Which Internal HDD for Music PC.

[Thad E Ginathom]

I live in the Linux world these days, so my OS issues might be different to yours! To be honest, I never notice or monitor if my HDDs are actual idling. I put a lot of effort into the fans: my general-purpose system is not sssh-silent but it is not much more than sssss-air-movement noise. I don't mind if they idle or not.

Even though I now do most of my music listening from the PC, it was was not designed as music-only. If I ever do that, it will be very different!

I simply don't know the answer to "1." It is nice to have ones eggs in more than one basket though!

 

[GeorgeO]

A few pinters:

Plan on extra space to cater to future needs.
Try and keep a back up(if not with you then) with a trusted friend so that you are covered in case of catastrophic failure
Get a good drive-whatever you do best avoid the cheapest one, and go with a company that has a good warranty/replacement policy. I found Buffalo pathetic, WD outstanding. I invested in higher quality disks when I bought them for NAS duty, they cost around 15% extra, I consider this extra cost as insurance.

 

[prepress]

Thank you!
Overall WD is the winner.

So which should be good and SAFE?
2TB (1 HDD) or
1 TB (2HDD)

 

[hydra]

I've been using a 3TB WD Green drive for more than a year now. For my next drive, I'd probably try a 5400 rpm Hitachi, if the premium is not too much.

The reliability stats nowadays tend to favour Hitachi. This makes for good reading about reliability stats in a large scale real life usage scenario.

As always, regardless of what drive you get, backup, backup, backup.

Thank you!
Overall WD is the winner.

So which should be good and SAFE?
2TB (1 HDD) or
1 TB (2HDD)

When we're talking about HDDs, from personal experience, there is no "safe". As they exhort at every possible opportunity in the TV show Game of Thrones, Valar Morghulis! ("All men must die"). The same holds true for HDDs.

Since I always backup, in a HDD scenario, I'd prefer to put all my eggs in one basket. I'd buy one 2TB HDD for a music PC. Why? Because:

1) Lesser noise and heat.
2) One 2TB gives far more elbow room than two 1TB disks.
3) Nowadays, HDDs seem to die sooner rather than later. Since I backup regularly, I'd rather take the risk of ONE drive dying than two drives dying on me.
4) More space in the Cabinet!
5) Generally cheaper.

 

[prepress]

After lot of reviews and thoughts, finally purchased WD Green 2TB today.
Installed and the data transfer speed details are:
PEAK : 93-95mbps
AVERAGE/MOSTLY : 65-75mbps
LOWER : 38-43mbps (if system is busy with doing lot of things simultaneously)

 

[jsmithe]

After lot of reviews and thoughts, finally purchased WD Green 2TB today.
Installed and the data transfer speed details are:
PEAK : 93-95mbps
AVERAGE/MOSTLY : 65-75mbps
LOWER : 38-43mbps (if system is busy with doing lot of things simultaneously)

Just a word of warning. If you see the Load/Unload Cycle counts in SMART going up rapidly on the drive, then you might need to run wdidle3.exe from WD to reduce the rapid load/unload cycles this drive generates. The thing used to park the heads every 8 seconds in its attempts at being Green. Not sure if this was fixed on newer WD Greens, but if a SMART utility like Hard Disk Sentinel - HDD health and temperature monitoring shows the Load/Unload Cycle count rapidly increasing you might want to run the wdidle3.exe utility if you don't want the counts going up real quick.

 

[Staxxx]

Wow! Haven't been using my system for a month or two and disaster. One WD 3TB in my NAS is not showing up and both 2 TB WD green HDDs in my music server failed (I think) within the space of one week. Music is backed up to an extent but not all. Bah! You can never be too safe.....
I went through the same exercise as you are in a much earlier post but nothing is foolproof. Worth keeping that principle in mind.

 

[prepress]

Just a word of warning. If you see the Load/Unload Cycle counts in SMART going up rapidly on the drive, then you might need to run wdidle3.exe from WD to reduce the rapid load/unload cycles this drive generates. The thing used to park the heads every 8 seconds in its attempts at being Green. Not sure if this was fixed on newer WD Greens, but if a SMART utility like Hard Disk Sentinel - HDD health and temperature monitoring shows the Load/Unload Cycle count rapidly increasing you might want to run the wdidle3.exe utility if you don't want the counts going up real quick.

Oh really? Should I use this? Is this because I am using WD Green or is it for all HDDs? I am using Hitachi from last 3 years, and used Samsung for around 10 years. Nothing happened with them (Touchwood )

Wow! Haven't been using my system for a month or two and disaster. One WD 3TB in my NAS is not showing up and both 2 TB WD green HDDs in my music server failed (I think) within the space of one week. Music is backed up to an extent but not all. Bah! You can never be too safe.....
I went through the same exercise as you are in a much earlier post but nothing is foolproof. Worth keeping that principle in mind.

I am afraid if anything happens like this to me, I was expecting something reliable like my above mentioned discs. :sad:

 

[jsmithe]

Oh really? Should I use this? Is this because I am using WD Green or is it for all HDDs? I am using Hitachi from last 3 years, and used Samsung for around 10 years. Nothing happened with them (Touchwood )

I am afraid if anything happens like this to me, I was expecting something reliable like my above mentioned discs. :sad:

Download HD Sentinel (freeware) and look to see if the Load/Unload Cycle Counts(LCC) on your drive are increasing quickly. If it is only showing a Load/Unload per power/on off you don't need to do anything.

Even if the LCC increases at the default of every 8 seconds, it does not mean your drive is going bad. It's just that every drive is rated for a particular Load/Unload cycle count and when the LCC are consumed, the drive firmware "could" report the drive as bad. That however depends on the drive maker and the firmware they deploy.

WDIdle3 is only for WD drives and per WD only for certain older WD Green drives.

I have a 3TB Green WD30EZRX and noticed the Load Cycle Count rapidly increasing. Downloaded and ran the utility even though WDIdle3 was not supposed to be for my drive and now my HDD Load Cycle Count only increases at power off/power on. If you decide to run the utility ensure you completely power off (i.e.) do a cold boot as opposed to a restart(warm boot) of the computer after you run the utility. If you just restart, the LCC literally goes crazy and increases real rapidly. A cold boot sorts that out real quick.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Wow! Haven't been using my system for a month or two and disaster. One WD 3TB in my NAS is not showing up and both 2 TB WD green HDDs in my music server failed (I think) within the space of one week. Music is backed up to an extent but not all. Bah! You can never be too safe.....
I went through the same exercise as you are in a much earlier post but nothing is foolproof. Worth keeping that principle in mind.

This is really bad luck. All disks are mortal, but they seem to fail in a random way, unrelated to age, which ensures that not too much goes wrong all at once. Your experience sounds like something out a Terry Pratchet book --- like, if the odds of something happening are exactly a million to one against, then it probably will happen.

Boot-up seems to be the most dangerous time for disks. Maybe they live longer if never shut down. Maybe idling them isn't such a good thing? Just guessing here.

 

[dranil]

Always keep a full backup irrespective of the brand you are using. Disaster can happen anytime with any brands, even if it is covered under warranty. Company cannot replace your lost music files.
Thanks
Anil.

 

[Fantastic]

I know people who keep two additional copies of their music hard drive. They replace all three every 5 years ! Easiest ( and more fun !) must be to let friends copy your full drive. That way there will be so many copies around that you will never loose your music if your drive fails !

 

[prepress]

I know people who keep two additional copies of their music hard drive. They replace all three every 5 years ! Easiest ( and more fun !) must be to let friends copy your full drive. That way there will be so many copies around that you will never loose your music if your drive fails !

hahaha, by the way it's not a bad idea :lol:

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

I know people who keep two additional copies of their music hard drive.

And Me. In fact, I have two external-hard-disk copies of all my data plus system back-up. One is kept at another location.

Somebody recently offered me access to copy 1TB of music off their system. One reason that I do not choose to acquire music "wholesale" like that is that I would have to invest in three TB of storage.

They replace all three every 5 years

One would have to be desperately unlucky (Hello Staxxx) to suffer the death of three disks all at the same time. Even in a commercial environment I would not have replaced disks just because they reached a certain age (Would have been horribly expensive with IBM SCSI disks )

 

[arunlouie]

May be little out of the topic, Can anyone suggest any good backup software for taking regular backups from different machines to one disk?

My setup is 2tb connected to my router acts as central access to my PC, Laptops, Mobile, Tablet. Backup software that runs from PC is Cobian, sometimes with wrong setup it messes up the backup in the disk (configuration is some what confusing)

 

[Fantastic]

For the person who changes drives every 5 years, the cost is a drop in the ocean !
Seriously, it may be OK to make ONE new single copy every 5 years. That way I guess we are pretty much covered from any failure.

About friends copying the drive. It must be under one important condition ! They must keep ALL the music as is and not edit it or delete sections ! Otherwise it will not serve it's purpose !

 

[cha_indian]

Since you are storing all the music on HDD, it is better to use a RAID array to save yourself from complete loss if it completely fails.... and also stay away from Seagate.

 

[dheerajin]

For just media (non OS / Programs) WD green is best. Using it since 2 years, no issues till now. Another reason especially to go for this is, this is quiet and it goes to idle when not used (that is how its ECO) .

So if not SSD/ External HDD then this will be best choice.

+1 to above comments..
Number of revolutions determine the lifespan of HDD. If HDD stops while not in use is the best to have for longevity of HDD, while most of the HDD continues to run even PC is Idle.

Cheers

Dheeraj

 

[jsmithe]

May be little out of the topic, Can anyone suggest any good backup software for taking regular backups from different machines to one disk?

My setup is 2tb connected to my router acts as central access to my PC, Laptops, Mobile, Tablet. Backup software that runs from PC is Cobian, sometimes with wrong setup it messes up the backup in the disk (configuration is some what confusing)

Try:

2BrightSparks | Download SyncBackFree
FastCopy
Free Utility: RichCopy, an Advanced Alternative to RoboCopy

 

[rikhav]

+1 to above comments..
Number of revolutions determine the lifespan of HDD. If HDD stops while not in use is the best to have for longevity of HDD, while most of the HDD continues to run even PC is Idle.

Cheers

Dheeraj

Just realized my WD green 500 Gb is failing SMART test by WD diagnostic software. After surface scan it is having 3 or 4 bad sectors
So its not complete dead but dying a slow death
Its 2 years 4 months old
This PC is hardly used. Mainly for browsing and occasional movie watching. It has a AMD 350En board which is good for HTPC

Another WD BLACK approx same age is having same problem. But this PC is used a lot, stays on 24/7 but goes on sleep if not used for more then 15 mins
No 24/7 downloading

After using Seagate for long, then Samsung and last WD, I feel no one can predict life of a mechanical HDD. I have a WD BLUE 500 gb (4 years old) and Samsung 160 Gb (6 years old) still going strong

WD BLACK was suppose to be a work horse, hence bought that and to compliment it bought a very robust power supply (corsair TX650). Still it fails in this manner

Now moving to SSD. I know its expensive but if it works as promised, atleast I don't have to reinstall full OS and softwares every few years and to top it with 5 times more speed then normal HDD

Fingers crossed