Original Title: Low level data hoarder here. I have about $70 in Best Buy rewards that will expire soon that I want to put towards 1 drive. What's the best overall 8-12 GB hard drive available at a decent Price per TB? It will be going in my desktop computer's hard drive bay.
I am in desperate need of MORE hard drive space. In the past few months I have been needing to constantly delete old files to make up for more relevant, current media (movies/games, etc.). I do not have a NAS. I am putting this drive in my desktop computer's hard drive bay. I am not going to even RAID for at least 6 months. I currently only have a few 1 or 2 TB drives that are each over 95% full. I want my first "BIG" hard drive to be as good as possible for the time being. Things I am looking for in particular are:
- for it to be on the quieter side
- For it to be easily shuckable (if it is an external drive)
- CMR instead of SMR (if possible at this storage size)
- (Optional) not sure how to word this, but in the event I set up a NAS or RAID in the future, for it to "work well with others".
Again, this drive will be in the same room as where I use my computer, about 2 feet away from my head, so I would prefer it to be on the quieter side of hard drive noise levels. The computer will be on for anywhere from 4-8 hours every 24 hour period. It does not need to hold intensive files like video games (I have an SSD for those), but rather file types such as pdfs, mp3s, mp4s, mkvs, etc. I can possibly price match the drive to get a better deal, as long as the hard drive is available on other retailers.
My current top consideration is this: WD - Red Plus 8TB NAS Internal Hard Drive currently on sale for $169.99 ($21.24 a TB). I understand it is meant for NAS but I'm under the impression that just means it can work alone OR with other drives, vs. non-NAS advertised drives that are more limited. Also I am willing to sacrifice the legendary "sub $15 a TB" price considering it isn't Black Friday or any other big sale of the year.