In short: I’m an IT guy and I find this drive highly recommended for local storage at home. I have many Barracuda Seagate disks of an old models and very happy with their performance and durability and they serve me for years… If you don’t like the idea of storing your precious data in the cloud (safe and sound as it may seem) then managing a local storage is the way to go. And these Barracuda Segate 4TB drives are great for that purpose as they have enough capacity for most users while their price tag is affordable.
Keep in mind that having local disks require maintenance, and that hard drives do fail when they wear out – it’s not IF they fail but more of WHEN, as they all die eventually; even the enterprise level ones. So if you consider the route of a local storage \ backup server then you’d better make a backup plan in advanced for redundancy – if you only need 1 drive for your data then buy 2 drives. If you need 2 drives then go with 4. And so on… The rule is to always have an exact copy of your data in 2 separate (physical) places, either by manual copying between disks, or for the advanced users between us to setting up a RAID 1 array for automatic clone (mirror) of one disk to the other; even if it costs somewhat more (if not doubled) at first, in the long run when one of your precious disks fail you’d be very happy that you had a backup. So besides of the loss of the actual disk, your data is safe and sound since it is stored on the second disk you aimed in advanced for this very scenario. And in such scenario it’s a good time to go shopping right away for a new drive to replace the one that failed, since you no longer have redundancy once one had failed. And when it arrives don’t challenge your fate and waste time - go ahead and copy all your data from the backup drive to it to have redundancy once again.
My own story and experience: I have many Barracuda Seagate disks. About 10 actually. From my experience with mechanical drives and with Seagate brand in particular is that they *last for about 7-10 years. And when we speak on mechanical hard drives it's quite good. I had an old Seagate disk I stored data on, which was about 7-10 years old, and it failed about 2 weeks ago. I'm very glad that I spent some extra when I bought it and purchased a second one to serve me as a backup. So besides of the actual disk that died I didn't lose any data. This one came to replace it and I’m writing this review while it copies my data from the backup drive. I trust that it will give me another 7-10 years of quiet before it fails too. I'd recommend to check your disks health every now and then and to pay attention for any "clicking" sound from your computer case - even after my rich experience as an IT guy I fell for that very scenario because I was too busy to open my computer case and check where the clicking sound had come from, and thought that it's just from a dying fan... If I was paying more attention and take responsibility I'd probably replaced the disk before it finally died. There are many free tools out there that you can use to check your drives health and to let you know in advanced when a disk shows bad signs and needs a replacement. I'm using CrystalDiskInfo and I set it to launch at startup. So every time I restart my machine it pops-up and shows the actual disks health.
*Hard drives will last depending on the user's usage. If you're only storing files on them for accessing later then they will more likely last longer. On the other hand if it's your "scratch disk" for video editing or you create and delete huge amount of data on it on a daily basis and the drive is under a heavy load then it may last less. It also depends on the environment the hard drive is located and the airflow in your computer case. Here are some tips as an IT guy: carefully clean your computer case interior from dust with air spray cans or oil-free dental compressor every 3-4 months. Make sure all fans in your case are working correctly – ventilated computer case will make your entire system and disks to last longer and to perform better; computers don’t like heat. Don’t keep computers in cabinets that have no airflow from the front and back. Don’t force shutdown your computer by holding the power switch unless it’s your last result (if let’s say it hanged or crashed). If you take these tips into consideration then your hard drives will last longer.
| RAM | 6 GB |
|---|---|
| Hard Drive | 2 TB Mechanical Hard Disk |
