[shilka]

I am replacing my old 6 TB WD Green with a new HDD after new years as the WD Green 6 TB i have is old slow and almost full
I have decided to get a 12 TB HDD as they are the bigest size consumers can buy and the HGST HS 14 is not sold to consumers so thats out

What i want and need from a drive is reliability first and foremost cost be dammed
I need to store a ton of movies videos pictures music and other stuff but i dont access some of the data all that often

My problem is i simply dont know which drive to go with and i know that many say HSGT drives are the most reliable but i have never owned a HGST drive before
So i have the option to go with a HGST HE 12 which seems like a good drive and is one of the cheaper options

My other options is the WD Gold 12 TB the 12 TB Seagate Ironwolf and Ironwolf Pro and the Barracuda Pro
The WD Gold does not seem like the right kind of drive for my usage so i dont know about that?

My experience with WD has been up and down with some good and some bad drives
Seagate on the other hand is what i am most confused about as their reputation and reliable is not all that good

On the other hand i do own a Seagate Ironwolf Pro 10 TB which has been flawless and perfect which make me doubt what is being said online
I really like the 5 year warranty and 2 year free data recovery service Seagate give you with their Pro models

These are the drives i am looking at but i dont know what is the difference between the ale600 and the ale604?
https://www.computersalg.dk/i/3634030/hgst-ultrastar-he12-huh721212ale600
https://www.computersalg.dk/i/3715643/hgst-ultrastar-he12-huh721212ale604
https://www.computersalg.dk/i/3741017/seagate-ironwolf-st12000vn0007
https://www.computersalg.dk/i/3741015/seagate-barracuda-pro-st12000dm0007
https://www.computersalg.dk/i/3741016/seagate-ironwolf-pro-st12000ne0007

While the IronWolf Pro is the most expensive out of all of them it does seem like my best option
Or maybe the Barracuda Pro?

Which drive to go with?
Also does anyone know if there are any consumer 14 TB HDD´s on the way?

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Quote:

Originally Posted by shilka

...What i want and need from a drive is reliability first and foremost cost be dammed and data loss is not acceptable at all!...

...On the other hand i do own a Seagate Ironwolf Pro 10 TB which has been flawless and perfect which make me doubt what is being said online
I really like the 5 year warranty and 2 year free data recovery service Seagate give you with their Pro models...

I can't make a recommendation on any HDDs anymore since I went all SSD about a year ago and HDDs are a rapidly changing market. However, two thoughts I would like to share are:

1. Lord Xeb shared with us a while back that the data recovery business he worked for at the time had a much larger percentage on large capacity drives (over 4TB) coming in for data recovery than the smaller drives. Unless you are running multiple monster drives due to a paucity of SATA ports, etc., you may want to reconsider using such large drives.

2. While I share your desire for drive reliability and also will use only the best, the sad fact is no drive is 100% reliable. No matter how good a drive may be, it is susceptible to irrecoverable failure at anytime without warning-even new ones can be DOA (I've had it happen). Data recovery from a dying or dead drive is very expensive and is a crap shoot at best since data recovery has no guarantees of success. It's nice that Seagate includes two years of free data recovery but that will do you no good if the drive dies with no hope of data recovery (the more likely scenario when a drive dies).

Rather than gamble your data on drive reliability, it is much safer to make and maintain multiple backups of your data. Using the best quality drives will reduce the chances of data loss and the accompanying inconvenience but will not ensure against it I still recommend using the best drives you can afford. I won't bore you with my insanely paranoid backup scheme but for your data to be reasonably safe from drive failure and from other causes of data loss (drive failure is but one cause of many for data loss), your data should exist in at least three places, such as on your computer, on a onsite backup drive, and on an offsite backup, such as another backup drive or even a cloud backup service (a good, paid cloud backup service, not a free cloud backup or storage site). The backup drives should be kept disconnected from your computer and powered down except when updating the backup.

Btw, while RAID can be included as part of a backup scheme, by itself, it is not a backup (click on the top link in my sig below to read why).

 

[shilka]

I only have room for 3x HDD´s in my case unless i install the second HDD cage and that will kill all air flow into the case so no i dont have the option to use more but smaller drives

My only option is a bigger HDD and i know there are risks by going with a bigger drives and i have heard all that preaching against it for so many years and have always disregarded the risk because if you got tons of stuff to store and almost no physical room a bigger drive is your only option

Another reason is that i am almost out of SATA ports on the other motherboard so its not an option for that reason as well

Its been more then 10 years since i had a HDD die and had any data loss and other then a single DOA i have never had problems with any HDD i bought
Besides that with the rate i am replacing drives i wont have it for more then 2 or 3 years at most so it wont fail because of old age

I am not foolishly enough to use a brand new drive and have no backups so there is no need to worry about that
If the drive dies later there might be some small data loss but its not going to be anything i cant find again

I have had 2/3/4 and 6 TB WD Greens and a 2 TB WD black and i never had any of those fail and that was back in the day those where the bigest drives you could buy

Edit: my question was not really answered

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Quote:

Originally Posted by shilka

I only have room for 3x HDD´s in my case unless i install the second HDD cage and that will kill all air flow into the case so no i dont have the option to use more but smaller drives

My only option is a bigger HDD and i know there are risks by going with a bigger drives and i have heard all that preaching against it for so many years and have always disregarded the risk because if you got tons of stuff to store and almost no physical room a bigger drive is your only option

Another reason is that i am almost out of SATA ports on the other motherboard so its not an option for that reason as well

Its been more then 10 years since i had a HDD die and had any data loss and other then a single DOA i have never had problems with any HDD i bought
Besides that with the rate i am replacing drives i wont have it for more then 2 or 3 years at most so it wont fail because of old age

I am not foolishly enough to use a brand new drive and have no backups so there is no need to worry about that
If the drive dies later there might be some small data loss but its not going to be anything i cant find again

I have had 2/3/4 and 6 TB WD Greens and a 2 TB WD black and i never had any of those fail and that was back in the day those where the bigest drives you could buy

Edit: my question was not really answered

Obviously, more but smaller drives aren't an option for you. I get it. I can't make any recommendations on HDDs because I haven't bought any in over two years (and used any in about a year) and the HDD scene has been rapidly changing. Sorry.

I still suggest you look into backing up your data. Even only one backup drive for each data drive is much, much better than none. You've been lucky so far but that doesn't mean your luck will continue to hold out. Even if you can replace your data (and I doubt you could replace all of it) if a drive when belly up, it would still be a time consuming pain in the....neck to do so.

 

[sakae48]

i have no experience w/ helium drives yet. i've used hgst, seagate, toshiba, and wd drives. only wd green has been turned me down twice. the re (now gold) and hgst works great on me. my preference, it's either wd re / gold (or black. but they're friggin hot!), hgst, or seagate constellation series (now labelled as exos?).

the difference between HE12 E600 and E604 is the security mode. 0 means instant secure erease, 4 means secure erease with overwrite only. E means the drives are 512byte emulated format

i don't know what's the deal w/ security mode but it's either that He12 or ironwolf pro for me

 

[shilka]

My chair has decided to die on me as the gas pump is leaking causing the chair to lower itself without any warning or me doing anything which is extremely annoying
The money i had saved for the HDD went to a new chair instead as thats much more important then a new HDD right now

Talked to my go to PC store and they recommended a Seagate IronWolf Pro as they sell a bunch of those and the failure rate is very low
The guy i talked to said that while HGST might have the lowest failure rate they dont sell all that many of them which is probably why the failure is lower as the market share is also lower

New HDD is on hold indefinitely unfortanately
14 TB consumer HDD´s might show up in the meantime

 

[ddarko]

I'm in a similar situation as the OP. I have a bunch of HGST Deskstar NAS 6TB hard drives that are almost full and I've been waiting for 12TB (or greater) drives to become viable. I've been very happy with the 6TB Deskstar and would probably go with their 12TB equivalent but the Deskstar NAS lineup maxes out at 10TB at the moment and Deskstar NAS seems to be about a year behind their helium cousins in capacity so I don't expect 12TB Deskstars to be released until the middle or end of 2018 if not later. That leaves 12TB helium drives as the only near-term option and I'm just not sure I'm ready to move to helium drives yet. They make me nervous though the drive companies content that helium drives are more reliable than the regular air drives. I do have some brand bias; HGST has been perfect for me - I had 3TB HGST Deskstars before getting the 6TB drives - while Seagate and Western Digital drives have died on me but since HGST is now owned by Western Digital, I'm not sure if HGST/Western Digital are mechanically the same and the only difference is the label/branding/price.

 

[DzillaXx]

Quote:

Originally Posted by shilka

My chair has decided to die on me as the gas pump is leaking causing the chair to lower itself without any warning or me doing anything which is extremely annoying
The money i had saved for the HDD went to a new chair instead as thats much more important then a new HDD right now

Talked to my go to PC store and they recommended a Seagate IronWolf Pro as they sell a bunch of those and the failure rate is very low
The guy i talked to said that while HGST might have the lowest failure rate they dont sell all that many of them which is probably why the failure is lower as the market share is also lower

New HDD is on hold indefinitely unfortanately
14 TB consumer HDD´s might show up in the meantime

Every time I buy Seagate the drive ends up dying in less than 2 years....

I have a 8TB Seagate that just died after half a year of ownership...

My old 3TB Seagate is going bad, and I've had to replace both of my 2tb's at least once before the warranty expired.

I'm not sure if I would trust that much data on a single drive without some type of backup system in place...
Hell even a external USB mounted drive would be fine...

 

[Thready]

Question: What do you use for backups? I would suggest a 12 TB HDD only if you find a way to work in enough redundancy, maybe through a NAS wired to the house.

Honestly if you only have enough room for a few drives in your PC, I would suggest getting a few NAS drives (WD Red for example) for simply movies, pictures, and music. And then keep your 6 TB HDD or use it in your NAS or make it an external drive. I made my old HDD an external drive when I needed space.

Here's a 10 TB HDD

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178997&cm_re=12tb_hard_drive-_-22-178-997-_-Product

I know you say money is no object but this 10 TB HDD is a little over half the price of a 12 TB. a 12 TB is about $500 USD but a 10 TB is $300. For $200 more you're only getting 2 TB more space.

You could use that extra $200 to buy 2 4TB drives at $100 each and put them in a case with a cheap motherboard, some RAM, a cheap CPU, and make a NAS out of it.

Just my thoughts. I would hate to spend that much on a drive if only 2 TB less is about half the price.

 

[mattliston]

OP, what do you have for a computer case?

Do you have 5.25" bays available?

You could grab one or two of the 4x2.5" bay adapters, and build yourself a big scrub drive array if you are running out of space.

You can get away with elcheapo china adapters to save money, grab a nice SATA 8 port PCIE card (60-100 US$$) or 4xSATA card for 30-60 US$, and build a small parity software raid.

Heck, if you use windows' JBOD software raid, none of the drives have to match, you wont have parity, but you can make use of any and all cheap craigslist finds and such.

Ive bought a couple old toshiba 1tb laptop drives for 20 a pop before. actually have 3 right now.

They make fantastic scrub drives when you are making big data swaps.

This would be a great hold over until the 12 or 14tb drives come into your hands. And would temporarily deal with your drives being full.

Else, find a college town near you. computer parts deals happen all the time

Ive seen decent GPU prices during the year even with the mining craze. Its how I was able to afford to upgrade some family members' computers without being bent over too bad.

 

[Pawelr98]

How about remote storage ?

Build a small low-cost machine which will take a lot of HDD's.
Then you can do an array of cheaper smaller capacity drives which will give you some reliability.

Smaller capacity drives have better $/GB so there should be some gap for a cheap machine.

Look at my "Awangarda" NAS.
Metal brackets from hardware store work really well for HDD mount.
Cuts down the cost of casing.

6x2TB RAID6 which gives 8TB (or around 7TiB) available.
Rest is OS drive,RAID1 secure storage and single old drive.

In my case 2TB drives had the best $/GB.
For other areas this will vary.

 

[SimonOcean]

Shilka, I understand that you have deferred your purchase decision. When you get back to it here is my recommendation.

1. From the drives you list for a 12TB general storage disk in your PC (non-RAID) I would recommend the Barracuda Pro. It has a 1/10^15 NRRE rate same as the NAS drives you are looking at but has firmware more suited to a non-RAID setup. (You didn't ask, but if RAIDing I would go IronWolf Pro or He12... just whatever price is best. Slight preference for the He12).

2. Lady Fitzgerald's advice about smaller disks being less prone to disk failures is absolutely true. Minimal differences between the 12TB drives you ask about are fairly insignificant compared to statistically major differences in failure rates between 4TB and 12TB drives. Therefore if there is not much room in your PC case for more numerous smaller capacity drives then a viable alternative would be a NAS linked with a 1GbE ethernet, or even a DAS with Ethernet / Thunderbolt.

Setting up as NAS (even an entry level one) is not an insignificant cost. I appreciate that. But data integrity... what is the worth to you. If it is a bunch of game files and movies who cares, right? But if it is work, or family photos / videos then it will cost you to be safer. It sound like you have been lucky so far as regards disk failures.

 

[shilka]

Sory i have forgotten about this thread
What i ended up doing was buying an 8 TB Seagate Ironwolf Pro and i now use that as my primary storage as its a 7200 RPM instead of the WD Green 6 TB 5400 RPM HDD i used before

The old 6 TB WD Green is now a mirror of the 8 TB Ironwolf Pro so now i have at least some backup of files i cant replace
Moved some of the data from my 8 TB WD Red to the 8 TB ironwolf and 6 TB Green

That gave me space on my 8 TB Red so i moved some stuff from my 10 TB Ironwolf Pro to the 8 TB WD Red
I am now running 4 HDD´s instead of 3 and i have had to take the power connector from my case LED lights to free up a SATA power connector for the 4th HDD

Also had to install my second HDD cage which means the air flow into my case now suck and i have to remove the whole front of the case every time i want to play games
Since i have heard everyone bash and rant about how bad Seagate are so much i am thinking about what can i buy that is so much better instead??? HGST? WD?

In total i got just over 29 TB of storage with two older and slower WD 5400 RPM drives and two newer and faster 7200 RPM Seagate Ironwolf Pro Drives
Since the Ironwolf Pro are some of the most most expensive drives from Seagate they should suck less then the cheaper Barracuda and the normal Ironwolf drives?

Edit: by the way i dont live in the US i live in Denmark so all the links to Newegg and other advice inside the US while appreciated is not viable
I an not doing any sort of RAID either as i always found that to be a massive pain

As for my case its a Phanteks Enthoo Luxe with the front 200mm fan replace by two Noctua NF-A14 FLX fans and even with the fans cranked up to max there is very little air flow into the case because of both the dust filter and the second HDD cage

As i said when i want to play games i have to remove the whole front of the case or listen to my EVGA GTX 1080 FTW2 become obnoxiously loud and give me a headache
If i had the funds for it i would buy 3x of the HGST HE 12 drives but since i dont i will have to live with 4x smaller drives instead at least for the foreseeable future

I also need to get a DAC some new headphones a Crucial MX500 1 TB SSD and a glass display case so i have tons of stuff i need to get and only funds for some of it