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WD or HGST?

Loa

Loa

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 5, 2003
1,729
78
Québec
Hello,

I know they're both WD owned, but as far as HDDs go, is there one that's definitely better? I'm planning on getting a 6tb drive for primary (but not system, which is on SSD) and daily use.

I'm familiar with the WD colors and was going to get a Black. Is there a HGST equivalent? (Great performance and good 5 year warranty.)

Thanks

Loa
 
Last edited:
Loa said:
Hello,

I know they're both WD owned, but as far as HDDs go, is there one that's definitely better? I'm planning on getting a 6tb drive for primary (but not system, which is on SSD) and daily use.

I'm familiar with the WD colors and was going to get a Black. Is there a HGST equivalent?

Thanks

Loa
Click to expand...
I buy a lot of high end enterprise storage, and it's all HGST or Seagate. Never see WD. Literally never. The people selling stuff with 5 year warranties don't use WD drives.

Every storage vendor, however, has had some lemons - some designs that are pure crap. I was turned against WD by the first generation 80 GB drives. Bought 4 drives. Replaced 11 of them.

Seagate has been very good, although their first generation 3 TB drives were horrible.
 
I own the 6TB WD Red, it works flawlessly so far, quiet and cool. And an important advantage is this drive has the standard mount point. It fit the cMP's HDD tray. Other brand / series 6TB may come with different mount point. Even the 8TB or above WD Red HDD has different mount point. So, for 6TB, I personally do recommend the WD Red.
 
Thanks for the inputs.

The backblaze data is very interesting. There's the HGST 8TB drive that's not too expensive, but I can't find any real-world info on its transfer speeds. As it's not an archival drive, speed is important.

Loa
 
Loa said:
Thanks for the inputs.

The backblaze data is very interesting. There's the HGST 8TB drive that's not too expensive, but I can't find any real-world info on its transfer speeds. As it's not an archival drive, speed is important.

Loa
Click to expand...
As h9826790 stated, it likely won't fit in your Mac Pro's drive bays so do be aware of that. Best to check the mount point before buying if you're set on installing into one of the bays.
 
For what it's worth to you, I've been using a WD Black 6 TB here, heavy usage daily for 8-10 months. Functioning perfectly well so far.
 
1024724 said:
For what it's worth to you, I've been using a WD Black 6 TB here, heavy usage daily for 8-10 months. Functioning perfectly well so far.
Click to expand...

What's the noise level on that like? I'm also looking to reorganise my storage, and wondering if it's worth going for the black for a photo drive (lots of 30-50mb files), or setting up a Fusion drive with an m2 pcie card, since if I understand it correctly, the system keeps recently used stuff on the ssd portion, which is probably going to be the files I actually need to work with.
 
Hello,

As far as mounting points go, I'm planning on mounting it in the optical drive bay, which has different mounting points. But the fact that I can't find a SINGLE webpage that specifies the 8TB's drive real-life transfer speed is is a big obstacle for me.

I may go with a 6tb black for main drive and 6tb blue for back-up to simplify the clutter of aging drives I'm currently using.

Maatspace: The big blacks are already extremely fast. Going fusion has never been an option for me: I prefer being able to decide what goes on the SSD and what remains on the HDD. I find that fusion drives are similar to what Apple is doing with Cloud Photos: you can't really decide what gets downloaded to which devices. I personally can't stand that an prefer to decide what goes on my two SSDs.

Loa
 
HGST developed a lot of advanced hard drive tech.

It is my favorite hard drive brand.

The Toshiba 3.5" drives derive from that, so I also buy them as the prices are very interesting.
 
I can't speak to the 6 Tb, but the 1 Tb Blacks I put in a year ago are very quiet and fast. I was surprised at how little actuator noise they emit.
 
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