6tb external hard drive reviews 2017 install#
6tb external hard drive reviews 2017 update#
6tb external hard drive reviews 2017 pro#

We first take a look at the different metrics that matter, and how various hard drives stack up against each other. Based on that, a specific set of metrics needs to be considered. Their retail offerings currently top out at 18TB, 16TB, and 20TB respectively.Ĭonsumers looking to purchase hard-drives need to have a rough idea of the use-cases they are going to subject the drives to. There are three active vendors in the consumer hard drive space - Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital.

6tb external hard drive reviews 2017 pro#

It must be noted that the Exos series drives are relatively noisy and consume much more power compared to other drives tuned for specific use cases - such as the Barracuda Pro and Toshiba X300 for desktop usage, or the WD Red SMR drives for read-heavy / sparing writes scenarios. At other capacity points, the most cost-effective drives vary even when similar workload ratings are considered. However, for consumers needing absolute lowest cost at other capacities, the Seagate Exos series fits the bill, with unbelievably low prices compared to other 'consumer' HDDs at similar capacity points. In the current market, the WD Gold is the only available 20TB option. Most consumers in a non-business settings also require low-power and low-noise, yet, high capacity drives, which we're including as an explicit category as well. The challenge in picking any hard drive, of course, is balancing workload needs with total drive costs. Long-term backup storage and high-capacity NAS units for consumer use are also ideal use-cases for hard drives.

6tb external hard drive reviews 2017 install#

Toshiba's MG09 18TB HDDs based on FC-MAMR are yet to get retail availability, and are also not part of this buyer's guideĢ021 Hard Drives from Western Digital and Toshibaįrom a gaming perspective, install sizes of hundreds of GBs are not uncommon for modern games. Synology has introduced 8, 12, and 16TB enterprise hard drives (rebranded Toshiba Enterprise HDDs with custom firmware), but they are meant specifically for Synology NAS units (no warranties if used in other systems) and are not part of this buyer's guide. Some high-capacity models such as the Seagate IronWolf Pro line are currently running 15-20% lower than launch MSRPs. With the HDD supply chain seeing some improvements, prices have largely stabilized. Toshiba's 18TB drives using FC-MAMR, as well as Seagate's Exos 20TB and IronWolf Pro 20TB are also scheduled to make a retail appearance soon. In terms of recent product introductions, we have retail availability of Western Digital's OptiNAND-equipped 20TB drives. The $/GB metric for SSDs (particularly with QLC in the picture) is showing a downward trend, but it is still not low enough to match HDDs in that market segment. Hard drives are also suitable for workloads that are largely sequential and not performance sensitive. While SSDs have taken over the role of the primary drive in most computing systems, hard drives continue to be the storage media of choice in areas dealing with large amount of relatively cold data. Best Consumer Internal Hard Drives: November 2021ĭata storage requirements have kept increasing over the last several years.

All numbers in the text are updated to reflect pricing at the time of writing.

6tb external hard drive reviews 2017 update#

In our series of Hard Disk Drive guides, here’s the latest update to our list of recommended HDDs.