So what is the right Hard Drive to buy for your server/ project? There is a vast range of makes of Hard Drives, and in those makes, there is a vast range of models. Making a decision can be a bit challenging if you don’t have enough information, so that is what this article is for, to clarify and show you what Hard Drives you should be buying.
My first choice when it comes to Hard Drives is Western Digital. They have a wide range of Hard drives from Desktop drives with their Western Digital Blue and Black series, to Enterprise with their Western Digital Gold, Purple, RE and Red. You might think that it is still a lot to choose from, but every drive has its purpose, Blue is for day to day desktop use, Black is for creative people, such as gamers photographers and videographers, Purple is for surveillance, Red is for NAS, and Gold and RE is for datacenter.
And there is a reason why each model has its specific purpose it comes down to features. A Western Digital Blue does not have the same features as a Gold, this, of course, allows the Western Digital Blue to be the cheapest drive in the range, it does not mean that the Western Digital Blue is unreliable, I use one everyday in my PC at home, it is just not recommended for and are not warranted for use in RAID environments.
If you are looking for Hard Drives to use in your server or your SAN, I would advise using the Western Digital Gold, it is designed for entry-level servers to high-end enterprise storage systems, and has features such as, High workload capability, WD Gold hard drives are designed to handle workloads up to 550TB per year, Vibration protection, RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER), and the list goes on. Western Digital Gold drives come with a 5 Year Warranty and 24/7 premium customer support over the phone.
But if you are looking for Hard Drives for your NAS, it would be best to look at the Western Digital Red series. This, however, comes in two models, Western Digital Red for Small Business and Western Digital Red Pro for Big Business. WD Red is designed specifically for NAS systems that have 1 to 8 drive bays in both 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch form factors. WD Red Pro is designed specifically for up to 16 bay medium to large scale 24×7 NAS environments. The Western Digital Red series works well in a backup NAS, to a media NAS.
If you are looking for high performance in your computer or laptop, Western Digital has released their SSD range, with an endurance rating of up to 400TBW and a 1.75 million hour.
If you would like a quote, advise or information on hard drives for you company, you can email contact@dcdata.co.za we will be glad to assist.
Author – Jonathan Mathews