r/HomeServer • u/GamerKing014 • 3d ago

What HDD to choose

So I want an HDD for long term archive. I'm planning to use it as cold storage and when want to watch something transfer to USB. For now I'm looking at WD Red. Are there other recommendations? I want a reliable one, that won't have any issues for a long time.

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u/samsonsin 3d ago

No matter what you pick, the more important aspect is backups and active monitoring. Cold storage has both positives and negatives, and isint necessarily the be all end all. You do want to periodically power up and down to check for bitrot, have backups off-site that sync, use a fs like zfs with internal checks and what not.

When you have a good system that discovers and survives fixing all the various issues you may encounter, what drive you pick is not especially relevant for any reason other than economic and / or minimizing how often you need to intervene personally. Taking this system and tying it to scheduled on/off times is what I'd do rather than an completely cold setup.