I have quite an extensive collection of media that my server makes available through different means (Jellyfin, NFS, mostly). One of my harddrives has some concerning smart values so I want to replace it. What are good harddrives to buy today? Are there any important tech specs to look out for? In the past I didn’t give this too much attention and it didn’t bite me, yet. But if I’m gonna buy a new drive now, I might as well…

I’m looking for something from 4TB upwards. I think I remember that drives with very high capacity are more likely to fail sooner - is that correct? How about different brands - do any have particularly good or bad reputation?

Thanks for any hints!

  • RyanOP
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    31 day ago

    I was thinking actual hard drives, not SSDs…

    • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬
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      21 day ago

      Okay, so … then maybe really look into the Seagate Exos drives. 20 TB should be pretty much fine for most selfhosting adventures.

      • @[email protected]
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        421 hours ago

        I have a few of those, and while the ones I bought have worked out fine so far, I think it’s worth cautioning people that they are annoyingly loud doing basic operations.

        • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬
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          221 hours ago

          Absolutely. They’re advertised for being used in datecenters, so I assume noise optimization wasn’t a concern for Seagate when creating those drives.

        • RyanOP
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          221 hours ago

          that wouldn’t be a problem for me, as my server is located in the basement. But good to know!