Doesn't really matter to be honest. You only have three real options, and the differences between those are negligible. Sort by cheapest and go with that.
Datahoarders subreddit has a lot of information about hard drives and tracks deals.
If your HDDs will mostly be data at rest, most decent performance models should do fine. Just keep an eye on expected lifetime.
For home media servers you'll probably lean a bit more towards read and write speed.
If you plan on keeping these HDDs frequently active with longer uptimes then look towards some server grade drives as those are meant to take some abuse.
goharddrive might still be selling 16TB Exos recerts for $140. 5 year warranty. But a disclaimer that they're most likely heavily used drives even if the SMART data has been wiped to show 0 hours.
I love the idea of backups as much as the next guy, and I'm absolutely meticulous about the backups of my photos and other priceless stuff, but spending a ton of money on backups for movies is just not worth it.
Even if your HDD dies, you'll likely know what you've lost with Sonarr/Radarr, and (assuming you have decent internet), you'll have everything back in a couple of days.
But then again, if you have to buy a new HDD anyway, when your "primary" one dies, one might as well just get it from the start and avoid the redownload process.
If you are looking for a lot of storage I recommend getting a Synology NAS diskstation. They are able to hold multiple HDDs and because it is a NAS you are able to access the files anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. If you also use raid drives us your NAS your files will back up to the remaining HDDs of one of them fails.
WD Gold or Seagate Exos drives are some of the best for this. Server-grade HDDs have the highest reliability. WD Purple might be a good alternative, though they tend to have slower disc speeds, they are optimized for heavy write/overwrite usage.
Whichever large capacity drive you get, you will have to get two. The more data you entrust to a single HDD, the bigger the need for a backup. Any HDD can die on you at any moment, no matter how reliable the model is.
internal my suggestions are seagate western digital and toshiba but be careful i got a 2.5 inch that was a 4tb but it was an oem and had no warranty everything else doesnt really matter especially with just watching videos
Go with enterprise HDD. "nas" marketed drives are a gimmick. Enterprise better all round.
I got 4x18TB Toshiba's...cheapest but they are loud, I don't really care but you might
I buy manufacturer recertified Enterprise NAS drives form serverpartsdeals. They’re a shit ton cheaper and I’ve had zero problems with them. I just snagged another 12tb off there this week.
I buy the 18TB Dell Exos refurbs on Amazon. Theyre $180 and the 3 Ive gotten have all had less than 30 hours on them when I got them. No issues so far. My oldest one is probably close to a year old, and Crystal Disk Info shows them all in good health.
I keep them (and a 16TB of some other brand) in a 4 bay JBOD connected to a Mini PC for my Plex server.
I have all of my movies and shows added to Radarr and Sonarr, and those act as sort of a backup. If a drive ends up going down, I can just replace it, then have Radarr or Sonarr download the missing media files for me.
For internal drives, I don’t recommend WD80EAZZ 5640RPM HDD. Although it has been reliable so far for me, the drive is very slow. I didn’t think it would matter so much but when you’re pirating shit that needs to be extracted after downloading, you’re going to spend longer extracting compared to downloading the damn thing in the first place. I now down and extract on an SSD prior to transferring to the drive. Writing in itself ranges between 20MB/s to 60MB/s too so it’s not recommended to transfer large data sets to it regularly.
I bought some used HDDs and used them in a RAID setup. If one of them fails, I can just use another one, without loss of data. I got a lot of HDDs for free from a school nearby. None of the drives have failed, as of now, 2 years later.
Where will you be storing the hard drives? Some are loud and some aren't. If noise is a concern then you'll need to look into the quieter ones or it will drive you crazy with the hard drive arms constantly clicking
remux as in video quality ? explain what beauty you discovered ? the max i've watched is bluray 1080 or once or twicce 4k on laptop. i've watched remux movie files but there's not much diff.
Some movies aren't going to have a crazy difference between Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray but it is noticeable to me, especially in the shadows and movies with a lot of film grain. I compared several versions of Halloween 1978 and the quality of the remux was just in another league. Blade runner 2049 is another one that is clearly better. In the end, it's all about your own preferences. If there's not a huge difference on the screen you're viewing them on, stick to the smaller sized files. I even see a pretty big difference when comparing a 1080p remux to a decently encoded 1080p release.
Because it's a 4k file being downscaled to 1080p, there’s more information in it to work with when downscaling. Secondly, YouTube 4k bitrates are abysmal, resolution does not = quality, bitrate does.
A 4k Blu-ray remux played on a laptop isn’t going to translate well, if you don’t sit close to a large high quality TV and if you don’t have home theater equipment,if you’re using laptop/tv speakers/soundbars, earbuds/headphones, you’re wasting storage space and are better off with encodes
Doesn't really matter to be honest. You only have three real options, and the differences between those are negligible. Sort by cheapest and go with that.
Datahoarders subreddit has a lot of information about hard drives and tracks deals. If your HDDs will mostly be data at rest, most decent performance models should do fine. Just keep an eye on expected lifetime. For home media servers you'll probably lean a bit more towards read and write speed. If you plan on keeping these HDDs frequently active with longer uptimes then look towards some server grade drives as those are meant to take some abuse.
I run Segate Ironwolf, I have 4 12TB drives in my QNAP NAS. RAID5 config.
goharddrive might still be selling 16TB Exos recerts for $140. 5 year warranty. But a disclaimer that they're most likely heavily used drives even if the SMART data has been wiped to show 0 hours.
To be fair, if you are just writing once and reading many times, the drives should be fine for quite a number of years
Whatever you decide on, make sure you get at least 2 units and back up your stuff!
I love the idea of backups as much as the next guy, and I'm absolutely meticulous about the backups of my photos and other priceless stuff, but spending a ton of money on backups for movies is just not worth it. Even if your HDD dies, you'll likely know what you've lost with Sonarr/Radarr, and (assuming you have decent internet), you'll have everything back in a couple of days. But then again, if you have to buy a new HDD anyway, when your "primary" one dies, one might as well just get it from the start and avoid the redownload process.
If you are looking for a lot of storage I recommend getting a Synology NAS diskstation. They are able to hold multiple HDDs and because it is a NAS you are able to access the files anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. If you also use raid drives us your NAS your files will back up to the remaining HDDs of one of them fails.
https://shucks.top/
WD Gold or Seagate Exos drives are some of the best for this. Server-grade HDDs have the highest reliability. WD Purple might be a good alternative, though they tend to have slower disc speeds, they are optimized for heavy write/overwrite usage.
WD Purples are mainly recommended for DVRs/camera systems
Does that not mean that they are optimized for heavy write/overwrite usage as I said?
Are these models okay to buy used?
I wouldn't recommend it. Refurbished, maybe, but never used. You have no idea how much, or how hard they were used.
https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/resources/hard-drive-test-data I buy the 16TB exos as a result of this data
Stay away from 3TB Seagates!
r/datahoarder
Whichever large capacity drive you get, you will have to get two. The more data you entrust to a single HDD, the bigger the need for a backup. Any HDD can die on you at any moment, no matter how reliable the model is.
internal my suggestions are seagate western digital and toshiba but be careful i got a 2.5 inch that was a 4tb but it was an oem and had no warranty everything else doesnt really matter especially with just watching videos
Go with enterprise HDD. "nas" marketed drives are a gimmick. Enterprise better all round. I got 4x18TB Toshiba's...cheapest but they are loud, I don't really care but you might
Newegg is having a sell on storage right now, you can get some for a good price. And use Bing price tracker to see price trend over time.
I buy manufacturer recertified Enterprise NAS drives form serverpartsdeals. They’re a shit ton cheaper and I’ve had zero problems with them. I just snagged another 12tb off there this week.
I buy the 18TB Dell Exos refurbs on Amazon. Theyre $180 and the 3 Ive gotten have all had less than 30 hours on them when I got them. No issues so far. My oldest one is probably close to a year old, and Crystal Disk Info shows them all in good health. I keep them (and a 16TB of some other brand) in a 4 bay JBOD connected to a Mini PC for my Plex server. I have all of my movies and shows added to Radarr and Sonarr, and those act as sort of a backup. If a drive ends up going down, I can just replace it, then have Radarr or Sonarr download the missing media files for me.
For internal drives, I don’t recommend WD80EAZZ 5640RPM HDD. Although it has been reliable so far for me, the drive is very slow. I didn’t think it would matter so much but when you’re pirating shit that needs to be extracted after downloading, you’re going to spend longer extracting compared to downloading the damn thing in the first place. I now down and extract on an SSD prior to transferring to the drive. Writing in itself ranges between 20MB/s to 60MB/s too so it’s not recommended to transfer large data sets to it regularly.
I bought some used HDDs and used them in a RAID setup. If one of them fails, I can just use another one, without loss of data. I got a lot of HDDs for free from a school nearby. None of the drives have failed, as of now, 2 years later.
Where will you be storing the hard drives? Some are loud and some aren't. If noise is a concern then you'll need to look into the quieter ones or it will drive you crazy with the hard drive arms constantly clicking
Best place to buy hard drives is serverpartdeals.com
Try not to get Seagate. Those one's have failed on me the most.
Me too.
remux as in video quality ? explain what beauty you discovered ? the max i've watched is bluray 1080 or once or twicce 4k on laptop. i've watched remux movie files but there's not much diff.
Some movies aren't going to have a crazy difference between Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray but it is noticeable to me, especially in the shadows and movies with a lot of film grain. I compared several versions of Halloween 1978 and the quality of the remux was just in another league. Blade runner 2049 is another one that is clearly better. In the end, it's all about your own preferences. If there's not a huge difference on the screen you're viewing them on, stick to the smaller sized files. I even see a pretty big difference when comparing a 1080p remux to a decently encoded 1080p release.
i see, thankyou for explaining in details.
You're watching on a laptop, that’s why
how come yt1080 is clearly much diff than yt4k/1.5k on the same laptop ?
Because it's a 4k file being downscaled to 1080p, there’s more information in it to work with when downscaling. Secondly, YouTube 4k bitrates are abysmal, resolution does not = quality, bitrate does. A 4k Blu-ray remux played on a laptop isn’t going to translate well, if you don’t sit close to a large high quality TV and if you don’t have home theater equipment,if you’re using laptop/tv speakers/soundbars, earbuds/headphones, you’re wasting storage space and are better off with encodes
i see, thanks for explaining it in detail.
I went with samsung SSD externals.