Best Hard Drives for Computer 2022

Top 10 rating according to KP

Editor’s Choice

1. Western Digital WD40EZRZ

Less than 8 thousand rubles for a 4 TB hard drive – a lot or a little? Probably okay. And so those who choose Western Digital WD40EZRZ argue. The hard drive is popular, but gamers don’t like it – the spindle speed of 5400 rpm makes the hard drive very thoughtful in games. Although the real speed of writing and reading is not so small – stable 90-100 MB / s. The disc is relatively quiet and does not annoy with vibration. And cold – the temperature rarely rises above 40 degrees. The Winchester is considered reliable, but sensitive to shaking – the heads may not park and then problems cannot be avoided.

2. Seagate Barracuda 2 TB ST2000DM008

This 2 TB Barracuda has a rotation speed of 7200 rpm and this has a positive effect on the speed of data access. According to passport data, this is 220 MB / s. However, when the disk is 80% full or more, the speed drops almost twice. But the data on the noise level of the disk contradict each other. Some users complain about the loud sound from the Barracuda, which almost does not let them sleep. Others praise the silence. Perhaps the noise is different from batch to batch. As well as the survivability of the disk – for especially “lucky” hard drives, bad clusters crawl out after 500 on and off cycles. But in general, the disc is popular and worthy of attention among the people. Oh yes, the warranty here is only 12 months.

3. Toshiba 1 TB HDWD110UZSVA

Terabyte hard drive model from Toshiba. There are a lot of good things in it, for example, a full two-year warranty. The manufacturer promises that with everyday use, the drive will work for at least four years. The spindle speed here is 7200 rpm, which means the disk is relatively fast. In reality, this is about 190 MB / s for writing and reading. Perhaps someone will not like the noise and heating, but these are relative values. The disk itself is a born “workhorse” that does not cause problems for the user.

4. Western Digital WD1003FZEX

Hard drive from WD, belonging to the expensive “black” series. Hence the price for 1 terabyte – almost six thousand. But the guarantees are simply huge and amount to a full five years. However, the buyer here pays not only for service, but also for quality – the disk is cold by HDD standards and very quiet. True, some complain about vibration, but the question is how you install the disk in the system unit. At 7200 rpm, peak write and read speeds approach 200 MB/s. By the way, the power consumption here is 6,8 watts.

5. Seagate FireCuda 2 TB ST2000DX002

This hard drive belongs to the hybrid SSHD class. Here, there is an 8 GB flash memory card in the disk case. It is used as a cache of the most frequently used data stored on the hard drive itself. As a result, the overall performance of the system is improved. A kind of “crutch” when you want to save on an additional SSD. But be prepared that you will not see a noticeable increase in speed – a 7200 rpm hard drive is like a hard drive. Some users complain about bad blocks after a few months of use, but the drive has a two-year warranty. If it’s not right, they’ll change it.

6. Toshiba 3 TB DT01ACA300

A fairly favorable ratio of price and quality – for less than six thousand rubles we get a 3 TB drive. Moreover, the disc itself, as well as its packaging, looks quite unsightly. It is understandable – this model has been on sale for about 10 years. In general, DT01ACA300 is a vivid example of how the hard drive industry has been marking time for the last decade. The spindle makes 7200 revolutions, the average write and read speed on a relatively clean disk is 200 MB / s. Yes, the disk is noisy and vibrates a little more than modern colleagues, but there is no dramatic difference. But this is the development of Hitachi, whose HDD manufacturing business was once absorbed by Western Digital Corporation. And this means that the resource of the drive is simply prohibitive.

7. HGST 10 TB HUH721010ALE604

Another “fragment” of the production of Japanese Hitachi hard drives. Now the HGST brand is owned by Western Digital, but it has ended up in the backyard. But you can buy something else. For example – HUH721010ALE604 for 10 TB. This disc enjoys an excellent reputation among computer scientists, because there is not only a good price, but also a huge resource for failure – 2,5 million hours. Moreover, the build quality here is very high, and the warranty is 5 years. There is only one problem – the disk will not work with a regular SATA connector. Molex adapter required.

8. Western Digital WD2005FBYZ

WD from the “gold” series. The price for 2 TB, of course, looks overpriced – almost nine thousand rubles. The board in that model is justified not only by the extended five-year warranty, but also by the quietness of operation and the low level of heating. Here, the rejection in production, apparently, is tougher. As a result, the manufacturer promises 2 million hours to failure. The speed here is quite familiar for such a disk – 200 MB / s for reading and writing.

9. Maxtor 250 GB STM3250310AS

What if you need a hard drive with a small amount of memory in the early 20s? Although SSDs dominate in the segment up to 1 TB, but what if? Then you can look at the Maxtor 250 GB. But don’t be deceived, Seagate Corporation has been hiding behind the once third largest hard drive manufacturer in the world for the second decade. The model is no longer new, as evidenced, for example, by the now ridiculous amount of buffer memory of 8 MB. But in general, the model is hardy and has been living with individual users for more than 10 years.

10. Seagate Barracuda 12 TB ST12000DM0007

Giant in volume and with the same gigantic price hard drive from Seagate. We will not go into details of the economic feasibility of buying a record holder, when you can assemble a RAID array from three 4 TB disks and save a decent amount. Someone really needs one hard drive with that much capacity. True, there is a suspicion that there are two or three plates here, but the manufacturer does not disclose such information. The write and read speed of the flagship of the Barracuda line is higher than that of disks with 7200 rpm – 250 MB/s. It is too early to draw conclusions about the reliability of this model – the first copies went on sale in mid-2018. Well, if something goes wrong – the guarantee here is 5 years.

How to choose a hard drive for your computer

Although now more and more users are abandoning classic hard drives in favor of fast SSDs, it is unlikely that anyone will argue that there is never enough memory. In the meantime, solid state drives are not cheap, storing large amounts of data on them seems unprofitable. So, it’s too early to forget about hard drives in the computer industry. We will talk with a computer equipment seller about how to choose the best hard drive in 2022 Sergei Murzin.

Manufacturer

In fact, all hard drives in the world are made by just three manufacturers. These are Western Digital, Seagate and Toshiba. Moreover, the first two account for most of the production. Therefore, do not expect a special variety on the hard drive market. Yes, for example, there is Hitachi, but it’s still the same WD.

Volume

The standard is now considered 1, 2 and 4 TB. There are also 3-TB models, but you need to look at how much it will be cheaper than 4-TB. Anything higher is already significantly more expensive. Often, it is easier to build an array of several 2TB drives than to chase a 10TB drive. And, remember, although this does not only apply to hard drives, the volume indicated on the box due to inconsistencies in the breakdown of the file system will be somewhat less. For example, on large models with a capacity of more than 10 TB, a whole terabyte can “disappear”. This is fine.

Speed

Of course, HDDs are much inferior in read and write speed to solid state drives. Hard drives that connect to the SATA 6Gbit / s connector have long been hit by a ceiling. So, for models with a spindle speed of 5400 rpm, it is somewhere around 90-110 MB / s. And the faster, but noisy and gluttonous 7200 rpm can already process data at 220-250 MB / s.

Clipboard

The clipboard is a built-in internal memory that is needed to process, manage and store data. And the larger it is, the faster you can access the contents of the disk. Modern HDDs have from 16 to 256 MB. But here you can save money – if the fate of the “file dump” is destined for the disk, then a large buffer is not needed at all.

Warranty

There is an opinion that hard drives are more tenacious than SSDs. It probably developed at a time when flash memory was unreliable and failed after several overwrites. In fact, a hard drive is a complex and capricious product, where any mechanical part can fail. Therefore, it is better to take those models for which there is a guarantee of two years.