Top Hard Drives 2017
Hard drives have come a long way since the 1950s when the first hard drive from IBM came out. The hard drive back then had 5 MB of storage, which means it could at least store 1 MP3 file. People considered it as quite large, but now casual users need 1 TB and upwards of storage, which can hold about 250,000 MP3 files.
Backblaze – a backup solutions provider – has released its hard drive reliability statistics for the first quarter of 2017. It compared hard drives from multiple manufacturers: Seagate. The hard drives under the brand of HGST come with an unmatched reputation for high quality and reliability. These hard drives by HGST are known for offering highly optimized data storage & backup software along with a portfolio of highly innovative and top-quality hard drives for storing, managing, and protecting the data of all sorts.
It’s great that we have various options now, but with the vast selection available in the market today, how do we choose which is the best hard drive for us?
Take a look at our list of best internal hard drives to see which one is the right one for your computer set-up and budget.
May 14, 2017 Hello guys, I want to ask for the best hard drive for pc gaming 2017 I'm using an i7 920 oc to 4.2ghz stable @24/7 with asus p6t-se with gtx970, the loading times on the game is so high and some guys told me to change the old 500gb sata 2 hdd, so I want to upgrade it to 1tb with high end. Seagate Bare Drives BarraCuda 1TB Internal Hard Drive HDD – 3.5 Inch SATA 6 Gb/s 7200 RPM 64MB Cache for Computer Desktop PC – Frustration Free Packaging. Dec 30, 2020 The only case with hard drives where the USB standard matters much is if you connect a drive to an old-style, low-bandwidth USB 2.0 port, which is better reserved for items like keyboards and mice.
Seagate BarraCuda – Best Value for Money Hard Drive
The Seagate BarraCuda isn’t the biggest in the family with only 2 to 3 TB versus the Barracuda Pro’s 10 TB capacity, and we can’t say it’s the fastest either. However, its capacity and 64 MB of cache, which adds up to 156 MB/sec of read and write speeds, should be enough for personal use.
What really makes the Seagate BarraCuda stand up, though, is its low price. Its price per gigabyte is among the lowest you could find with the quality of performance and speed it provides. It’s fairly power-efficient as well, with an idle usage of 2.5W, standby usage of 0.25W, and operating usage of 5W.
If you want to get the best pc hard drive with the best value, the 2 TB model combines affordability and high performance.
Toshiba X300 – Best High-Capacity Hard Disk
If you have the budget, though, go for the Toshiba X300 for a high-capacity hard drive. It’s available in 4 TB, 5 TB, 6 TB, 8 TB, and 10 TB capacities. It’s the internal HDD you want when you need a lot of storage space.
The best thing about this high-capacity hard drive is that it doesn’t skimp on performance as well with drives spinning at 7,200 rpm with a 128 MB (256 MB for the 10 TB model) cache buffer. It’s a good choice for workstations, gaming computers, and all-in-one PCs.
For the type of performance and capacity the Toshiba X300 provides, it comes with a great gigabyte per dollar value. The only caveat is that it only has a limited warranty of 2 years.
Western Digital Black – Best Hard Drive in Terms of Speed
If it’s speed you’re looking for, the Western Digital Black will meet your expectations. If you need to access data and change it frequently, the WD Black is for you. The 6 TB variant comes with 218 MB/s read and write speeds, so it will fulfill your storage space needs, too.
Not only that, it’s also perfect for gamers and creatives who need high performance and heavy computing power. Don’t expect this to be cheap, though, but you can expect it to deliver performance and speed that are in line with its value.
If you don’t need as much as 6 TB, you can choose from its 3 TB, 4 TB, and 5 TB models. It also has a 5-year warranty.
Western Digital VelociRaptor – Best High-Performance Hard Disk
If Black’s 7,200 rpm is not enough for you, try the VelociRaptor with 10,000 rpm, 6 Gb/s of speed, and 64 MB cache. With this much, gaming, producing media, and other heavy tasks shouldn’t be a problem.
Worried about the heat? The VelociRaptor says you don’t have to as it comes with an IcePack mounting frame, which helps keep its functions smooth and cool.
It’s not the solution for your huge storage needs, but the smallest option (250 GB should be enough for a basic computer set-up. If you need to store a lot of files, you have a 500 GB and 1 TB options. The largest one is enough for a lot of games, plus it helps launch and load those games fast.
Seagate FireCuda – Best Hybrid Hard Disk
The Seagate FireCuda adds an SSD buffer to the traditional hard drive to boost the performance. You can expect a high price tag for this one, though its performance and speed are worth every penny. Other hybrid drives in the market are no match for the FireCuda.
This 7,200 RPM internal HDD performs up to 5 times faster than other traditional 7,200 RPM drives. The SSD learns and stores the data you access frequently, making it easier and faster to access again.
It’s perfect for your gaming needs and for your workstations where you need a reliable and high-performance hard disk. With up to over 200 MB/s data-transfer speeds, it’s truly one of the best HDD you can get in the current market. To top it all off, the Seagate FireCuda has a 5-year limited warranty.
Seagate FireCuda Mobile – Best Laptop Hard Disk
Want the benefits of the FireCuda but you have a laptop? No need to worry – the FireCuda line offers a 2.5-inch form factor that offers the same benefits of the desktop model.
It’s available in 500 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB capacities, so you won’t have to worry about storing all your games either. According to Seagate, you can store about 80 25 GB games in the 2 TB variant.
Like the 3.5-inch model, it’s a solid state hybrid drive that’s 5 times faster than traditional HDDs. It’s recommended for gaming and creative pro applications, and it claims to boot Windows 8 in less than 10 seconds.
Seagate backs the FireCuda line with a 5-year limited warranty, ensuring it can last as long as your laptop.
SanDisk Ultra SSD – Best Solid State Hard Drive
If pure SSD is what you’re looking for, we won’t recommend any other than the SanDisk Ultra SATA SSD. It employs flash memory, which works with spinning discs and laser-based readers to call up any data in an instant. This means no mechanical and moving parts, so there are fewer risks of breaking it and losing your files.
The SanDisk Ultra SSD comes with 512 GB storage and data-transfer speeds of almost half a GB per second, ensuring faster boot-up and better overall performance. It’s easily the fastest drive on this list, and you’ll have to shell out money for that. SSDs are about 5 to 10 times more expensive than traditional drives per gigabyte, so a 512 GB SSD would cost much more than an HDD of similar capacity.
Western Digital Blue – Best Budget Hard Drive
We can’t always buy the best internal hard drive in the market due to our limited budget. If that’s the case for you, the Western Digital Blue is your best bet. Western Digital released it in 2012, so it’s a little old compared to the others on this list, but it’s still one of the best value for money hard drives.
Its storage options range from 500 GB to 6 TB, so there’s sure to be one variant for your computer’s storage needs. WD compromised on the raw performance, though, so you can stick to your budget. It has a spindle speed of 5,400 RPM with sequential read and write speeds of 130 MB/s.
It does, however, offer low power consumption with an idle usage of 3.4W, standby usage of 0.4W, and operating usage of 5.3W. It’s fairly quiet, too.
Seagate IronWolf NAS – Best NAS Hard Disk
A network-attached storage (NAS) system stores data and connects to a network that allows authorized users who can retrieve the data. This requires a specialized hard drive for this function because according to Seagate and Western Digital, using the standard disks might damage your NAS or your data.
If this sounds like something you need, we’d recommend the Seagate IronWolf NAS, which is the best NAS server-tailored hard drive in the market this 2018. It runs at a 7,200 RPM spin rate all day every day without risk of failure. It’s ready for RAID, and it’s faster than other options.
You can get it at 6 TB to 12 TB options, and it doesn’t have a much more expensive price tag than standard drives.
Western Digital Gold Datacenter – Best Business Hard Drive
The drives in this list are best for personal use, but if you need something for your small business, the WD Gold Datacenter might be the right one for you. With 8 TB of storage, it will be able to store high volumes of data related to your business. It also hits all the important aspects any business HDD should live up to, as listed by Primary Storage Solutions.
It’s specifically for use in data centers or enterprise services, so you can expect it to be able to handle 24/7 transfers. According to WD, it can transfer up to 550 TB per year without keeling over.
It has the standard specs of a high-performance hard disk with 6 GB/s in transfer protocol and 128 MB of cache, but if you need a drive for your business, a standard drive might not be enough. Get the Gold Datacenter instead, which also comes with a 5-year warranty.
Which of the Best Internal Hard Drives is the One for You?
There’s no hard drive that’s the best for everyone, but you should be able to find the right one from our list of the best internal hard drives this 2018. Whatever computer set-up you’re making, there’s something here for every budget and need.
If you want more tips, take a look at our top 10 articles. Visit our blog now to learn more about technology, home, entertainment, and more. Feel free to contact us today if you have any inquiry.
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The hard drive is the most crucial part of a computer system which contains all our important data. It has our important business report, data files, photos, videos and many important things that we can’t afford to lose. Computer’s hard disk is bound to get corrupted due to several reasons: bad power supply, accidental power cut, virus attack, damaged blocks, loose wires, sectors, faulty software and corrupted operating system files.
So, it’s important to create regular backup of hard-drive because if any other component of computer such as RAM, CD/DVD Drive, RAM, Monitor, Keyboard, etc. stops working, you can replace them anytime but if your hard-disk gets corrupted due to any reason, you’ll lose all your important data which was available on your hard drive.
But, does anyone keep regular backups of full hard-drive? Usually, hard-drive size ranges from hundreds of GBs to several TBs which makes it very time & resources consuming (if not impossible) to create regular backups. So usually, users create backups of very few most important files in their external hard disks, flash drives or online cloud storage.
Though creating backups of most essential files is important but there are several other files in hard drive which are important to us. So, by understanding both the problem and the situation with the hard drive, here I am listing down the top 10 causes of hard drive failures with solutions on how to fix them and perform data recovery if you’ve lost any of your important data from hard-disk.
Top 10 Causes of Hard Drive Failure
Knowing main causes of hard-drive failures is important because it will help you to prevent future hard drive failure. And, if you’re already at the stage when your hard drive has crashed or data inside the hard disk has already got corrupted then going through these points will let you identify the cause properly and find out the solution to help you repair your hard drive and recover any lost data. So, read these points carefully.
1. Power Issues
Power issues are one of the most common issues behind hard drive failure. If your PC is not connected to a consistent power source and the voltage of power source fluctuates very frequently then even if your PC doesn’t turn OFF instantly, it’s hardware components get affected which include the hard drive too. The hard drive might miss some data or write corrupted entries which can lead to data corruption.
Top Hard Drives 2017 En
2. Firmware Corruption
Firmware is the permanent software programmed in a read-only memory which interacts with hardware directly. You can simply call it software for hardware that provides control, monitoring, and data manipulation to hardware components. If there are minor errors in firmware which somehow allows the system to work and do most of its task properly, but can’t properly interact with the hard drive, it will lead to data corruption, data loss, and even hard-drive failure.
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3. Water Damage
Your computer, laptop or hard-drive is not water resistant. All of them are electronic components which can crash when water reaches inside them. While the system is ON or even if it is OFF, if water accidentally reaches inside the hard-drive, it will be crashed.
4. Human Error
With lots of software & scripts, we can do a lot of things on our computer and computer won’t stop us, even if you do something which can make it self-destructive. So, we always need to limit ourselves to do only those things which we know what we are doing. But, human errors happen either accidentally or intentionally which can lead the system or its hardware components work improperly. If the error is related to hard-drive then based on the severity of the error, it can either corrupt the data inside hard-drive or fully crash the hard drive and make it unusable.
5. Virus or Faulty Software
A software is capable to corrupt the system or data going inside hard-drive but they are not designed to do that. So, when software work normally, they won’t create any problem but if due to some update, an unexpected closing of the program, incompatibility with software or hardware, if any issue comes in software or it’s working then it can corrupt the hard drive and/or crash it.
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If your system is infected with viruses or you’ve installed any malicious software they might corrupt your hard-drive data, lock it or crash hard-drive then if you are not quick to stop them, they will do this.
6. Unallocated Space Issue
Sometimes, due to some flaws in the system or at the boot time, a portion of hard-drive storage space is lost. It becomes unreachable and you don’t know whether those sectors of your hard drive are corrupted & data inside them is permanently lost or it’s still available there. This is another very frequent cause of hard-drive failure. Usually, it only makes a portion of hard-drive inaccessible but in some cases, it can cause the loss of Windows directory files which don’t let the system to work as required as Windows system files are inaccessible.
7. Hardware Issues
Hardware components wear out over time. The hard-drive itself, other PC components, wiring and the dust settled in hardware components can cause hardware generated issues. This can cause issues either directly or those other hardware components to hard-drive making it lose data or crash due to compatibility issues.
8. Mechanical Flaws
While most of the PC hardware are electronic devices, hard-drive is one component which is mechanical. Inside it, there are platters, spindle, and actuator which work in cooperation to insert or read data from the exact sector and it’s desired block. If any mechanical flaw happens to any of these components, it will break the full cooperation and crash the hard-disk.
9. Unforeseen Mishaps
Top Hard Drives 2019
Accidents happen but a true mishap is not as simple as a human error. A mishap is one very unfortunate event which was not foreseen and hence things were not prepared accordingly. This contributes to very rare cases but in all these cases, the hard drive is not protected. Either its data is corrupted or hard disk itself is crashed/broken.
10. Work Environment
A work environment can also be a factor to make the hard drive crash or corrupt its data if it’s such extreme. If you’ve put hard drive at a very hot environment, heating may cause issues in a hard drive. Strong magnetic ways can also corrupt a device’s data, it can distort many or all sectors in a hard drive which will be impossible to use either to read information which was earlier available or write new data to them.
Recover Data from Crashed/Corrupted Hard Drive
If you’ve already lost some of your important data from hard drive owing to any of the reasons above and you’re in a situation where either some portion or full hard drive is crashed, then even if you can’t fix the issue yourself but you can send it for hard drive repair. The hard drive recovery specialists use some very advanced techniques which can recover hard drive data even from hard disk which is totally broken (internally or externally) due to any of the hard drive failure reasons. Try them and you’ll be able to recover such high percentage of data from your worn out hard drive that you never thought possible.