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Over the years, I've had 5 hard drives go out on me, and they were all drives used for A/V work. No other drive has ever failed me, except after a long and healthy life. I've got drives that are measured in megabytes that still work, but they weren't A/V drives.

So, it seems a pattern has emerged, at least for me.

What is the best brand for A/V internal 3.5" hard drives. What fails you the least?

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DM60 Tue, 06/23/2015 - 07:02

First, those early hard drives were built really well, and they were expensive. Now they are built well and are cheap. Maybe the years have crept up on you, but 5 years is about the average life of an HD.

The A/V part is irrelevant, you just need to look for a good reliable HD with a 7200 RPM spin. The best is really hard to say, just need to look at the reviews. Plus, for longevity that is hard to say because no one knows until that model has aged, and usually technology has changed and that model is no longer available. Reputation from a manufacturer is all you can go with.

pcrecord Tue, 06/23/2015 - 08:04

Other than buyig a controler and SAS server drives, you won't get much longevity on any consumer drives. The key is to always have a copy somewhere safe..
There is big discussion about longevity and speed this days. More and more people are turning to SSD drives. I know, people say it doesn't last. It was true with the first versions but they make it better now a day.

I read a lot about this and I figured that my next drive for recording will be a small ssd, and I'll put backup on a regular 1 or 2 tb HDD
The choice of company today should be more oriented to what kind of service they offer..

DM60 Tue, 06/23/2015 - 08:24

I have switched to an SSD as my primary and working data drive, then a 2 TB storage area. I back up the SSD oncee a week and the storage never. At some point in the future, I really will need to backup the storage drive.

One thing I will say is nice about the SSD (I found a 480K drive) everything on there loads really fast. So VSTi, samples etc. are nice and snappy. If one's system is running a bit tired, this isn't a bad upgrade. Once again, get some software to clone the drive to make life easier on you before you switch drives. Just sayin' worth the $40 for 3 computers.