What Hard Drives do you Like?

[GeekOnTheWing]

Me, I like Seagate Exos Enterprise drives. Just added another 8TB internal today.



It's the one on top. The one on the bottom looks like an Ironwolf, which I usually use for NAS drives. I probably didn't have an Exos handy when I installed it.

Between the computers and the NAS, I'm pretty sure I'm sitting in the middle of more storage than existed in the world when I first started messing around with computers. (They didn't have hard drives back then.)

My other favorite parts:

Motherboards: Gigabyte or MSI
PSU's: Corsair
Cases: Thermaltake
Fans: Noctua
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws
GPU's: NVIDIA, usually by EVGA
Micro SD Cards: Right now, PNY Elite Pro

Becoming one of my favorites is pretty easy: Companies whose parts don't fail get on there pretty quickly. If they're competitively priced, as well, so much the better.

 

[rgold1963]

I like the redundant ones I have mirroring my important data!
Honestly, I have had great luck with Seagate and WD over the years. The only failure I have experienced was due to a lightning strike right next to my house. The "surge protector" didn't help at all. It knocked out my power supply and 2 WD black drives(which might have been a result of the power supply failure) along with other electronics in the house that weren't even turned on when it happened(that were also connected to "surge protectors". My best advice, don't believe that a "surge protector" will protect your devices and certainly don't believe the great big warranty they offer on the packaging!

 

[kenautelevo2pro]

all of my attention has been on external hard drives rather than internal. I'm a Mac computer person so maybe that's the difference.

 

[GeekOnTheWing]

I like the redundant ones I have mirroring my important data!
Honestly, I have had great luck with Seagate and WD over the years. The only failure I have experienced was due to a lightning strike right next to my house. The "surge protector" didn't help at all. It knocked out my power supply and 2 WD black drives(which might have been a result of the power supply failure) along with other electronics in the house that weren't even turned on when it happened(that were also connected to "surge protectors". My best advice, don't believe that a "surge protector" will protect your devices and certainly don't believe the great big warranty they offer on the packaging!

I swore off RAID mirroring more than a decade ago, except on servers.

I'm OCD about backup. I literally have backups of my backups. In addition to image backups, every file I create or modify is backed up both locally and remotely seconds after it's saved. I also back up the images that Macrium creates, so again, backups of backups.



But mirroring? Nope. I made that decision one day when I realized that RAID controller failures that took down their entire arrays were responsible for more data-loss incidents I experienced or responded to than all other causes combined.

The only place I use RAID is on servers that need as close to 100 percent availability as possible. Even then, it's only for downtime-avoidance. I don't consider it backup.

 

[GeekOnTheWing]

all of my attention has been on external hard drives rather than internal. I'm a Mac computer person so maybe that's the difference.

I may wind up joining you because of Microsoft's increasingly aggressive data-mining.

 

[herein2021]

I swore off RAID mirroring more than a decade ago, except on servers.

I'm OCD about backup. I literally have backups of my backups. In addition to image backups, every file I create or modify is backed up both locally and remotely seconds after it's saved. I also back up the images that Macrium creates, so again, backups of backups.

View attachment 11245

But mirroring? Nope. I made that decision one day when I realized that RAID controller failures that took down their entire arrays were responsible for more data-loss incidents I experienced or responded to than all other causes combined.

The only place I use RAID is on servers that need as close to 100 percent availability as possible. Even then, it's only for downtime-avoidance. I don't consider it backup.

I have a total of around 100TB of storage which can be expanded to around 400TB if I need to.

Internal storage for my Editing Workstation


OS drive: Single Samsung NVME M.2 980 pro 500GB PCIe drive

Projects Drive: 4x Samsung NVME M.2 980 pro 500GB PCIe drives configured as a RAID5 storage spaces array using a single PCIe x16 slot via an Ultraspeed drive card

DaVinci Resolve cache drive: Twin WD Black SSD drives configured as a RAID 1 array for speed

Library drive: Twin WD Green 5TB drives configured as a RAID 1 array for redundancy

File History Drive: Single WD Green 5TB drive

External Storage

Synology NAS with 12x 10TB WD Red NAS Pro drives configured for RAID 5 with a hot spare expandable to around 400TB if I were to get an expansion array


In case it is not obvious by now my favorite drive vendor is Western Digital. I also like how easy they make it to select the right drive for the job. Once you understand the differences between the Black (speed), Red (NAS), and Green (archive), you don't even have to research which drives you need.

 

[GeekOnTheWing]

I have a total of around 100TB of storage which can be expanded to around 400TB if I need to.

Internal storage for my Editing Workstation


OS drive: Single Samsung NVME M.2 980 pro 500GB PCIe drive

Projects Drive: 4x Samsung NVME M.2 980 pro 500GB PCIe drives configured as a RAID5 storage spaces array using a single PCIe x16 slot via an Ultraspeed drive card

DaVinci Resolve cache drive: Twin WD Black SSD drives configured as a RAID 1 array for speed

Library drive: Twin WD Green 5TB drives configured as a RAID 1 array for redundancy

File History Drive: Single WD Green 5TB drive

External Storage

Synology NAS with 12x 10TB WD Red NAS Pro drives configured for RAID 5 with a hot spare expandable to around 400TB if I were to get an expansion array


In case it is not obvious by now my favorite drive vendor is Western Digital. I also like how easy they make it to select the right drive for the job. Once you understand the differences between the Black (speed), Red (NAS), and Green (archive), you don't even have to research which drives you need.

I have about 18TB in my "main" computer and about 24TB in the NAS, none of it RAIDed. Everything on the NAS also exists elsewhere. Most of it is backups of backups.

In addition, most of the data is also backed up to AWS and/or Backblaze. I use Flexify.io to copy the data back and forth between AWS and Backblaze for remote redundancy without having to upload it twice.

I use Mountain Duck to mount the AWS or Backblaze backups as mapped drives. So if I lost everything locally, I could keep working using the remote files while they were simultaneously being downloaded using GoodSync. That also comes in handy while traveling.

I have no issue with WD. I've used their NAS drives a few times. I use Seagate HDD's mainly out of inertia and the fact that I've had good luck with them.

I'm partial to Crucial or Samsung for SSD's. Both the system drive and the Resolve cache / render drive on this computer are Crucial NVMe drives. I also have a Samsung SATA SSD for documents and the like, a 4TB Ironwolf HDD for video storage once they're edited, and an 8TB Exos drive for the source files.

Once I don't need them locally, the videos live on AWS / Backblaze. Most of the rendered files are also on Vimeo. (Pro accounts allow the source files to be stored.)

My next project will be either building another NAS, or building a Linux computer purpose-designed to run Resolve. I actually like Win10 as far as stability and resource management, but the spyware and telemetry are getting out of hand.