HDD recommendations?

[andrew71]

I'm building a new system and whilst I'll have an SSD for the boot drive, the amount of storage needed for my sample libraries really dictates the use of a traditional HDD.

Looking around, 4Tb+ HDDs seem more expensive that I anticipated and spindle speeds appear to be 5400rpm more often than the older 7200rpm that I used to use.

Does anyone have any recommendations for reliable but inexpensive storage of 4Tb or more?

[robotmonkey]

Sample libraries need fast read access so don't get the 5400 RPM drives. They are garbage for anything other than very static storage like backup. Get at least a 7200 RPM drive with plenty of cache - at least 128 or 256 MB. Either Western Digital Black or Gold or Segate Exos series. None of them are particularly expensive.

[andrew71]

Thanks. I'll take a look at those.

[jdnz]

seagate ironhawk pro line are decently priced (compared to the enterprise exos line) and deliver decent sustained read speeds ( around 200mb/s depending on the size of the drive).

trouble is even 200mb/s is slow if you’re dealing with projects with LOTS of kontakt instances - you can get 2tb m.2 nvme drives (which will give about a 10 fold thruput increase) for about the same price as an 8tb ironhawk pro, so could be worth putting your most heavily used libs on ssd if you can stretch that far. Otherwise it could be worth going to RAID and 2-3 drives to get the read speed up

[robotmonkey]

seagate ironhawk pro line are decently priced (compared to the enterprise exos line) and deliver decent sustained read speeds ( around 200mb/s depending on the size of the drive).

trouble is even 200mb/s is slow if you’re dealing with projects with LOTS of kontakt instances - you can get 2tb m.2 nvme drives (which will give about a 10 fold thruput increase) for about the same price as an 8tb ironhawk pro, so could be worth putting your most heavily used libs on ssd if you can stretch that far. Otherwise it could be worth going to RAID and 2-3 drives to get the read speed up

I think you're mixing up two lines here: IronWolf and SkyHawk. The first is a NAS drive, again, optimized more for static storage, and the second one, SkyHawk is meant for video surveillance eg for 24h video stream recording.

This does not mean that they can't be used as general everyday use HDD's. They can, but there are better options.

[jdnz]

I think you're mixing up two lines here: IronWolf and SkyHawk. The first is a NAS drive, again, optimized more for static storage, and the second one, SkyHawk is meant for video surveillance eg for 24h video stream recording.

This does not mean that they can't be used as general everyday use HDD's. They can, but there are better options.

I absolutely meant the ironwolf pro line (just typing badly - there's no such thing as a 'pro' line for the skyhawk) - the ironwolf pro is meant for higher workloads than the stock ironwolf and has a decent sustained read speed.

I'd never think of using a skyhawk in a data storage application, they're just not optimised for that, as they're all about sustained WRITE speed

[roman.i]

I'm building a new system and whilst I'll have an SSD for the boot drive, the amount of storage needed for my sample libraries really dictates the use of a traditional HDD.

Looking around, 4Tb+ HDDs seem more expensive that I anticipated and spindle speeds appear to be 5400rpm more often than the older 7200rpm that I used to use.

Does anyone have any recommendations for reliable but inexpensive storage of 4Tb or more?

7200rpm doesn't improve the random access by a lot, this is the same slow mechanical technology.
As well as the reliability is not very different between regular consumer hard drives.
If you want reliability, buy two drives and connect them into raid 1, or get a backup drive.
In case you have enough memory, you can load samples into memory at the project load, and/or store your projects on the ssd in a 'self contained' mode.