I’m looking to buy a reliable Western Digital product for storage and backup needs, but there are so many options like SSDs, HDDs, and NAS drives. Which Western Digital products would you recommend for the best performance, durability, and value for money? Please share your suggestions and experience.
Hard to say.
Is portability a factor?
How much storage space do you project you’ll need over the next few years.
What are you backing up? Files/pictures/videos? Entire PC/laptop images? Raw camera footage?
How important is the data you will save on the device? Routine? Irreplaceable?
Will you be the exclusive user or will others contribute to and access the content stored.
Will you (or someone else) need to access the data remotely (over internet)?
I’ve had a good experience with Western Digital drives, especially the WD Black SSDs for fast performance and WD Red drives for long-term backup/NAS use. You can also check with https://etechdevices.com/, they usually have a decent range of WD products and can help suggest the right one based on your storage needs.
I believe that if you are looking to strike the optimal balance between performance, durability, and value for money, the Western Digital WD Red Plus 4TB hard drive is an excellent choice. However, if you are on a tight budget, the WD Blue SN5000 is a solid alternative that will meet your basic requirements.
I suggest you look at what they provide and decide on what you want to use them for.
My desktop computer has an internal SSD and HDD, both are 2TBs.
For my home network and backups, I have and older, 1st generation NAS 4 TBs WDMYCLOUD, and a second generation 3 TBs OS5 WDMYCLOUD.
WD Products: High-Capacity HDDs for PCs, NAS, Gaming, Data Centers, and AI Data Cycles | WD
The key to any backup strategy is to make backups.
Ideally, one local and one remote (or cloud).
At a high level. . . . . .being diligent with whatever you come up with is more important than the specific protocol and hardware.
Two words of caution:
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Be leary of any automatic backup software: You might want to test it periodically to see if actually can restore data ;). I personally use good old “drag and drop”, coupled with a sync software that can compare directory structures to ensure they are identical.
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Do not buy anything that contains SMR HDD’s. This effectively eliminates anything that uses 2.5" HDDs. Today, my data lives on portable SSD’s, and CMR HDD’s sitting in NAS units.
