Is my HDD Going to Die?

[vskid3]

I've had a couple random shutdowns over the last few days. I've read that 187, 188 (which is now 9), 198, and 199 are all signs of impending doom, so its days are numbered. Backing up everything now.

Anyone have any suggestions for what to replace it with? Needs to be at least 2TB, wouldn't mind adding a ~240GB SSD if the price is right. Cheaper the better, while still being reliable. I don't need extreme speed.

 

[samjc3]

An SSD is absolutely worth every penny - in the 240gb range, the cheapest two I'd recommend are the Sandisk SSD Plus 240 and the Crucial BX200 240, at around ~$65 each on amazon. If you prefer the best (yes I realize it's not technically the best, but he's running an HDD, so he obviously doesn't need the ~2% performance edge the Pro brings above the Evo) performance, the Samsung 850 Evo 250gb runs about $90.

As for the HDD, if you really only need 2tb, the Hitachi K7200 is consistently under $60, and is a solid drive. However, 3tb drives are a lower cost per gigabyte, running around $85 for a Toshiba DT01ACA300 or a Seagate Barracuda.

Or you could be a badass and buy a samsung 850 pro 2tb SSD for ~$900

 

[ttsgeb]

Everything dies eventually.

But, uh, I've set up my pc with a 256gb ssd for actually running things off of and a handful of hard drives totaling like 4tb that only turn on when I need them. It's been wonderful.

Highly recommend ssd + long term storage drive setup.

 

[Prog]

Geb beat me to the snarky death comment. But Hitachi/HGST drives are the most reliable, Seagate least. I've also heard that 3TB drives are less reliable than 2 or 4, not positive though.

 

[vskid3]

Thanks, sam, I think I'll go with the Sandisk. My desktop is 3 years old and was at best on the higher end of mid-range at the time, so it won't notice a slightly slower SSD much. I can't find a Hitachi K7200, though, linky? 2TB will be plenty for now. I'm only using about half of my current 2TB, and that's with the OS.

geb and Prog, thanks for the philosophy lesson.

I really need to make a better backup system. Would probably help if I did some de-junking and organizing, too.

 

[samjc3]

linky?

Linky.

 

[vskid3]

Those reviews don't exactly inspire confidence... Most of the bad ones are DOA, which would be better than after a few months. I hate buying hard drives, there's never one that seems to shine brighter than the rest for reliability.

 

[samjc3]

It is one of the cheapest drives on the internet, so I suppose I wouldn't expect superlative quality. That said, it's amazon, so if it's DOA they'll replace/refund with no questions asked and return shipping paid. And if it ain't DOA, it's probably fine.

 

[vskid3]

Ordered a Sandisk SSD Plus 240 and the Hitachi HDD. We'll see how they do. I'm planning on getting an external HDD (maybe another Hitachi with an enclosure) and some cloud storage in the near future to do better backups. Thanks, guys.

 

[vskid3]

It's like I'm living in the future. I click stuff and it just happens.

I got the SSD a few days ago, finally had a chance to install it today and throw Win7 on it. It took maybe 5 minutes to install, I thought there was more and then it asked what the user name should be. Thanks again.

 

[samjc3]

You kids these days have it good. When I got my first SSD, we paid dollars per gigabyte, and only got ~300MB/s sustained write, and damnit, we were happy.