Best 3TB Hard Drive

I can't answer your question directly, but I am interested in the answers you receive...

One hopefully helpful comment:

I would recommend that you look at Western Digital's recommendations for RAID drives. In particular, they do NOT recommend their "green" drives for use in RAID arrays.

I'm not aware of similar information Seagate or any other vendor regarding their "green" drives and RAID arrays.

Don't go for the cheapest drive - get one appropriate/recommended for RAID.

Reliable, fast, cheap...pick 2. Actually, in a 8 drive raid configuration over USB3, individual fast drives really isn't THAT much of an issue. Every drive manufacturer will have success and horror stories. As said above, look for drives that have reported success in raid installations.

Personally I would not use RAID 5 in my HTPC. While I agree that protecting data is important, RAID 5 only supports 1 hard drive failure. If a 2nd drive were to fail, you will lose all your data since parity is stored across all the drives. Also by using hardware RAID, you are commiting yourself to the RAID controller on your ProBOX. Keep in mind that with 3TB drives, your rebuild times will be very long.

I would use a sofware based snapshot RAID\\backup solution like flexraid (commercial), or snapraid (free). These applications write parity on 1 physical drive and allow you to rebuild in case of failure. They are great for data that doesn't change often. Their advantage is that if a 2nd drive fails, the data on your other drives remains intact. They also support RAID6 which allows you to have 2 parity drives. If you go this route, save some money and get the probox instead of the proraid.

Here is a page comparing different solutions. These solutions have also been discussed in this forum if you search

http://snapraid.sourceforge.net/compare.html

If you don't need 8X3TB of storage right away, purchase the amount of drives you need ex 3 or 4 and purchase larger capacity drives in the future when they exisit and expand your storage. (note this will only be possilbe with software based RAID and not hardware based)

As for which harddrive to use, I have had good experience with Western Digital Green drives in my HTPC (non hardware RAID5 config). Though hard drive prices are very high at the moment due to flooding, I would wait 2 -3 months if possible before purchasing.

You don't want 7200rpm drives for a media server.

Lower life span, more energy, and not needed for a media server.

No, absolutely not for HTPC media playback.

Faster = more heat, more noise, more power consumption for absolutely no benefit in the HTPC environment.

I have said for many months that 7200RPM are not needed at all. If you want speed get a SSD for the OS/Programs.

SSD for OS/Programs and 5400RPM drives for data -- best combination for HTPCs and Media Servers IMHO.

You'll never go back.

There's always a trade-off. In this case, it's (at least) cost vs speed vs heat
vs noise vs power consumption.


It's nice to have a fast drive for, say, copying a massive video library. Personally,
all my drives are 5400RPM 'green' drives.

Sure. But even then you are only talking extra minutes/hours during that 1 massive library transfer. After that its less important.

Of course if you are transferring massive amounts of data on a daily basis then perhaps it makes sense. But I would think those HTPC users would be much less than 1%.

I use a SSD for my OS drive to make it VERY VERY VERY peppy. I use a 7200 rpm 1 TB drive for my recorded TV drive because I am both a little paranoid about recording 4 HD shows while watching a 5th...and because it was my OS drive prior to the SSD, so it was free.

For the movie storage drives, I use nothing but green technology drives. No problems streaming two BluRays at the same time off one of the drives.

The 7200 rpm drive is considerably warmer than the green drives. It is not hot, but the green drives do not even get warm to the touch.