Project Hard Drive Recommendations

This isn't an official endorsement, but I'm partial to Western Digital Blacks. I've run them into the ground and just RMA'd the failed units under warranty. It's never been an issue with WD. 

Thanks for the advice.
 
I've ordered a 2TB Western Digital Black ordered from Scan and will arrive on Thursday. It's not worth risking it. My second backup is 78% complete, so all should be fine.
 
I mentioned in another post that I was experiencing dropouts and glitches, it's likely that this is the cause. 
 
Thanks again,
~ Tony

kitekrazy1
All 3 of my Black drivers failed within the first 6 months.

Imagine the odds of that happening.  At the opposite end, I've never had a hard drive fail in 30 years.
I only stop using them when the interface changes.
 
I've been running three Blacks all day long for the last couple of years with no problems.
 

I just bought and installed two new drives: a 1 TB rotational (7200) drive for projects and a 1 TB SSD for large sample libraries.  The SSD is a Samsung Pro.
 
I find spinning drives fine for projects but unusable for string and orchestral libraries and the SSD changed my life. The bad thing about the SSD is that it cost around $650 (ordered through Amazon) and it needed a bracket to fit the slot plus an extra cable.  (In fact, I had to use two brackets: one to convert 5.25" to 3.5" and another inside that to covert 3.5" to 2.5".  Hopefully you can find a single bracket solution.)  The brackets and cables are cheap and available at Tiger Direct and other places.
 
String libraries that were unusable before (because they stream from disc) work great now; and projects that use sample libraries load extremely fast.  Even libraries I could use before but that had slow load times are now on the SSD and productivity is way up.
 
Some say write time to an SSD is slower so I don't know if you would want it for projects.  I had not had enough write experience to validate that.  Transferring the libraries to the SsD went fairly fast, though, so I didn't notice a write speed issue.
 
In the past, I could cook and eat lunch while a Vienna Dimension Pro matrix was loading, and even after that, it didn't work well.  I had actually uninstalled Hollywood Strings because performance was so bad.
 
I know you specifically asked about projects but thought some of this may help you or others.  Even though they cost a lot, my next PC will have two 1 TB SSDs.
 
I also back up all projects to an external drive (e.g., Passport).

I just saw this news today and figured it would be worthwhile to post here: http://techreport.com/news/27697/latest-backblaze-reliability-data-shows-carnage-for-3tb-seagate-drives
 
Looks like the large size Seagates are leading the pack in failures. 

Seth Kellogg [Cakewalk]
I just saw this news today and figured it would be worthwhile to post here: http://techreport.com/news/27697/latest-backblaze-reliability-data-shows-carnage-for-3tb-seagate-drives
 
Looks like the large size Seagates are leading the pack in failures. 

That article pegs one model of the 3TB Barricuda (st3000dm001), so is a bit misleading. I can only speculate as to "why" but failures at such a high rate (which is atrocious) is often due to dielectric breakdown inside the head... almost like a lower data rate (5900rpm) head was used because it "fit the bill" without proper thermal stress testing (again, speculation, not "fact"). The data rate of that particular drive is pretty high on the HDD listing (#17 of 880), so thermal stress seems a probable factor.

after hassles at work with them (note to self, check what brand/model, it's about a year old, we run vmware instances off them daily) i'm put off ssds right now; the speed benefit (is there any other benefit?) is still outside the cost/reliability/capacity/worthwhile intersect for me

I do not think that it is higher capacity, per se, since media is pretty much outsourced and common to most drives (which was typically 2-platter or 4-platter variations). The heads are designed to run at incredibly high temps (15 years ago it was ~255C/500F - which is damn hot), and data rate is the prime contributor to heat (especially write speeds). There is no air flow through the case (making most heat transfer conductive only), so higher capacity does have some credence as far as a 2-platter (4 head) versus a 4-platter (8 head) drive (but actual "capacity" depends on the media).
 
Quick comment to Greeny's post... the most stressful events to a HDD are startup (unparking the heads) and shutdown (parking the heads)... if a HDD is acting up but running, it is best to backup to an external HDD (i.e. do not shut it off). A HDD head actually flies 1-2 microinches from the surface of the disk (this is why they are sealed in a clean room environment, as a simple molecule of cigarette smoke can tear the write head off).

Greeny

pwalpwal
after hassles at work with them (note to self, check what brand/model, it's about a year old, we run vmware instances off them daily) i'm put off ssds right now; the speed benefit (is there any other benefit?) is still outside the cost/reliability/capacity/worthwhile intersect for me

I have two corsair SSDs, both using sandforce controllers both have been nothing but fast and reliable for me. I can only speak from my own experience. One is fairly new but the other is well over 18 months old now and still going strong. I too have heard some terror storys with some other brands, kingston being one that comes to mind for some reason, I heard the cheaper OCZ ones were a bit dodgy too but for me corsairs = happy greeny.
 
No doubt they are expensive compared to a mechanical drive but when your mechanical drive dies thats it it is dead and there aint a lot you can do, at least with a SSD the data is safe.
 
EDIT: Other benefit is silence that's about all, but the speed benefit is significant, I was suprised to find out just how much of a bottleneck mech drives are in a modern PC.

Is less heat generated by the SSD's. That would be a reasonable benefit too.