Western Digital Hard Disks - Which to buy? WD Blue, Black, Purple, Red, Gold and Ultrastar.

[@carlosedwardos]

This is better content than the channels with millions of subscribers, you saved me a lot of research time, and confirmed my findings - Well done, Sir! - I was trying to find the most reliable drive, as I am notorious for not backing things up as I should, and I also wanted good bang for the buck, this video answers both of those and reaches the conclusion that my minimal research came up with, causing me to feel much better about my preliminary selections. You also kept me from wasting money on WD Gold and WD Black. Bravo! - Your channel will eventually go viral if you keep this level of good work up, just look at what happened to channels like Gamers Nexus or Bald & Bankrupt - They just caught fire eventually and blew up to several million subscribers overnight!

[@sometechguy]

Thank you, this was very generous. And not just the super, but the comment itself. Starting out as a creator isn’t easy, there is a lot to learn and it takes a lot of time invested if quality is important to you. So this kind of support is greatly appreciated. I hope you are right and I can get momentum with the channel, and provide content that people enjoy and find useful. 🙏

[@TrentCantrell]

I came across his content only recently and Ive already learned some important things to look for in hard drives. This channel should catch on if enough people see it.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

Please note that Ultrastars can be SMR too. Namely, 20tb DC HC650 (seen at 12:13 in this video) is, unlike the 18tb DC HC550, SMR according to the manufacturer's website: "The Ultrastar DC HC650 20TB HDD with host-managed SMR enables the highest capacity HDDs for data centers. Media tracks are overlapped (or ‘shingled’) with adjacent tracks" 0F38755 \ DC HC560 is the 20tb drive that has CMR. Honestly, somebody should pass a law that they should write SMR\CMR in big red letters on the drive label.

[@sometechguy]

The DC600 range is host managed SMR though, so this isn’t something you could accidentally buy. This requires that the host system can manage the drive. This is difference to DM-SMR (device managed) that we have seen on the Red and Blue drives.

[@Vednier]

Speaking about Purple drives, there s one dditional thing - its main difference 1) they came from factory with head unloading disabled, they dont go to sleep on its own 2) they support Streaming feature set. Its special set of commands allowing drive to drop pending writes or ignore write errors IF this mode was requested by host. This allow drive to increase write speed sacrificing some of write reliability because one damaged frame doesnt make difference. There is not much of info on how its is implemented really but some people raised concerns on should be Purple used in not video-capturing systems. WD however claims its fine.

[@miaobinhuang2315]

I can imagine the time and tremendous efforts you use on all these research, it such a complicated task to study and to understand no one would really want to get involve. Deeply appreciate you share your research.

[@KTIIbot]

I have 5 WD Gold each 10TB in a NAS Raid 5 since the last 4 years and never got a problem with them they are running 24/24 since then. I like these 👍

[@Xcross93X]

I love your videos! You're the only person that makes these kind of videos. You're a legend! Next time I upgrade my storage (in about a year) I'll be buying 5x20 of the ultrastar drives! You're a legend!

[@sometechguy]

Thank you, appreciated. I like to try and make different content, rather than follow other channels. Really appreciate the positive feedback.😊

[@Matlockization]

You're completely right about WD being vague about the specs, however you can apply this idea to just about any electronic device where the manufacturer are claiming it's 'better than the rest'. That's why if after digging I get no answers, then I go elsewhere. It also helps to read the reviews if they are available.

[@Goygle]

This is exactly the analysis I was hoping to get! Thanks for the tre,endous job

[@sometechguy]

Thank you, appreciated 👍

[@alexclifford2485]

Outstanding research again. So informative in such an small amount of time

[@sometechguy]

Appreciate it!

[@dkostasx]

Great video. I especially liked the price comparison of drives which is really useful, thanks for that

[@sometechguy]

Thank you. 😃

[@-Bill.]

I've got a couple 1 TB WD Caviar Black drives which have lasted well over 10 years at this point.

[@harigaribovic799]

I have several wd blue ones for the first few years they worked for me 24/7,they currently have over 7 working years 10+ years in total and still working wd is a good brand at least for me

[@fusion9258]

i have a wd blue hard drive and wd green ssd, and they've both lasted close to 10 years now

[@bricefleckenstein9666]

I've had USED HGST/Ultrastar drives that lasted over 10 years FOR ME at this point. Mostly 2GB models, a few 3GB. But to be fair, I also have quite a few 500GB models from WD and Toshiba pushing 15 years (but bought new) also - and have seen some of those die.

[@ZackyVillain]

Their reputation just ruined around 3 years ago though. 10 years was before they started doing shady businesses.

[@ShadowManceri]

This is the survivorship bias. Any disk could last for 10+ years, doesn't matter what the disk is. What matters is the mean time for it to fail. Some disk after all are dead on arrival, some last for 1 year etc. You might have same brand and model and have them fail are very different times. So unless someone is saying they have thousand disks and all of them lasted for 10 years, you should ignore these statements. It's not going to be accurate at all. What comes from the study of thousands of disks, turns out that disks tend to fail early and if they make past the 3-4 year mark, they last for long time. And the model or branding makes no difference. So as the reliability goes, just consider any HDD to be equally good or bad. Plan for failure and you are set.

[@amarokorama]

5:48 "5400 RPM Class" = actually 7200 RPM, but somehow dumbed down in firmware. Meaning you get the power consumption, heat, noise of a 7200 RPM drive with the slower transfer speeds of a 5400 RPM drive. Great job, WD. You can find some forum discussions and even news articles about this, e.g. on arstechnica, "Western Digital is trying to redefine the word RPM".

[@sometechguy]

Thanks for this pointer, that’s interesting. This is again disappointing for WD, they never seem to learn how this negatively impacts customers opinion of them, and not sure they are even doing this, just call it what it is with the lower rate. Or use a 5400rpm platform.

[@addydiesel6627]

If 7200rpm is peak rotation, then power saving must be the reason for the 5400rpm equivalence. That's actually better for noise and heat than constantly maintaining highest 7200 rpm for no reason.

[@addydiesel6627]

Unless you mean it's shingled. Therefore you are right. It will work continuously at 7200rpm but with 5400rpm equivalence

[@amarokorama]

@@addydiesel6627 I don't quite understand what you are getting at. "Peak rotation"? Do you think it's variable? Absolutely not. Rate of rotation is constant during operation. There are no variable rotation speed HDDs, to my knowledge. It's easily provable with a microphone, because the rate of rotation directly determines the dominant vibration frequency. If you had read the mentioned articles, you would have known that. Also has nothing to do with SMR.

[@Maxoverpower]

Thank you, this breakdown was very informative and put me on track to find a great deal, new WD Ultrastar 10 TB for 180 USD.

[@sometechguy]

Love those disks. Good pick.

[@llTheSystemll]

yikes!. where did you find them so cheaply priced? was it during a holiday sale? thanks

[@xellaz]

My 16TB EXOS has been running 24/7 nonstop for more than 3 years without any problems but they are kind of loud. My 12TB WD Golds has been the same too and much quieter but it's more expensive. One of my HGST 4TBs got corrupted a few years ago. The other 4TBs and 8TBs are still doing fine but they are not being used as much now. I've tried 16TB refurb Seagate EXOS from Amazon and they are running great. I might take my chance and go for the same for my new 8-bay NAS in raid 6. It gets expensive real quick when you fully populate a NAS. 😭

[@goku445]

I was reluctant at buying second hand drives but it can be quite interesting if the price is low enough. You have to have redundancy and backup tho. Some sellers even have cheap 3 years warranty.

[@alexpitibalrog2909]

Thank you for this quality video. It help me 👍 You miss a chapter in your timeline at 8:22 where you stop WD gold and start price comparison.

[@sometechguy]

Thank you, and glad it helped. I will take a look at the chapters, sometimes if the chapters are too short, it breaks things so will have to look at it. Appreciate the feedback 👍

[@patricklonski]

Just this week (August 2024) I had a 6tb WD Red start to fail in a home Synology 212J NAS. I label the drives when I stick them in the NAS. This drive was installed on July 27, 2015. Yes that is NINE years in use. The other five I have installed are equally as old and NO failures. I'll stick with the WD Reds

[@sometechguy]

In one NAS I have with Red 6TBs, they also last a long time, some failed around 7 years, and I have some still running at 8.5 years, but when i replaced one of the 7 year failures I had a bit of pain with a further disk failing during the rebuild process and another one suffering some errors and needing replacement also. So i have been rotating out the high power on time disks proactively for Ultrastars.

[@45KevinR]

It's worth noting that both your old drives and those of @sometechguy are from before SMR infected the Red drives (2019, discovered 2020). So those were the good CMR class drives. Any replacements would need to be Red Plus or Red Pro to get the same technology & performance.

[@bobmcbob4399]

Thanks for providing all of this comparison data. Your very real efforts are appreciated. I have subbed to you channel as it is high quality.

[@sometechguy]

Thank you for the compliment, and appreciate the sub. Lots more to come!

[@geog8964]

Thanks. Used to use black but have switched to ultrastar with lower price.

[@rsomel6628]

Thanks. Always been a WD fan but now… a food for thought. Subscribed.

[@cristianr9168]

Thanks for the advice! Your videos are great for learning and IT advice.

[@sometechguy]

Thank you, appreciate you taking the time to comment and share your feedback.

[@ErikS-]

1:00 - if you take drives from the EXOS range, they can differ hugely between variants! I know that especially the noise can be unbearable for some EXOS variants. Some are okay, but others really unbearably loud.

[@meson183]

I have always been a IBM > HGST > WD Ultrastar aficionado. In fact just bought a 22TB Ultrastar from Scan UK not two weeks ago. Good to hear that your conclusions confirm my own findings regarding reliability and value.

[@sometechguy]

They have a great pedigree and a great reputation. And the data suggests that through the acquisitions, that remains which is great to see.

[@kamilmielczarek5664]

How do you find the drive? Do you use in a desktop? How loud is the drive?

[@meson183]

@@kamilmielczarek5664 It's in a Fractal Define R5 tower case (glass side panel) with 6 other older generation Ultrastar drives. About half a meter from me. I won't say they're completely silent, but I can live stream on Twitch without a problem.

[@eliotcougar]

One note on WD Blue drives in comparison to Red drives if you plan to use them 24/7 in a NAS... Blue drives tend to park the heads way more often, thus wear them out quicker... Red drives always expect data to be read or written I guess, and don't park the heads at every opportunity... The only difference of Purple drives is the support of Streaming instruction set that is used exclusively by specialized surveillance equipment and nowhere else…

[@cosettapessa6417]

I have two purple in my nas since 2014 and they barely park the heads. The green died in 4 years because it had 300k parks. That piece of sh.

[@Hatch3dLabs]

This is timely as I need to upgrade my drive capacity in my TrueNAS servers. EXCELLENT quality video!

[@sometechguy]

Appreciated, thank you 🙏

[@goku445]

thank you for decrypting this for us.

[@sometechguy]

👍

[@yw1971]

Please do similar comparison (& survivability) with SSDs.

[@sometechguy]

Backblaze do have some data on SSDs, but it didn't look very extensive as the majority of their storage is on magnetic media. But I will take a look to see, and of course if there are other datasets it would be great to find them. I am planning to do some content on NAND storage also, as well as some comparisons on SSD vs HDD, so look out for that. And thanks for watching!

[@yw1971]

@@sometechguy I hope the failure percentage is just as low there, but I think it’s even higher.

[@philippemiller4740]

Awesome video thank you!

[@sometechguy]

Thank you for watching it hot off the press. 😁

[@tulsatrash]

Thank you for making this.

[@sometechguy]

No problem, thank you for the comment. 👍

[@enkaskal]

great work. just found your channel and nice to see you use the exact same methods of analysis i’ve always done on drives 😀👍for US retailers, i’ve actually been buying direct from wd the last couple of times as i got lucky they had really good sales going on whn i needed to purchase. might be worth looking at in future analysis along w/ a quick spot check of amazon. love the back blaze video too, am now subscribed, and will be double checking all future purchase analysis against your videos so please keep up the great work!

[@PatrickDKing]

I used to buy all HGST Ultrastars, then for whatever reason distribution sucked and it seems only odd and end places or shady resellers have them available. So I decided to just get WD Gold drives exclusively now since all the major distributors have them. If you are patient you can get them cheaper than any other the other drives and lower cost per TB. My sweet spot is about $270 for an 18tb WD Gold drive here in the USA. I almost got some Ultrastars but after digging around found out they were "recertified/refurbished" whatever the hell that means and by whom I don't know. Not going to risk it to save a buck on my mission critical stuff. I won't pay normal Gold prices those because those are horrendous.

[@sometechguy]

You should be able to find WD Ultrastars ok, and those are an evolution of HGST unit, and are also basically the same as WD gold under the hood. I did a comparison of the larger capacity enterprise disks based on BackBlaze reliability data and they seem really solid.

[@wishusknight3009]

I have always liked the WD red 5400 rpm drives in my nas. Lower heat output and quieter operation. (red plus now). And putting enough of them in a raid 6 has always given me enough write speed throughput. I have had used HGST drives the last couple years and they are great, but the extra heat and noise has made me want to go back to lower spindle speeds again next round.

[@RiotRetroGaming]

You forgot the datacenter yellow 'Re' drives... amazing piece of kit.

[@sometechguy]

The Re drives are now long gone I think, and replaced by the gold drives. But good drives as you say. :-)

[@areriff]

Great video. I’m subscribing now.

[@Fortzon]

Great lineup video! It is sad how Blue is now the budget brand from WD when it used to be Green. The SMR fiasco wasn't the first time, and probably won't be the last, WD was being sneaky. Them merging slower Green drives with Blue drives in like 2015-2016 really hurt Blue's reputation because now you have to always check the serial number when back in the day you could always recommend Blue because you knew Green was 5400rpm and Blue was 7200rpm. I guess their reasoning was that Green had a bad reputation among consumers so they weren't selling that well compared to Blues which were known as the bang for the buck kings. I have 1TB 2010 EALX Blue (7200rpm with 32mb cache) and 1TB 2012 EZEX Blue (7200rpm with 64mb cache), both still alive, and the only reason why I bought a Seagate drive was because WD didn't offer a 7200rpm CMR drive above 1TB anymore in their Blue lineup.

[@arturorubio-w1m]

im going to try the Ultrastar dc550 for diy nas i don't mind noisy as my office is another room according to your video the best bang for my Buch per tb

[@sometechguy]

Those are nice drives, and they currently look like a nice pick for price per TB. Enjoy 😎

[@arturorubio-w1m]

@@sometechguy do you know what would be good choice for NVMe drive or ssd? so I am planning to boot from NVMe or sdd and then use these enterprise as my storage I am building DiY nas using truenas

[@sometechguy]

The Lexar drives I quite like, good price point. Some of the WD and Samsung also. I have a bunch of these I intend to performance test as well, as the caching method has a big impact, and you find this from simple performance tests. Should be coming soon!

[@emrebng]

Thank you.. My english is not good so I didn't understand key points but should I chose WD Ultrastar 10tb hc510 or WD hc550 16tb? Price is important to me, should I not prefer hgst ones? If they are not WD, should I save some more money and get 16TB?

[@sometechguy]

I couldn't find a HC510 for sale easily, but if I compare the 12Tb HC520 and the 16Tb HC550, the price per Tb for the 16Tb drive is maybe 20% better. The data I have seen suggests the newer (larger) drives are also a little more reliable. So personally, I would pick the 16Tb. The premium in the UK right now, is around £30 including tax, so around $38 US. So if you can afford that premium, its better value per byte. Of course, not sure on price and availability where you are. And thank you for watching, even though English is not your first language and I hope you could get some value from the video.

[@emrebng]

@@sometechguy I was thinking of buying toshiba mg 10tb. Then, thanks to your video, I thought about buying Ultrastar 10TB, but when I learned that the HC510 series was also produced by HGST, Then I decided to save a little more money for the Ultrastar HC550 16TB, which is the original WD. Thank you sir.

[@sometechguy]

WD owned HGST for a long time now, and now all the HGST Ultrastar drives are branded WD. The HGST drives had a great reputation for build quality and reliability, and that still appears to continue now that they are branded WD. Good luck with the drive purchase!

[@emrebng]

@@sometechguy Oh I thought only ultrastar hc510 ones were hgst. Now I have to think again. Thank you for your time and information andd good luck on your KZbin journey!

[@jeetuag]

Nowadays , for desktop drive NVME or SSD is pretty much first choice as main hard disk. So mechanical disk are typically the 2nd hard disk in a desktop. SMR hdd (Blue and RED ) develops huge Load Cycle Count issue pretty much killing them in 2 years. Purple on the other hand is all CMR. So i think it should be preferred as cheap reliable storage medium.

[@Breakfast_of_Champions]

I've got two WD Green 2GB (remember those? EARS/EZRX) that are approaching 80k hours. For safety they're RAID1 but still impressive.

[@whophd]

Now that I'm in the market for >14TB drives at home, the big question is noise - everything got louder after 14TB. I want low noise, including at spin up (or disabling sleep + spin up). What's the right choice for 20TB, 22TB etc … Purple Pro or Red Pro ?

[@Jawad.1]

Absolutely Brilliant Video!!!

[@sometechguy]

Appreciate you commenting, and thank you. 😃

[@miaobinhuang2315]

Hi when comes to external hdd 4tb, is ther any reommendation. There isnt any information about which line of color hdd WD is using. I saw someone on youtube dismantle found out was actually a hitachi 4tb WD was using but then my old external 4tb hdd in fact using green hdd. So for external 4tb hdd what would you recommend.

[@lindsaybruce1396]

Fantastic video, thank you!

[@sometechguy]

Thank you! 🙏

[@tonycollazorappo]

Since I don't game on any desktop I have made, is it okay to use an HDD in a computer build that I would use for everyday tasks like I've always done?

[@sometechguy]

Having an SSD as the system disk will make it a much more pleasant experience. It will boot a lot faster and load software and other files much faster. So I would recommend an SSD, ideally an NVMe disk for the boot and system disk. But it probably depends exactly what you do with the machine and what capabilities the motherboard has. But you can use a relatively small and cost effective SSD for that, and use a HDD for storing large data.

[@Vednier]

Hybrid SSD + HDD system is most balanced scenario. NVME is great addition but its performance gains depends on amount data your system reads in one go, still its not bad idea to get one if you have place where to put it. I was hesitating far too long to use SSD as system drives and difference is very visible.

[@peteb5343]

I have some low capacity blacks, but are replacing them with gold, I don’t need a lot of single high capacity drives as I have an unraid server. this comprises of 2 x gold, 1 x purple, 2 x red, had 1 red fail recently so upgraded to a gold. Both reds were before the smr scandal and purchased at the same time. have always used wd as the have been inherently reliable.. red is @ 5years 9months so starting to look at a replacement.. just incase 😂

[@RogueIRL23]

I have 2 20TB Red Pros, working great 24/7 for a year now.

[@sometechguy]

If they got to a year, then I would hope they would run on for well over 5. Nice drives.

[@white_mage]

wd purple is great for video. i had a wdc wd30purz-85gu6y0 that failed after about a year of use for games and the ocasional fraps raw avi's. i'd buy another one for video but i already have a mostly empty ssd for that.

[@ajt_channel]

Hi, do you have any recommendations between the Ultrastar Air filled drives vs the Helium filled ones? HC330 vs HC510 for example.

[@sometechguy]

For the larger capacities, they are typically going to be helium. This is true for most manufacturers for 14Tb and up, but there are some smaller drives. This is because helium fill reduces turbulence and the related heat generation and this problem gets bigger as the platters get closest together, which happens with more platters. But other than this, and that power use and heat production are greater on air filled drives, I wouldn’t worry too much about much about this. The warranty is the same, but the expected MTBF is improved on the later model, also Ultrastars appear to be good drives but the AFR does seem to be improving on later models. So the larger drives are probably better, and cheaper usually per TB. But if you only need a 10Tb drive, then the HC330 is going to be a good drive with a lower unit cost.

[@aleksandarkikivideos]

Hi, can you tell me is it safe to use RED PRO or GOLD hard drives as a single NTFS drive in a PC for data storage? Does it have some drawbacks beside noise? I am in search for most reliable 20TB drive and I don't want to use NAS

[@sometechguy]

There should not be any problem with this at all. And if I was buying a large capacity disk for my PC, i would be looking at these disks if the price per TB was right, which it has been pretty consistently. Other than the noise, the firmware won't be as aggressive on parking the heads or power saving because for NAS / Data center use cases, power save isn't as useful as the disk would constantly be asked for access again. You can configure power saving to put the disk into power save, but I wouldn't do this too aggressively as its probably better for the drive to leave it to its thing. Unless you are really trying to optimize power. And on that note, there is likely a slight power increase for those drives, in the region of a watt or two.

[@MrStevenAttila]

Hi! I have a question. What are the differences between these categories such as enterprise, or surveillance? Not all can be used on a simple PC? Or are these only names?

[@sometechguy]

The drives are largely based on the same platforms and components, but there are physical improvements on the higher models, such as better vibration sensors etc. However, most of the differences are in firmware, which is the code that programs how the drives work. Broadly speaking you can use any drive in a desktop PC, but enterprise drives will usually have better performance but will be a bit noisier and use more power, they will also go to sleep less often though power saving can be configured in the OS. But you can use any of these drives in a PC, and aside from a bit more noise, the higher end drives will have better warranty and will usually perform better, and as I talk about in the video, may not really be more expensive.

[@MrStevenAttila]

@@sometechguy I understand, thank you for your help. 🙂

[@dubious6718]

I do a lot of research before I buy anything. Currently have 3 WD Red Plus and 1 Red Pro, Pro got bought cause it was cheaper than Plus. All are CMR. Now I need another drive and it will be a Red Plus or Pro.

[@sometechguy]

I agree, and research heavily before buying. Hope this video helped some with your research and welcome to the channel. 👍

[@Seujiro]

Nice video, thanks a lot. So, do you think an Ultrastar or are Red pro are similar to a WD BLACK right? without the overprice.

[@sometechguy]

The black may be a little quieter, as the firmware is more tuned towards that and less for performance and 24x7 running. But from what I have seen on the drives, it’s likely the same platform/hardware with some firmware changes. NAS and enterprise will sleep less often, though you can set lower save settings, and maximising performance often means more aggressive seeks, which makes the drives a little louder. But personally, I would compare pricing and if the Ultrastars are the best price per Tb, I would go with that. The prices may vary, but often the Red and Blacks are more expensive than the Enterpise drives.

[@paulfrayne6519]

I have used many hard drives over the last 30 years and I can certainly recommend Western Digital and Toshiba over Seagate any day. Just about every Seagate hard drive that I have used has gone bad after a period of time.

[@MGOFor3ver]

I already have an Ironwolf 4Tb for storage, but I want to buy another one like a WD purple 4Tb for offline gaming, it's a lot cheaper than the Ironwolf right now. I'm now ignoring 7200rpm but seeking for cache, and the purple one has 64Mb. What do you recommend? Thanks for the video btw.

[@bricefleckenstein9666]

IMO there is no possible reason to buy anything but the Ultrastar - MUCH higher reliability in any usage. For reference, the Ultrastar design is a carry-over from HGST and most of the design team for later Ultrastars are also carry-over from HGST (some may even have been around since the IBM days).

[@The_10th_Man]

So maybe they worked on deathstars?

[@bricefleckenstein9666]

@@The_10th_Man HGST fixed the issues with the IBM "deathstar" design way over a DECADE ago. *IF* they ever used it.

[@kamilmielczarek5664]

Great content! I am looking to buy high capacity drive for my desktop PC and was wondering which would you recommend in terms of reliability, noise level, speed and warranty. I went through specs of all listed and watched some other noise level clips but all seem quite loud. Could you please advise?

[@sometechguy]

The higher end drives typically have the higher performance and warranty. But they are also noisier, the noise is mostly related to head servo noise, and to get best performance, those are more aggressively tuned for higher performance so people comment on the noise from enterprise drives. NAS drives seem to be a little quieter, so maybe a Red Pro is a good balance but these NAS drives are often not the best value. So you may need to choose what is most important to you, noise or performance/warranty coverage.

[@kamilmielczarek5664]

@@sometechguy Thanks for the reply. I went with WD Red Plus 12TB as it seems to be quieter than Red Pro or HGST Ultrastar/WD Gold. Once I get it, I will be able to verify.

[@guessundheit6494]

In all these videos and web pages talking about "how long will your hard drive last?" they're always referring to drives that are being used. What I want to know is how long an unused drive will still work.

[@sometechguy]

HDDs on the shelf will last way longer than SSDs as the data doesn’t degrade naturally like SSDs. However bitrot is a thing so data can get damaged over time and starting up the disk now and then and performing some kind of data integrity check is a good idea. It will vary, but to give you an idea, 10years is the kind of number you could think about, but occasionally doing a full data integrity check and fixing errors before they broke unrecoverable would extend that. YMMV

[@guessundheit6494]

@@sometechguy I meant drives that have never been used. Ever. Others have asked and answered about drives containing data and left in storage, I already know the answer.

[@ManuFortis]

Thanks. This made it all a lot easier to just buy the right one I need instead of having to dig through ALL that data myself. Basically get the Ultrastar 20-24GB models. I generally just use SSD's now, but I can't deny the usefulness of a generally reliable hard drive for cold storage. Solid state stuff is nice and all, but the reliability is kind of touch and go. I will NOT be buying any more WD SSD's in the future. Have 3, two are failing faster than they have any right to be despite adequate cooling, and the 3rd one was barely used so it's still fine. I use only the Optane line up and Samsung Pro's now. Costs more, but so far, worth it. But even so, they only hold up to 2-4TB in the best case scenarios; and aren't exactly cheap for it either. So a good set of HDD"s can be real nice to have even if they aren't plugged in all the time. Or have them setup in some NAS box in a raid array that only gets accessed mostly to write to, rarely read except when actually needed. I do wish they had longer warranty's on these drives though. Not from expecting or wanting to have to use them, but because it's not exactly incorrect to base the potential reliability of an item based on the warranty period they are willing to toss in for 'free' as part of the products sales pitch. For instance, you gonna buy the PSU with a warranty of 5 years, or 7, or 10, or even 12 years? Personally I go with the 10 or 12 year warrantied ones when the sale is nice. Can basically guarantee the PSU should not be an issue for at least half that life span, kind of... and then have another 5 years or so of 'probably will be just fine' life span before the final months where I should probably get a new one and set that one aside for emergencies.

[@sometechguy]

SSD and HDD bring different value. A time will come when these spinning drives are gone, but until the cost, reliability and long term endurance catch up, they will have their purpose. And yes, the Ultrastars appear to be great drives, at least from the data that is available from disks that have been running for an extended period. The price gap is also closing with Seagate.

[@fabsi154]

What about desktop usage, when you want something quieter that is not used very often.

[@sometechguy]

It probably depends on your capacity needs. Small cheap and quiet is probably Blue from WD range. Most drives are pretty quiet of not being used though, with lower RPM drives helping also.

[@fabsi154]

@@sometechguy I dont think this information is accurate. I decided to get a WD Red pro as I wanted the increased performance and reliability and I figured it would be quite when not in use as you have mentioned. Unfortunately it seems newer wd drives keep making some noice even when idle for Preemptive wear leveling PWL reasons. Every around 5s I get some noice even tho there is 0 activity on that drive

[@Guishan_Lingyou]

This video was very helpful. Keep up the good work. Do you also have research on SSD's? I will check your channel.

[@sometechguy]

Yes, I have some content in the works on SSD architecture and performance. As well as SSD vs HDD. Been very busy recently, but lots coming. Appreciate the feedback and support.

[@kamilhorvat8290]

Why not simply avoid WD drives altogether? Since Seagate Exos enterprise drives are for some reason cheaper than consumer drives with the same capacity, I'm buying them.

[@WantedByCod]

Yo, I requested a custom build from a pc shop i got a 2tb 256m wd blue but they called me a said they ran out of stock and i won't be able to give the requested drive and they'll replace the hdd to a wd purple 2tb 64 with no extra cost, will it affect the pc performance negativily?

[@sometechguy]

I wouldn't think so, but will depend on exactly what drive models they are. But the Blue drive is likely to be an SMR drive, which will have poorer write performance on large writes, where the Purple has its cache usage optomised for writes, and won't be SMR. Overall, the purple drive is likely going to be the better drive, but will depend a little on what you use it for. Hope this reply doesn't come too late for you, and good luck with the PC.

[@manojkumarbehera9712]

Hi , i am a movie lover. Always Stores movies in my pc . Further I am thinking to buy a 10 tb surveillance wd purple hard disk for my pc. Is it a good idea. Need your help.

[@sometechguy]

The purple is a perfectly good choice for this. The current purple range doesn't contain any SMR drives, but the capacity only goes up to 8Tb, so for 10Tb you are looking at a pro disk, which is also a great disk. Your use case is not a demanding one, so most of the disks would be fine, though I would generally avoid SMR. So check which of drives gives you the best price per TB, and you would be fine for what you need.

[@Seujiro]

Hi again: may I ask you something again? I can get an new WD Ultrastar DC HC530 14 tb SATA hard drive al the same price than a WD BLACK 6TB. The main use is for PC use and backup information; movies, fginished renders and all that stuff. Dou you think it is worth? My motherboard is a b350 Asus aRog Strix f gaming and I have a 750w power supply, PYLON. I ask you because I adon´t want to buy before being secure.

[@sometechguy]

The motherboard and PSU shouldn't be a problem. Power draw for the black and Ultrastar will be similar and sata HDD do not draw a lot of power, 5-10w. I personally would buy the Ultrastar, especially if you get more for your money. Comparing the two, the Ultrastar would give you a little extra throughput performance, but there isn't much in it and you don't buy HDD for high performance compared to NVMe or even SATA SSD. The Ultrastar will likely be a bit noisier, as most enterprise drives are and the default for power save may spin the black down sooner as its a desktop unit, but you can adjust power save settings. But in many ways, they are similar from a hardware perspective, most of those changes are in firmware. The Ultrastars are great disks, and though the blacks are good as well, they are often overpriced.

[@Seujiro]

@@sometechguy ok thanks a lot. That 14tb new hdd Ultrastar costs me 150 usd and the WD Black 6tb costs the same, so, there is the answer. The Ultrastar gives me more for my money. Now, as I told you, I will use it for backup; movies, documents, finished renders and all that stuff. In my Pc I have a 2 tb predator mx7000 nvme, 1 tb Adata su800 ssd and I will add the Hdd. Now, I didnt undestand you very much about the noise and energy. Do you use pone configuration for that? Thanks a lot dos your answer, i think this kind of info helps a los people un choose a good component without overprice and just marketing.

[@vollhorst140]

Thank you, nice vid. WD can fu off. I’m still not buying WD stuff after all the shit they did in the last few years and still do. Changing specs, swapping components and generally misleading the customers.

[@sometechguy]

I agree, WD do not help themselves. They have some good products, but they also have some not so good products. This can happen, but when it does it's the way you handle it that counts. And they have a history of making bad choices in the way they deal with this with their customers. And its a shame.

[@rangersmith4652]

I've had WD Red Plus 3TB CMR 5400rpm drives, six of them, in my home file server since 2015. All are running fine after more than tripling their warranty period. If I ever need to replace any of these I'd probably buy Red Pros. I have a pair of WD Black CMR 7200rpm drives that are almost as old and also still going strong. Over many years, I've had about 30 different HHDs from all the current brands, and the total number of HDD failures I've experienced is still one. That was whatever was in my Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop. It was pretty much garbage from day one, as was the entire machine.

[@thisnthat3530]

The best WD disk to buy is always the dirt cheap WD Elements USB. Simply extract the HDD from the enclosure for a significant saving over the "coloured" drives.

[@Marco-rn8lh]

What manufacturer and Harddrive would you recommend for SAN/NAS Storage?. I watched all your Videos but now i am not really sure what to buy 😅

[@sometechguy]

Thanks for watching, and I think the answer does depend on what you need. What size NAS do you have, and approx how much storage space do you think you will need? It will also depend on the prices where you are, but the Ultrastars are a great choice currently, but Toshiba and Seagate may also be a fit depending on prices. Happy to give some ideas with a little more background. 😁

[@Marco-rn8lh]

@@sometechguy I am an IT administrator and currently planning a new NAS and SAN environment. While searching for new hard drives, I came across your videos. I found the data and information from Backblaze very interesting. Price is not a concern :-) the most important thing is very good reliability of the hard drives. They should have a low failure rates. In the end we would need arround 300-400 TB in total 😄 So every hard drive should have more than 10TB

[@sometechguy]

I have another video that compares reliability data from each of the manufacturers (you may have seen it) and the WD Ultrastars have been very solid over the last 10 years or so. I can't say for sure they won't release newer drives with issues, but its a great place to start. There is some hard data on some capacities that fit your profile, but you would reasonably extend that to drives of higher capacity in the same product line, especially given the long term reliability trends on the Ultrastars. The larger capacity models probably offer the best storage density as well as price per Tb. Large drives take less bays and provide more flexibility for scale up. kzbin.info/www/bejne/n5Sxk5iujrtmg5Y But I don't really believe in telling people what to buy, as there are many variables such as price, availability and possibly support in different places. But I do try to provide the info to help make an informed choice. Hopefully this all helps, and thanks for checking out my channel.

[@Marco-rn8lh]

@@sometechguy Thanks for the information. We will check out the Ultrastars ☺️

[@wngimageanddesign9546]

I avoid SMR like the plague. Terrible hit to performance, even for saving files. WD Ultrastars are fantastic and that's due to them being rebadged HGST enterprise drives. Seagate has higher failure rates, also has SMR issue. And as for Toshiba, they suck, far more failures within 4-7 years. BTW, great videos!

[@HereAfterNow]

why don't the prices reflect what I'm seeing online? Those Ultrastars are way more expensive than what I see here

[@sometechguy]

Prices do vary over time and by location. Depending on where you are it can be due to competitive pressure, availability and the exchange rates between currencies. I compare prices here in the UK often between the high capacity enterprise drives (18-24Tb) from Tosh, Seagate and WD to catch bargains and prices do seem to vary fairly often. But comparing how prices compare against these in the video could indicate when to buy and when to wait.

[@nipunmohonroy5925]

Hello Sir! What about Green?

[@sometechguy]

Greens have been gone many years. They are all included in the blue line now.

[@Vednier]

My queston is - previous anyone was able to identify SMR drive by its cache size - its usually 256Mb vs 64 in CMR. But now we see drives like WS40EZAX with 256Mb cache and claims to be CMR. Some newer CMR drives even advertise TRIM support. How it is possible? Why CMR drive uses big cache? What TRIM can even do on CMR? Are they blatantly lying?

[@sometechguy]

This is really interesting. Is it possible the larger cache and TRIM support is there in support of their AllFrame technology? Writing streaming data may be more efficient if the data can be buffered in cache in larger chunks, and then written sequentially rather than writing many streams in different locations at the same time. And maybe TRIM is there to help with cleaning up when data is overwritten. This is worth of a deeper dig. And with disks getting larger, large parallel file writes are not going to just be limited to streaming applications, there is quite some effort to wring performance out of spinning disks. I couldn't totally exclude some misdirection on the recording technology, but I would think it would be very risky to misstate this clearly in documentation. They suffered a class action as a result of the SMR drama before, and this would be far more egregious. There is also the subject of storing more drive metadata off the platter and on cache or nvram to help with performance there also.

[@Vednier]

@@sometechguy Well, SMR use TRIM for its zones optimization (internally its moving data around much like SSD do, rewriting from CMR disk cache to slow SMR zone). TRIM on CMR would imply its SSHD, but isnt they all extinct? Even if not, TRIM issued by OS, so to use NAND part of drive as cache there is heavy need of proper support of that by OS, i didnt seen any mention of that by WD. Speaking of Allframe, yes, large cache can help with writing videostreams, but i had feeling its more about ATA steaming and optimization to parallel writes. I have WD40PURZ and its have 64Mb and no TRIM support, while also advertised as Allframe. Heck, when i was purchasing i got exactly this model because it was 100% CMR while models with larger cache was actually cheaper. I have slight fear WD is still wanting to switch everyone to SMR one day.

[@Vednier]

@@sometechguyThere is some reddit posts about this, searched for "WD43PURZ TRIM" - people found Purple drive featuring TRIM. WD support given very vague answers about this topic directing on some white paper about how TRIM can benefit HDDs (bit funny enough its paper about SMR drives). So, its very inconclusive. Its possible its just firmware stub doing nothing in respond to TRIM. Or not?

[@sometechguy]

Thank you, you came with some really interesting info here. I will check in on that thread and dig deeper on this. There do appear to be a new generation of Purple with superficially very similar stats, but with different model numbers. So something is going on.

[@Angel24112411]

I will not pay more than 70% of the price of a new dive for an old refurbished drive even if I see people are paying more and feel "happy".

[@James_Knott]

I have 3 WD blue 1 TB SSDs, one each in my desktop, ThinkPad and external case. Hopefully, they'll be OK.

[@sometechguy]

Though SSDs do fail, they have shorter life’s when used intensively, so for normal laptop or external usage, they are going to generally last pretty well. But maybe you are alluding to some recent issues with WD / SanDisk, if so then I hope so also. Not sure off hand of those models were affected, but actually SSDs have many failure modes and internally they are pretty complex. Some people point to HDD failures as being answered by using SSDs, but it isn’t that straight forward. Good luck with those disks, and of course keep backups of i pet any stuff. 😊

[@James_Knott]

@@sometechguy No, I wasn't alluding to anything. I just know there's been lots said for and against them. However, they do provide a significant performance boost.

[@sometechguy]

@@James_Knott yes, SSDs are the go to drive for boot drives and primary storage for performance reasons. But they can wear out faster than spinning disks for a few reasons, and WD recently had some issues with some of their SSDs failing much earlier than expected.

[@PandaTheFirst-xh1ho]

Iam about to buy a 1tb of gold wd

[@dxdynamite47]

What about WD Green?

[@sometechguy]

They were discontinued about 9 years ago.

[@TecraX2]

TLDR: If you want a larger drive, just buy an Ultrastar!

[@tadmarshall2739]

Very nice overview, especially of the confusing WD range, thanks! I think that you have overblown the SMR issues a bit and are dinging WD more than they deserve. I remember this issue when it was discovered, and I think that it was murder on ZFS but not really an issue on other file systems. And once WD saw the industry reaction, they got religion on disclosing the recording type, making it easier for customers to make the right choice. I'm running all WD drives at the moment, all CMR, and not having problems. Also, UK prices are awful compared to the USA! Is this VAT? Or just capitalism run amok?

[@sometechguy]

Thank you! For me the SMR instance had three dimensions. Firstly, they did not disclose the change transparently. They were not alone there, and all the major manufacturers put SMR drives into their lineup without good disclosure. For example, the sustained write performance numbers are typically maximums and do not measure the impact once the write buffer fills and SMR has to start managing the rewrite of zones into its throughput. Secondly, WD were the only one to put this into a NAS drive, and the issue wasn't specifically for ZFS, but really for any RAID implementation, which is really what NAS drives are for. Maybe less so during normal operation, but terrible for rebuilds as the long term write performance was significantly worse, causing disks to be ejected from RAID arrays or for rebuilds to take far longer, or to fail. And thirdly, when pressed on the issue they declined to admit it for some time. People contacted WD support and asked, and were not given an answer. This is how it really became the issue it did in my opinion. Mistakes get made, and its how you show up in response that really speaks about company culture. WD did not show up well. So I think they do deserve the backlash, and as a customer, I can only hope lessons were learned. Though subsequent similar failures suggest they didn't learn a lot. But that's just my two cents. 😎 As for UK prices, it varies but US prices have often been better across many market sectors, especially technology. Any UK retailer has to price with sales tax (VAT) included, which I prefer to the US system where I really can't tell what I will pay without doing some math. And UK sales tax is 20%, so this doesn't help, where it can vary by state in the US. However, prices can vary and be better here based on current exchange rates etc. What was interesting to me from looking at the prices is that the Blue drives actually represent a lower price point per Tb than the higher end drives in the US, which didn't hold true in the UK. Given that the drives have lower performance and warranty cover, if you can live with some of the enterprise drive characteristics, such as power and noise, a pro/enterprise grade disk is better value here. Of course things change, so it may not be the case in 3 months, but if you are buying, its worth checking that situation at the time. Thanks for dropping by, making a reasoned comment and sharing your view. I appreciate it.

[@DH22013]

I have 6x 10TB helium drives and one failed because it leaked the helium. So i replaced it with a normal drive. If you want to avoid helium these days your options are limited and you pay more for so far as i have seen. I think you want to avoid helium if you want to use your hdd's for the longest time possible.

[@sometechguy]

I have not heard of any issues with Helium leakage, many reports of drives beyond their warranty and still reporting 100% on the helium content. Also, air drives are actually not sealed and it seems particles getting past filters and causing head impacts is a real thing that helium doesn’t suffer from. Maybe this is worth some analysis, but it seems that helium drives provide better reliability than air filled variants. Of course, YMMV and there are always outliers. So maybe a dive into the data on this is worthwhile. 😁

[@DH22013]

@@sometechguy Maybe i was unlucky, idk. I think it's an very interesting topic tho. What you say about air filled drives is also true. Personally i only experienced that with the horrible well known Seagate 3TB drives: st3000dm001. Sometimes they gave bad sectors and after cleaning the drive with an airblower the bad sectors where gone.. I had 12 of these all made in Thailand, China versions where even worse. All died within 4/5 years of running time. I made the switch to WD and HGST and never looked at Seagate again. It seems they improved according to your video's. I really like your in depth content, keep up the good work 🙂

[@yw1971]

Back when there were Green & Blue WDs, the Greens were just as good

[@UseFreeSpeech]

What about WD Green?

[@sometechguy]

WD still does the green range on SSD, but for hard disks….it’s gone.

[@UseFreeSpeech]

@@sometechguyoh i didnt know that

[@LegacyIvyTerascale]

red toshibas dont work vertically, only horizontally

[@sometechguy]

There should be no problem with the way the disks are oriented, though I would not change the orientation while they are spinning. And just for clarity, what did you mean by 'red toshibas'? this video was about WDs, though I have others that cover Toshiba and you may have been referring to one of them. And the 'Red' disks are made my Western Digital.

[@TechSid-hn6eg]

awesome! :D thnx

[@sometechguy]

Thank you! 👌

[@TecraX2]

Who is loyal to WD Gold?!? I know there's great loyalty to HGST UltraStar, but I've never heard the same regarding Gold!

[@jacobp7289]

Having 20 hard drives of various brand and models I can say that theres no good reason for not just buying Seagate Exos or WD Ultrastar which is mostly the cheapest pr. capasity. Paying extra for Ironwolf or RED is a complete waste of money.

[@sometechguy]

This is my assessment also, because for some time the enterprise disks have been cheaper per TB. If that changed and they cost less, I could change my mind but I would stick to the Pro versions which are very similar disks. The Ironwolf Pro's do come with data rescue services, but I wouldn't want to rely on that anyway.

[@OleksandrSe]

Good video

[@sometechguy]

Thank you, hope it was helpful. 👍

[@wojciechczupta]

it is amazing how toshiba hdds are poorly covered on Internet. Everyone talks only about wd and seagate as if toshiba hasn't existed. in my place toshiba mg series is 25-30% cheaper than the other two competitors. Yes, making such video about Toshiba is an excellent idea.

[@sometechguy]

I have covered them in my reliability comparisons using BackBlaze data (as BackBlaze use their drives). I am also included them in my desktop drive SMR comparison (P300), and i am currently doing a lot of performance testing on surveillance drives which includes their S300. I am sure I will look at their NaS and Enterprise drives also. They do have a small relative market share however compared to the other two, so probably why less coverage on them. I do notice they have a loyal customer base though.

[@o0Hotiron0o]

Thank you

[@DocBain1]

I will never purchase another Western Digital drive. Back is the 90s when I built PCs for people as a second job, Western Digital drives would crash, sometimes without warning, within a year of placing into service. Last year, I purchased a new MSI GE76 laptop with a 2GB WD Black M.2 SSD. The drive crashed with no warning after 14 months. I was unable to retrieve my data after it failed. No more Western Digital for me.

[@uhohwhy]

SMR - no ASMR - yas plz

[@dangingerich2559]

There are Toshiba hard drive fans? How? I've only had horrible luck with them, and that's in 10 years of desktop support and 15 years in server storage administration. Why would anyone be a fan of them?

[@sometechguy]

The analysis of the backblaze data, which does only contain MG07 and MG08 Toshiba Enterprise drives, but it's around 56,500 drives as a sample size, shows they have good reliability. And when I have made videos about Seagate and WD, there are usually quite a few comments from Toshiba fans questioning why they don't get more focus. But for sure, the variety of models and the total drive count provides a smaller sample size to analyze than for WD/HGST and Seagate. So it looks like there is quite a fan base, even if their market share of the HDD market is only around 18% or so. And unlike Seagate and WD, there are far fewer comments slating them for being bad. But again, smaller market share so probably expected. 🤷‍♂️

[@Zero1Zero1]

Ridiculous how much more expensive they are in the UK If you need a few of these it'll probably be cheaper to import them

[@StefanHolmes]

Are gamers even considering a hard drive, these days? I’ve been using SSD’s for more than a decade and only the smallest games (often much older titles) would load from a traditional hard drive in a non-frustrating amount of time. I do have a few titles in my Steam library stored on a NAS, but practically all games should be kept on an SSD for a good experience.

[@sometechguy]

Yes, for sure. NVMe for boot disk and for games libraries, maybe an SATA SSD and spinning disks are great for mass storage like media.

[@rodfer5406]

👏👏👏

[@Longjumping-War2484]

I'll tell you right now the wd enterprise gold drives are the best, bar none!! That's from experience! Check the specs!

[@TheShorterboy]

awesome

[@hangdog7094]

I have never had an Enterprise drive fail. They are worthy of the price. AVOID SMR drives

[@PaithanMycerinus]

buy the one that doesn't come from wd. they used to make good hd's. that just isn't the case anymore.

[@PaR2020]

Who would buy WD black for “performance” these days if QLC nvme SSD are so cheap? HHDs do not have any performance these days. Those random reads/writes and IOPS are just tiny compared to even the cheapest SSDs. I only have WD Red Pros HDDs in my NAS for redundant storage. Nothing else.

[@johncrighton4738]

Your JUST reading specs! You have no clue of the internal features of the different types, THIS IS WEAK

[@Igorath]

seagate remains the better choice? hmm tell that to my brand new portable seagate hard drive that died after 3 hrs of use with my computer's back up on it right after i wipes the desktop's hard drive. your credibilty is down the toilet.

[@sometechguy]

I think you may be referring to me saying that in a previous video I compared Seagate NAS and Seagate enterprise, and that between those, the Seagate Enterprise drives were a better choice. This wasn't a comparison between Seagate and WD. I do have a video about that, and though it isn't as simple as one is better than the other, my findings there are that WD generally produce more reliable drives.