Data drives filling up and also over 10 years old...

[Box Brownie]

As per the subject, my internal data drives are filling (yes, I do have external SSD backups of the most important stuff ) and are old. The access times seem to, on occasion, be a tad slow........

So time IMO to retire it/them but as 4TB and greater SSDs are mortgage prices I will be sticking with HDDs.

My current (and prior to them) drives are Western Digital 'Black' and had thought 'Red' were a likely alternative version but stuck with 'Blacks'. However, in the light of all tech prices going up I have a seen IIRC a bigger differential in price between Red & Black than previously.

So, my question is would I notice much if any difference in performance by swapping out the Blacks to Reds bearing in mind these are data drives? NB without re-checking I think the Red is 5400rpm compared to 7200rpm of the Black........and that might been one reason I chose them.

 

[Sangoma]

At 10 years old, I would be making sure they are backed up, and not used for anything important, ie nothing that is not somewhere else as well.

They work fine until they don't. The number of times I saw staff in tears because of lost data, despite me constantly telling them to back it up to the server shows me you never know when they will fail

 

[Box Brownie]

At 10 years old, I would be making sure they are backed up, and not used for anything important, ie nothing that is not somewhere else as well.

They work fine until they don't. The number of times I saw staff in tears because of lost data, despite me constantly telling them to back it up to the server shows me you never know when they will fail

As mentioned, my primary data is backed up and I have always cloned and swapped out before failure based on a reasonable abundance of caution.

NB my last clone (I think 3 years back?) and swap was my OS and programs drives and the need for huge space was not required I installed Crucial MX500 series SSDs

PS I did have a drive failure recently and that was one of my external Freecom Tough 2TB. I can still feel the drive spinning but it is no longer accessible. Though unless/until I break it out of the casing and try the drive itself in a hub I will not know if it is the drive or the controller? Note ~ I had a 2TB SSD on standby to do a new save backup

 

[Mr Perceptive]

Reds are designed for NAS and long term storage use, I use them in my NAS. Reds are optimised for more reads than writes (Purples are the opposite, more writes than reads hence their use in CCTV systems)

Blacks are designed for fast read/write access and are more suitable inside a machine.

 

[Box Brownie]

Reds are designed for NAS and long term storage use, I use them in my NAS. Reds are optimised for more reads than writes (Purples are the opposite, more writes than reads hence their use in CCTV systems)

Blacks are designed for fast read/write access and are more suitable inside a machine.

Thanks for the summary insight. Food for thought, though the vast majority of the data is image files and installation.exe files etc. So primarily/in the main (once cloned) it would be more "reads" rather than "writes"(?)

 

[Mr Perceptive]

Thanks for the summary insight. Food for thought, though the vast majority of the data is image files and installation.exe files etc. So primarily/in the main (once cloned) it would be more "reads" rather than "writes"(?)

If you have more than one drive in your PC, then you 'could' get a black and a red, and organise the data such that the images are on the red and all your OS/executables, etc are on the black.

An anternative would be to get an SSD for the OS/run-time files.

FYI

I have a PC with 4 Drives
SSD - OS/Executables
WD Black - All my work stuff
WD Black - Photo
WD Green (old drive) - Scratch Drive, just a temporary dump

I then have a NAS with multiple WD reds and a single WD Purple - The Reds are automatically populated by links to the WD Blacks/SSD in the main computer, so that changes to a folder are duplicated onto the NAS and the Reds in the NAS are configured in a Backup/Raid type system. This means that when I copy a photo from the camera to the WD Black in the computer it is automatically copied to the NAS and stored on two seperate drives, this then applies to all subsequent edits etc. The WD Purple handles my CCTV system.

The NAS justs sits there and gets on with its job, and I don't have to worry about the robustness of external USB drives. I do have a fireproof/waterproof USB drive (weighs 8kg!!) onto which I periodically put a snapshot of all my key files/data. The NAS then also links to the cloud and overnight updates cloud storage.

I change my drives every 4/5 years as I want to minimise the effects of a potential HDD failure.

 

[Snapsh0t]

I also have a NAS to which I backup my system drive and mirror my data drive every night but I also have four external drives, used in rotation, to which I clone my PC once a month.

 

[hunnymonster]

If you're storing to multiple drives, past experience tells me to make sure that the drives are not all the same (different manufacturer preferably) - as far back as the 1990sk I got caught by Seagate's "revolutionary platter lubricant" that turned to a glue-like substance so the read/write heads became stuck to the platters when the drive powered down... 3 WD (of 3) drives failed over a 2 month period - manufacturing fault in the controller (luckily with an identical drive you could transplant the controller from one to another to access the data, but it was a brown trouser experience) - from the proper distant past I've had these multifault failures with drives from Conner, Maxtor, Quantum & IBM/HGST...

 

[Tysonator]

The Blacks are normally for Gamers who want the fast read / write speed and with that you tend to get more noise and power usage.

Personally I use WD Blue in PC's with the back up drive copied to another back up drive.

 

[Box Brownie]

Thanks all for the added insights, much appreciated

More food for thought, especially as mentioned I have found the WD Black drives to be very good. Though for the record the PC case drive cage has two 60mm(?) fans blowing over them so I do ensure I keep them as cool as I am able to! Though my two SSDs are not covered by the direct air flow but are fitted into metal trays( in the unused floppy disk positions) to aid heat dissipation.

Heat management is IMO key to protecting the primary components in a PC

 

[Mr Bump]

If you're storing to multiple drives, past experience tells me to make sure that the drives are not all the same (different manufacturer preferably) - as far back as the 1990sk I got caught by Seagate's "revolutionary platter lubricant" that turned to a glue-like substance so the read/write heads became stuck to the platters when the drive powered down... 3 WD (of 3) drives failed over a 2 month period - manufacturing fault in the controller (luckily with an identical drive you could transplant the controller from one to another to access the data, but it was a brown trouser experience) - from the proper distant past I've had these multifault failures with drives from Conner, Maxtor, Quantum & IBM/HGST...

i had a NAS about 8 years ago that i filled with WD red 2TBs and they all failed after about 3/4 years i binned of spinning HD and just went Cloud with local SSD , expensive but been faultless for the last 3/4 years