So, I'm pretty sure my 2tb WD HDD is dying.

It seems to hang for 30-60 seconds every 5-10 minutes. Whenever I try using it, navigating folders, it freezes and says "not responding". Then after 30-60 secs it's fine for a while. Same thing if I try playing a media file on it.

I can transfer large files to it still though, but you can see the transfer rate stop for a while during the transfer.

So I assume this means it's dying, and that I need to get another. I've always bought WD HDDs in the past and unless there's a reason to change this, I'll probably stick with them.

What I don't understand, is what all the different colors mean. What is this red blue green purple naming scheme they've come up with?

I'm after a 2-4tb (depending on price) internal HDD, my main concern is long term reliability. It'll be mainly used for storage, I have an SSD to deal with everyday things.

What colour should I get? Or should I go with a different manufacturer?

I'll be ordering off this website. (yes it's an NZ website, thus it's expensive)

Just checking that website, this 3tb seagate HDD seems to be popular, and relatively cheap. Thoughts?

 

The color nomenclature is regarding the speed/quality/intent of the drives. WD Green drives have a smaller energy footprint(I don't suggest this for a system drive), WD Black are performance and have higher read/write speeds, Blue are just standard, Red is for RAID/NAS systems.

For a system drive, a black is the best. Since you said you have an SSD for your OS, then it depends a little on what you use it for. If you have games installed on the external drive, then a black is also suggested. Otherwise, you can go for the cheapest one at the capacity you want. The quality isn't markedly different. Consumer greens can be irritating if you're accessing it infrequently since they spin down to save power, so there can be a slight delay if you haven't accessed the drive in some time.

WD is perfectly fine, and I personally prefer them over Seagate. Seagate had an entire line of drives have an extremely high failure rate some years back, and so I've avoided them since. Not a huge consideration, but brand loyalty is what it is.

In regards to capacity, I will mention that the more platters a disk drive has, the higher the chance of failure. A 4 TB drive has a higher chance of failure than a 1TB, which has a higher chance of failure than a 500GB. Not a dealbreaker, but something to consider.


EDIT: Upon doing some quick research, it looks like 3TB Seagate drives have a higher failure rate than any of Seagate's other drives, or any of WD's. The related picture is stats compiled from the cloud storage company Backblaze. Going by their metrics, I'd avoid the 3TB Seagate drives.

 

That's everything I wanted to know. Cheers.

 

I've let the last few questions about hard drives go by without mentioning SpinRite, thinking someone else would but I haven't seen a post yet.

SpinRite

Basically? It fix's HD's. More in-depth explanation.

 

Before you pay for Spinrite, read this: http://serverfault.com/questions/51681/does-spinrite-do-what-it-claims-to-do

Depending on what you want from the product, other, free solutions may be better. And "fix" is a bit of a stretch. I'd be very sceptical of any software that claims it can fix a hardware problem like OP has.

This is informative too: http://www.myharddrivedied.com/blog/why-spinrite-not-my-data-recovery-software-list

Spinrite has it uses, but a cureall for hdd failures isn't one of them. Be sure that it's the best solution for your problem before employing it.

 

Also, use Crystaldiskinfo if you haven't already. It reads out the S.M.A.R.T status, and while you may get a hardware failure while these values are fine, most often they do show if a HDD is about to fail. It's also worth mentioning that HGST is owned by WD, though they still build different HDDs. Still, if you want to stick with WD, HGST would be an indirect option.

 

Yeah I'm not willing to shell out $90usd on the off chance it might fix my HDD.

It's about the same price as a 2TB HDD, so yeah.

 

I got one of these as my data drive.
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145912
so far so good, and hitachi drives are super reliable. Yes I know its a "NAS drive" and no that hasnt made any difference. I dont remember all the details but this series was not going to give me any problems with using the drive for non-NAS.

Edit: basically get a cheap small capacity ssd (if cost is a problem) for your operating system and select games/programs, and a solid HDD for the rest.