for free or 5 years with $15 extra is a damm good deal

I have not used their data recovery service myself as none of the drives i have bought have had any problems

HeroofTime · Nov 14, 2018

Not trying to hijack the thread. What do you guys think about SSDs as backup drives, and how on earth is data recovered from an SSD if it dies? Also, do SSDs degrade over time in any way just sitting there? Just wondering.

shilka · Nov 14, 2018

SSD´s from what i understand only have a number of times you can write to the cells before they die
If you need a drive to dump some data on and you are almost never going to write new data to you could do it

But HDD´s have a far lower $ per gigabyte price so unless you dont have a ton of data or you can afford a 1 TB or bigger SSD the HDD is a cheaper storage option
If you wanted to have backup of say your music or picture collection you might be able to fit that on a 240 GB SSD so you could do that if you wanted to

Edit: the parts on a HDD that breaks are almost always part of the PCB or the heads on the drives the plates themselves almost never breaks
So in theory the plates in a HDD can last for centuries with no data loss where as NAND cells would degrade over time which would result in data loss

As a long term storage option HDD´s are far superior to SSD´s

Lady Fitzgerald · Nov 14, 2018

The Pook said:
People who never lost important data never care about backups, I was the same way until I lost >2TB of non-replaceable stuff :upsidedwn

Now my backups have backups.

LOL! Seriously, it's funny because it's true (Homer Simpson). I essentially also have backups of my backups although, in actuality, I have a set of four backup drives for each data drive in my desktop: two are kept onsite and two are kept offsite. Each time I the backups of a data drive, I do a separate update for each of its onsite backup drives. I swap out the offsite backup drives with the onsite backup drives no less than once a month to make sure the offsite drives are as up to date as is practical.

ciarlatano · Nov 14, 2018

I'm not going to comment on the quality of the drives themselves, since I haven't had any Seagates manufactured in the last five years or more, and I have had good and bad drives from both. However, I will say that WD's warranty service has always been a far better experience for me than Seagate's. WD is significantly quicker on the exchange, and has absolutely no hoops to jump through. Seagate replaced drives for me, but it always took considerably longer and there were always hang ups along the way. There was actually an instance where I shipped out a drive to each on the same day. I had a new upgraded WD delivered to me two weeks before Seagate confirmed receiving my return, and Seagate sent me back a refurb.

Lady Fitzgerald · Nov 14, 2018

shilka said:
The data recovery service is only available if you register your drive with Seagate so what happens is you make an account if you dont have one already you register your drive and from that point onwards you have 2 years of free data recovery service and you can buy one more 1 year for $5 2 years more for $10 and 3 years more for $15

If your drive fails there is a form you need to fill out on your Seagate account from what i recall and then you just ship the drive to Seagate and they will attempt to save what data they can
There is no guarantee that they can save all your data but considering that 3rd party data recovery can cost as much as $1000 2 years for free or 5 years with $15 extra is a damm good deal

I have not used their data recovery service myself as none of the drives i have bought have had any problems

You will almost certainly never need data recovery if you maintain a solid backup scheme. Backups offer fast and complete recovery (as long as they are up to date) opposed to the longer wait times and lower success rate of data recovery. Seagate's "free" or cheap data recovery is a good deal only if they can offer the same success rate as the other, and more expensive, pros.

ThrashZone · Nov 14, 2018

Hi,
Yeah I hate the refurbished replacement thing
Crucial does that on their ssd's not sure if others do though it's the only failure I've had.

HeroofTime · Nov 14, 2018

@shilka Thanks! Makes sense.

Lady Fitzgerald · Nov 14, 2018

HeroofTime said:
Not trying to hijack the thread. What do you guys think about SSDs as backup drives, and how on earth is data recovered from an SSD if it dies? Also, do SSDs degrade over time in any way just sitting there? Just wondering.

I personally love them for backup drives but they can cost you a fortune! When I decided to abandon HDDs for all SSDs, I had a choice of sacrificing my first born or not getting a new pickup truck (since my son wouldn't have appreciated me sacrificing him and my daughter-in-law and my grandchildren would have killed me, I gave up on a new truck...sniff).

Back to the ranch...Earth...the topic...wherever we were... With a few caveats, SSDs can be excellent backup drives. They are lighter, faster, use less power, take up less space and are mechanical shock resistant. For me, the dramatically reduced weight was the selling point. Lugging heavy HDDs to and from my safe deposit box at my credit union was killing my old back and shoulders. Now, schlepping my backup drives back and forth is almost a joy. The fact they take up much less room and updating backups is lightning fast are pleasant bonuses (which have spoiled me).

However, the data on SSDs do degrade over time unless powered up every once in a while. Usually, powering them up and reading them once a year will be enough but, both because I'm a paranoid coward and because I swap out my onsite backups with my offsite backups at least once a month, mine get powered up and read at least once a month so no worries there. For purely static data storage, HDDs are still queen (tape storage is still king).

Then, of course, there is much higher price. Not everyone can justify that expenditure like I was (barely) unless the capacity involved is really small.

Lady Fitzgerald · Nov 14, 2018

ciarlatano said:
I'm not going to comment on the quality of the drives themselves, since I haven't had any Seagates manufactured in the last five years or more, and I have had good and bad drives from both. However, I will say that WD's warranty service has always been a far better experience for me than Seagate's. WD is significantly quicker on the exchange, and has absolutely no hoops to jump through. Seagate replaced drives for me, but it always took considerably longer and there were always hang ups along the way. There was actually an instance where I shipped out a drive to each on the same day. I had a new upgraded WD delivered to me two weeks before Seagate confirmed receiving my return, and Seagate sent me back a refurb.

The one time I had to invoke a WD warranty, I took advantage of their cross shipping program. After one phone call and answering a few reasonable, easy questions, they immediately shipped me a replacement (a refurb but it easily survived a torture test) and I had up to a month to return the old one (WD paid for shipping on the replacement and I had to pay for shipping the old one back but I was able to buy the shipping label through WD at a steep discount). They did require that I allow them to put a hold for the price of the refurb on the card I use for internet purchases, which was reasonable and wasn't a problem for me, but they promptly removed the hold once they received the drive. I go the replacement drive the next day since I'm lucky enough to be only one State away from where it shipped. Service like that is hard to beat.

ltpdttcdft · Nov 15, 2018

Neither. Adobe is a resource hog and if you're not already using SSD for the scratch drive but still care about speed, get 2x 3TB HDDs and run them in RAID 0. You should have backups anyway.
As a 3.5" drive fills up it is normal for it to slow down to less than half of its original speed.

I'd recommend getting two Toshiba DT01ACA300. This is one of the faster 3TB 7200RPM drives. The P300 should also give the same performance.

I have two of the 2TB version (DT01ACA200) in RAID 0.

HeroofTime · Nov 15, 2018

@Lady Fitzgerald Thanks for the info! I could definitely understand still going with an HDD now over an SSD, but if you're constantly transporting them I can only imagine the fear of dropping one. HDDs are relatively much heavier than SSDs that's for sure.

GeneO · Nov 24, 2018

Little late to the party. I have a WDC Black 6TB and it is very noisy. A constant thunk-thunk-thunk by design. The only reason I can bear it is because I have the drive sleeping most of the time. Google it. I'd avoid them.

Lady Fitzgerald · Nov 24, 2018

GeneO said:
Little late to the party. I have a WDC Black 6TB and it is very noisy. A constant thunk-thunk-thunk by design. The only reason I can bear it is because I have the drive sleeping most of the time. Google it. I'd avoid them.

It's curious that I'm constantly reading about people having problems with WD Blacks being noisy (and I've no reason to believe they aren't telling the truth). I've had six of them (two 2.5" 500GB, two 3.5" 2TB, and two 3.5" 4TTB) and the only way I could ever hear them was when they were in a dock and I stuck my ear right by them (near as in 3"-4" from them); even then it was only a faint whirring noise. The only thing I can figure out is they noisy ones were mounted in tool free HDD trays that could vibrate and, thus, rattle instead of the drives being screwed down solid in a cage. We're in Twilight Zone territory with this.

GeneO · Nov 24, 2018

Lady Fitzgerald said:
It's curious that I'm constantly reading about people having problems with WD Blacks being noisy (and I've no reason to believe they aren't telling the truth). I've had six of them (two 2.5" 500GB, two 3.5" 2TB, and two 3.5" 4TTB) and the only way I could ever hear them was when they were in a dock and I stuck my ear right by them (near as in 3"-4" from them); even then it was only a faint whirring noise. The only thing I can figure out is they noisy ones were mounted in tool free HDD trays that could vibrate and, thus, rattle instead of the drives being screwed down solid in a cage. We're in Twilight Zone territory with this.

You haven't experience with the newer drives so your guess is based on incomplete information. I have never had issues with noise on the Black drives in the past either ( I had up to 2 TB drives before adding a 6 TB). The newer ones apparently activate a full seep of the head mechanism every 5 seconds or so for lubrication. It is very low frequency clunk and vibrates the whole case. Google it.

Personally, since I do regular backups, I'd opt for a less reliable quieter drive (not that I know these newer WD are reliable) if I could do it over again.

shilka · Nov 24, 2018

GeneO said:
You haven't experience with the newer drives so your guess is based on incomplete information. I have never had issues with noise on the Black drives in the past either ( I had up to 2 TB drives before adding a 6 TB). The newer ones apparently activate a full seep of the head mechanism every 5 seconds or so for lubrication. It is very low frequency clunk and vibrates the whole case. Google it.

Personally, since I do regular backups, I'd opt for a less reliable quieter drive (not that I know these newer WD are reliable) if I could do it over again.

I dont know anything about lubrication but i had a problem that was similar but only in Windows 10 and it drove me insane untill i found a way to force override Windows 10 and it has something to do with APM aka advanced power management

From what i read Windows 10 will force the drives into APM mode which moves the heads back and forth about every 5 seconds as you said and that will make a faint but anyoing ***** noise from the drive heads moving back and back and forth

Other than the super annoying noise it will actually break your drives as the heads will break over time because of it

After hours of trying to find a way to turn it off i asked for help here on OCN and ended up buying Hard Drive Sentinel where there is an option to force override Windows 10 so it does not force the drive heads into park sleep or whatever its called mode

Edit: by the way i have 4x Seagate Ironwolf drives which are NAS drives meant to run 24/7 in servers so having Windows trying to force them into sleep or whatever mode which you cant override is about the dumbest idea ever!

Lady Fitzgerald · Nov 24, 2018

GeneO said:
You haven't experience with the newer drives so your guess is based on incomplete information...

Granted, it's been a while since I bought any Blacks (I haven't even been using HDDs for a couple of years now) but I was hearing noise complaints about them long before I bought my last two WD Blacks around three to five years ago.

GeneO · Nov 24, 2018

Lady Fitzgerald said:
Granted, it's been a while since I bought any Blacks (I haven't even been using HDDs for a couple of years now) but I was hearing noise complaints about them long before I bought my last two WD Blacks around three to five years ago.

Noise complaints I used to have about them was loud chattering with lots of seeking.

GeneO · Nov 24, 2018

Lady Fitzgerald said:
Granted, it's been a while since I bought any Blacks (I haven't even been using HDDs for a couple of years now) but I was hearing noise complaints about them long before I bought my last two WD Blacks around three to five years ago.

Noise complaints I used to have about them was loud chattering with lots of seeking. But it wasn't too bad.

6TB HDD Choice? WD Black vs Barracuda Pro

The Pook

shilka

HeroofTime

shilka

Lady Fitzgerald

ciarlatano

Lady Fitzgerald

ThrashZone

HeroofTime

Lady Fitzgerald

Lady Fitzgerald

ltpdttcdft

HeroofTime

GeneO

Lady Fitzgerald

GeneO

shilka

Lady Fitzgerald

GeneO

GeneO

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