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Have you ever wondered about how reliable hard drives really are? Have you ever experienced a hard drive crash or failure? Are you looking for a new hard drive but don’t know which one is the best for your needs?
If you ever wondered about any of these questions, you have arrived at the right place. We will take a deep dive into the inner workings of what makes a drive reliable. We went ahead and pre-selected 8 of the most used hard drives these days to discuss their reliability for “Most Reliable Hard Drives of 2023!”
Hard drive reliability is simple to answer as it is a drive that never fails or has a very low failure rate for the application or task you assign it to. The solution to getting a reliable hard drive is also simple, by selecting the correct type of hard drive for your purpose, task, or application.
There are mainly 3 areas that these hard drives fall into which are as follows – Consumer, Network Attached Storage (NAS), and Enterprise we selected and reviewed the most reliable ones from each category.
Most Reliable Hard Drives of 2023 Round-Up
The table below will give you a quick look at our selections for the most reliable hard drives currently available on the market. To read a full review, simply click on ‘review>>’ in the respective row.
Product | Image | Rating | |
1. Seagate IronWolf Pro NAS ''Most Reliable NAS Drive'' |  | 9.8 | |
2. Western Digital Black ''Most Reliable Consumer Drive'' |  | 9.7 | |
3. Western Digital Gold Enterprise ''Best Enterprise Drive For Home Use'' |  | 9.6 | |
4. Western Digital Red NAS ''Great Budget NAS Drive'' |  | 9.5 | |
5. Western Digital Blue ''Perfect Budget Consumer Option'' |  | 9.2 | |
6. HGST Western Digital UltraStar DC HC520 ''Most Reliable Enterprise Level Drive'' |  | 9.8 | |
7. Seagate Exos X14 ''Most Reliable Enterprise Level Drive Runner-up'' |  | 9.7 | |
8. Toshiba MG Series ''Honorable Mention'' |  | 9.6 |
1. Seagate IronWolf Pro NAS
Capacity: 4 – 18TB | Interface: SATA 6 Gb/s | Cache: Up to 256MB | Spindle Speed: 7200RPM | Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF): 1.2 Million Hours | Warranty: 5 Years
REASONS TO BUY
- 5-year warranty
- Offers plenty of capacity options
- Perfect for a RAID solution
- Suitable for almost any use
- Comes with a 3-year recovery service
REASONS TO AVOID
- Higher price
- Not suited for enterprise-level use
Our Rating: 9.8/10
The Seagate IronWolf Pro Network Attached Storage (NAS) Drive comes in a range of storage sizes from 4TB to 18TB running at 7200 RPM. Although the IronWolf Pro Series can be used as a single drive, they excel in a RAID Network Attached Storage (NAS) environment up to a 24-bay solution.
The IronWolf Pro offers Seagate’s best warranty of a 5-year limited manufacturer’s warranty, plus 3-year data recovery services. That is nearly unheard of to offer free data recovery services even for the length of 3 years–So this is the best backup for a reliable drive, and Seagate surely stands by these drives. Though keep in mind you need to register on Seagate’s website in order to get the 3-year data recovery service.
The IronWolf Pro is designed to run 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and is rated at 1.2 million hours of reading and writing operations (about 136 years roughly). Not sure about you, but these drives we are sure could outlast technology. The only reason to replace these drives is new technology or expanding capacity.
Seagate has made the IronWolf Pro with reliability in mind for small to medium businesses and even for some of the larger businesses. These drives are great to work in pairs for video editing, high level of gaming, reliable backup, and much more, but can also work as a single drive.
If you are looking for large-capacity storage drives that are reliable and fast, you can’t go wrong with the IronWolf Pro. A Network Attached Storage (NAS) has better RAID Technology than a Consumer Level Hard Drive, giving it better speed and reliability when paired with another one.
However, the IronWolf Pro by Seagate just falls short of datacenter level operations lacking the key vibration and security technologies that can be found in such drives as the Enterprise Level Storage Drives we are about to discover in our list.
2. Western Digital Black
Capacity: 500GB – 10TB | Interface: SATA 6 Gb/s | Cache: Up to 256MB | Spindle Speed: 7200RPM | Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF): N/A | Warranty: 5 Years
REASONS TO BUY
- Perfect consumer-level HDD
- 5-year warranty
- Great speeds
- Time-tested quality and reliability
- Great price
REASONS TO AVOID
- Maximum 10TB capacity
Our Rating: 9.7/10
For a second spot on his list, we chose a WD Black series drive, which has been on the market for a while and is proven to be very reliable and popular within the community. The Western Digital Black Series is the one we highly recommend for many use case scenarios for personal, professional, or business.
These drives come running the standard SATA 6/GBs at 7200 RPM, giving it a great read and write speeds combined with the DRAM Cache of up to 256MB.
In addition, Western Digital stands by this drive with a high industry standard of a 5-year limited manufacturer’s warranty. Besides that, the Black Series drives come in a size ranging from 500GB to 10TB of storage, giving you plenty of options to choose from.
It’s perfect for all levels of gaming, video editing, video processing, and many other professional areas that one can think of for a creative desktop computer. This is one of the only drives most gamers recommend, as well as we do for any desktop computing and even adding it to a gaming console such as an Xbox or a PlayStation.
If you’re looking for the most reliable HDD at a consumer level, the Western Digital Black Series is the way to go. You will not be disappointed, as these drives even outperform some Network Attached Storage (NAS) Drives.
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3. Western Digital Gold Enterprise
Capacity: 1 – 18TB | Interface: SATA 6 Gb/s | Cache: Up to 512MB | Spindle Speed: 7200RPM | Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF): 2 – 2.5 Million Hours | Warranty: 5 Years
REASONS TO BUY
- Great speeds
- 5-year warranty
- Budget-friendly datacenter drive
- Comes with a Helioseal technology
- Reliable
REASONS TO AVOID
- Lacks proper enterprise-level features
- Pricey for consumers
Our Rating: 9.6/10
For the first of the Enterprise Drives, we are heading back to the Western Digital Rainbow of Colors all the way to the top, as this is one of the Gold Standards in Datacenter Hard Drives – Western Digital Gold Series.
With a storage capacity from 1TB to 18TB and with a read and write speed of about 220 MB/s, they are one of the fastest drives via the SATA 6/GBs Interface – like most Enterprise Drives, they are the fastest of the large-capacity storage.
The Gold Series is considered a budget-friendly data center hard drive as it provides 2.5 million hours (about 285 years roughly) of reading and writing operations 24 hours a day 7 days a week, 365 days a year non-stop.
Western Digital has opted to put their patented HelioSeal technology in 12TB Gold Series Hard Drives and above. This HelioSeal replaces the air inside of a hard drive with helium to provide less friction for even faster read and write speeds while providing longer-lasting drives with less wear and tear.
On top of that, Western Digital offers a 5-year manufacturer’s warranty to back this enterprise drive.
The Western Digital Gold Series of Hard Drives could be used by anyone, but where they excel for tasks such as video surveillance, web hosting, and anything that’s processing a constant amount of information.
They are not the ideal solutions for a data center because of the lack of vibration technology, but they will work just fine in small to medium data centers. The Gold Series is often considered a budget-friendly data center hard drive in storage bays of up to 48 bays with long runs of cables like cloud storage.
They would also be good in Network Attached Storage (NAS) solution, although it is an expensive solution in that aspect, and we don’t recommend them as such. However, the Western Digital Gold Series is best serving the purpose of a small data center for archiving video surveillance data or multiple Livestream game video recording.
4. Western Digital Red NAS
Capacity: 1 – 14TB | Interface: SATA 6 Gb/s | Cache: Up to 256MB | Spindle Speed: 5400RPM | Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF): N/A | Warranty: 3 Years
REASONS TO BUY
- 3-year limited warranty
- Great budget NAS drive
- The perfect option for many applications
- Time-tested quality and reliability
REASONS TO AVOID
- Slower speeds
- Quite noisy
Our Rating: 9.5/10
Continuing with the rainbow of colors from Western Digital, we are now moving onto the Network Attached Storage (NAS) Drive brought to you by the Red Series.
Network Attached Storage (NAS) Drives are often designed to work in a RAID System with a single drive larger capacity storage that operates in a small environment to run 24 hours a day 7 days a week, providing you with the reliability you need.
The Red Series Drives come in with 1TB to 14TB storage capacities and are optimized to work with up to 8 drives in a RAID at a time. Although these drives have a slow spin rate of only 5400 RPM, they make up the speed when combined with 2 or more in a proper RAID or Network Attached Storage Setup.
The workload of these drives is about 2 to 3 times that of a consumer drive coming in at about 180TB per year of read and write operations. This is backed up by Western Digital 3-Year Limited Manufacturer’s Warranty.
The WD Red Series hard drives represent a budget-friendly solution for beginning a RAID solution and can be used for many applications. While not individually better than the Black Series, in a RAID system, they offer better performance and reliability, and that’s why some users prefer the Red Series over the Black.
Overall, the Red Series is perfect for a home media server, data backup, gaming, and even video editing for small to medium businesses. The Red Series is also available in a Pro Model, giving you faster speeds per drive but also coming in at a higher price.
5. Western Digital Blue
Capacity: 500GB – 6TB | Interface: SATA 6 Gb/s | Cache: Up to 256MB | Spindle Speed: 5400RPM | Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF): N/A | Warranty: 2 Years
REASONS TO BUY
- Budget-friendly
- One of the most popular consumer HDD
- Best budget drive for consumers
REASONS TO AVOID
- Only 2-year warranty
- Slower and noisy
- No more than 6TB per drive
Our Rating: 9.2/10
The most common of these consumer-level hard drives is none other than the Western Digital Blue Series of Hard Drives.
The Blue Series has a range of storage of 500GB to 6TB with a usual spin speed of 5400 RPM, making this one of the slowest drives on this list. The Western Digital Blue series has a standard SATA 6GB/s and up to 256MB of cache, which provides a small read and write boost.
There are a few of the Western Digital Blue Series drives that come in a variant of 7200 RPM, like the 1TB 7200 Version. But overall, I would simply suggest just staying away from this drive unless you’re on an extreme budget.
The Blue Series comes backed with a two-year manufacturer’s limited warranty, which does not cover data loss, just hard drive failure. However, Western Digital Warranty has an easy process for replacing your failed drive by just filing a claim.
The design of the Western Digital Blue Series is for a normal computer that uses such as applications or tasks involving office work, web browsing, and e-mails with a workload of a small office that is only open 5 days a week, 8 hours a day.
Although the Blue Series drives are not all that bad, they are not designed to be pushed beyond what they were designed for. If you barely use your computer, then yes, you can get away with using this drive for years to come where you can save the most money with this budget-friendly drive.
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6. HGST Western Digital UltraStar DC HC520
Capacity: 12TB | Interface: 12 Gb/s SAS, 6 Gb/s SATA | Cache: Up to 256MB | Spindle Speed: 7200RPM | Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF): 2.5 Million Hours | Warranty: 5 Years
REASONS TO BUY
- Excellent speeds
- Highly reliable
- Excellent for securing large amounts of data
- Features advanced features and technologies
- Best Enterprise level drive
- Comes in both SATA and SAS
REASONS TO AVOID
- Premium price
Our Rating: 9.8/10
The best of the best from HGST Western Digital is the UltraStar DC HC520 drive with 12TB of storage. This drive is not only available in standard SATA 6/GBs, but also SAS, which allows up to 12/GBs, making it really fast.
The Ultrastar series features a standard Enterprise Drive where it has the ability to read and write 24 hours a day 7 days a week, 365 days a year non-stop, 2.5 million hours (about 285 years roughly) rated lifespan and 550TB yearly workload.
Many have considered this the Western Digital Gold Plus Hard Drive because of the similarities just with more features and technology added. Speaking of those technologies found in the UltraStar, this drive features a dual-stage actuator for fewer traveling heads, vibration mitigation, and security format features.
Vibration mitigation and detection are key for large-scale datacenter to withstand the vibrations that all of them combined make. Just like the Western Digital Gold, they offer HelioSeal Technology in storage capacities above 10TB to help reduce friction giving it a longer-lasting hard drive.
This is why Western Digital backs the HGST Western Digital UltraStar DC HC520 Hard Drive with their standard 5-year limited manufacturing warranty.
Whereas the Gold Series is Western Digital Datacenter Budget Hard Drive, the UltraStar Series however is not. If you are looking for a Western Digital SAS Hard Drive, this is the only hard drive currently available in a large-capacity format.
These drives are superficially designed and used for data center storage solutions due to the format security of 512e and 4kn, which wouldn’t be read by anything else. I recommend these drives only if you are working in a large-scale data center environment or where securing a large amount of data is necessary–like cloud storage, video security, medical, legal and such due to the security technology built inside a dual firmware.
7. Seagate Exos X14
Capacity: 8 – 18TB | Interface: 12 Gb/s SAS, 6 Gb/s SATA | Cache: Up to 256MB | Spindle Speed: 7200RPM | Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF): 2.5 Million Hours | Warranty: 5 Years
REASONS TO BUY
- Comes in both SATA and SAS
- 5-year warranty
- Fast and reliable
- Comes with Healumseal and other technologies
- Excellent for securing large amounts of data
REASONS TO AVOID
- Premium price
Our Rating: 9.7/10
Seagate Exos Enterprise Hard Drive has a range of storage available from 1TB to 16TB with the upper storage capacities with Helium Seal to improve longevity and speed.
The Seagate Exos has fast read and write speeds of over 200/MBs, giving it the ability to handle things such as cloud storage and video surveillance without a problem.
Like all Enterprise Drives on the list, they are rated to run 2.5 million hours (about 285 years roughly) non-stop, 24 hours a day 7 days a week, 365 days a year in a large data center combined together with other Exos Enterprise Drives to give it matching speed, and data reliability spread across multiple hard drives.
The Exos series of enterprise hard drives also have format security such as 512e and 4Kn, which limits their compatibility. This is all backed by a best-in-class 5-year Seagate Limited Warranty, adding all up to the high level of reliability and peace of mind.
The best solution for these is large enterprise data centers combined with other hard drives to form a cloud storage solution. This is for any large business that needs a large capacity of data storage, such as medical, security, communication, or even tech companies.
Like all enterprise drives, the Exos Series makes scaling from 1 to 100 drives fairly easily without data loss using tools provided to secure and fast format the large capacities. These drives rarely fail, and the only time to replace them is when you upgrade for faster, more compatible technology or higher capacity.
8. Toshiba MG Series
Capacity: 1 – 16TB | Interface: 12 Gb/s SAS, 6 Gb/s SATA | Cache: Up to 512MB | Spindle Speed: 7200RPM | Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF): Up to 2.5 Million Hours | Warranty: 5 Years
REASONS TO BUY
- Incredibly fast HDD
- Comes in both SATA and SAS
- Vibration mitigation
- Security features
- 5-year warranty
REASONS TO AVOID
- Premium price
- 2TB less capacity than the top drives
Our Rating: 9.6/10
The last drive on our list is from Toshiba MG Series of Enterprise Hard Drives in the range of storage capacity of 4TB to 14TB with SATA 6/GBs or SAS 12/GBs in a 3.5” form factor.
Like most of the Enterprise Drives on the list, the Toshiba has the fastest sustain rate of 237 MB/s; however, currently lacks the highest capacity of 18TB like some others. If speed is your priority, then this would be your drive, but if you’re seeking the largest capacity available, then you have to go with Seagate Exos or Western Digital UltraStar.
The MG Series of hard drives also has vibration sensors and security features via firmware and 512e format ability. Like all Enterprise Drives, this one is no exception with the 550TB Workload Per Year, Read and Write 24 hours a day 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and 12.5 million hours (about 285 years roughly) rated operation time. All this is combined with an industry-standard 5-year limited manufacturer warranty.
I like the Toshiba MG Series Enterprise Hard Drive due to the speeds it offers, making it perfect for large-scale video surveillance with fewer drives.
The MG Series drives are good for pretty much any application listed above, from cloud storage, security, large-scale medical, etc., but also is best for anything that is mission-critical and time-sensitive, where milliseconds make a difference.
Perhaps in the science field where you’re crunching numbers for the weather to predict a storm. Of course, this can be done with all drives in a RAID Solution, but these drives will do the same when a fraction of a second makes a difference – like in gaming is fps, this is the business side of that.
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Final Words
Now that we have discussed 8 of the most reliable hard drives for 2023, we will go over briefly and recap each class and what makes them qualify for those classes of hard drives.
The first class we will discuss is the Consumer Level Hard Drive (Western Digital Blue and Black Series). The consumer-level hard drives are cheaply made and on a large scale, giving the cost per GB as low as it is.
We are talking about bearing, plates, and the overall quality of internal parts, which is not a bad thing. The consumer drive is designed typically to run 8 hours a day and does simple tasks such as web browsing, emailing, and some gaming.
Next would be the Network Attached Storage (NAS) Drive, such as the Western Digital Red and the IronWolf Pro from our list.
These drives are designed for operating in pairs or multiple hard drives to increase speed or single local capacity via RAID Storage Solution. These operate 24 hours 7 days a week to provide backup or speed for such things as video editing.
Last would be the Enterprise Drive (Western Digital Gold, Western Digital UltraStar, Seagate Exos, and the Toshiba MG Series) with speed and security-focused for large-scale businesses such as video security, web hosting, or cloud storage. These drives are designed to last years in a tough data center environment full of vibrations.
Vibrations make mechanical things fall apart over time, and the Enterprise Hard Drives usually have vibration mitigation technology built into it. Along with vibration technology, these drives also contain format security that is only able to read in enterprise devices, increasing the security of the data in case of theft – which does happen in data centers.
That concludes our review of these drives, and my final recommendation is the Western Digital Black Series for any level of desktop computing–you will not be disappointed.
If you’re in need of larger storage or want to build a Storage RAID or Media Server for your small business or home use, I would go with the Seagate IronWolf Pro due to the peace of mind with a better warranty.
If the largest operations are in your cards, then I would suggest no other than the Seagate Exos. Mainly because of their warranty, which is the best-in-class.
Very informative, thank you!!
Glad to be of help, have a great day!
Greetings,I am building a video-archive from a compact desktop,which looks good under or beside the TV,i have space space for 2 2.5″ HDDs in it,may U pick for me the most reliable 2.5″ HDDs(hight does not matter)?
My priority is longevity over the speed or other parameters,i have most of my videos in SD,i want an archive drive,which will not die soon.
Thanx.
Hey Sabina!
I am assuming you don’t want to spend too much on it and with that in mind, I would recommend you either the WD Black (number 2 on the list)–that one is a bit pricier at around $70 per TB but offers great performance overall (they also make them in a 2.5” format and have longer warranty). Or, you can get a Seagate BarraCuda (Compute). That one is noticeably slower, but you’ll find it more than satisfying for your needs, and it only costs around $40 per TB.
Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions!
Richard
Thanx for Your reply.
WD Black tops at 1TB in 2.5″ form factor,i would like to install 2TB drives or greater,i am sorry,i forgot to write the capacity too into my previous comment,I was low on time that moment.
So in 2.5″ 2TB+ which is the best in longevity?
Barracuda Compute?
Thanx.
Hi again, Sabina!
Yes, for consumer purposes and your specific use, the Barracuda Compute should be more than adequate.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Richard
Hi there,
I would like your recommendation for the most/highly reliable HDD for 3D rendering (I use DAZ) images and animations. Minimum capacity 10TB. Thank you!
Hey Jerome,
From experience, I’d definitely recommend an SSD, something like the Samsung 980 Pro if you have the money. Your scenes will be loading much faster compared to a traditional HDD.
If you’re looking for a backup drive, then any of the drives we reviewed in the article will be great–It only depends on how much money are you willing to spend on it and what configuration are you going with. For your specific use, I’d go with the WD Black–It offers great speeds, 10 TB of storage, and a 5-year warranty. Plus, it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Richard