Hard Disk Review

[Quincey Homer]

Traditionalhard drives have a circular disk (platter) that stores your data - as the disk spins, the read-write arm reads data on the disc or writes data to it as it spins. Solid state drives (SSDs) have no moving parts, instead using NAND (Negative-AND) flash memory - the more memory chips an SSD has, the more storage capacity.

Choosing the best hard drive for your storage can be a bit of a juggling act, with performance, capacity, and cost all being critical parts of the equation to consider. A traditional hard drive may not be capable of matching the speed of the best SSDs, but they tend to have the edge when it comes to their generous storage capacities and cost-effectiveness.

For a more budget-friendly alternative, options such as the Western Digital Blue Desktop offer an excellent long-term storage solution at a competitive price. Ideal for any kind of PC build where budget is an issue, they offer unbeatable value for money, particularly with their larger drives.

Whatever your storage needs, our comprehensive guide has been carefully curated to accommodate your every requirement and crafted with the benefit of our years of experience testing hard drives of all kinds. So dive into our recommendations, and let us help you find the best hard drive for your needs and budget.

While you can get capacities as small as 500GB, the 2TB model hits a sweet spot by balancing high performance and affordability. Since this drive combines 7,200rpm platters and high density data, so computers outfitted with this drive will be able to read data as fast as you'll get with an HDD.

And with Seagate's 5-year limited warranty, you can expect to get a lot of durability out of these hard drives. They aren't going to be nearly as fast as a NAND SSD, unfortunately, but with options of up to 14TB, you just can't beat the capacity an HDD like the Seagate BarraCuda affords you.

Western Digital is about as established an HDD brand as it gets, and even today, it is putting out incredibly solid hard drives for long term storage at great prices. Nowhere is this more the case than with its line of WD Blue hard drives.

The SeaGate FireCuda is the best hybrid hard drive on the market. It can fit up to 2TB of data, and then its 8GB of solid state cache storage learns which data you use most, so that you can access it quickly. That speed boost is even sweeter when you consider that this drive spins at 7,200rpm, so you're getting the best of both worlds.

These drives are capable of running at a fast 7,200rpm spin rate 24/7 without having to worry about early drive failure, and if you have one of the best NAS devices for your business or home, the Seagate IronWolf NAS really is your best bet.

With up to 20TB drive capacities, you will get more storage than just about anywhere else with the IronWolf NAS drives from Seagate, which makes these especially good for long-term video and multimedia storage. That said, this isn't the kind of drive you'll want to use for day-to-day app and file storage, as random access speeds on a 20TB HDD is about as horrible as you'd imagine it is.

The WD My Book strikes an amazing balance of storage and price, offering enough room for massive game libraries. Running on USB 3.0, it may not be quite as fast as an internal drive upgrade, but it will run games and offer more storage at a cheaper rate.

Best of all, because this is an external hard drive, you can take all your favorite games on the go. Or, if you're working on a major project that requires a certain degree of portability, the Western Digital My Book is also a great work storage device in a pinch thanks to its large capacity.

Testing hard drives isn't that much different than testing an SSD. Typically, this involves running file copy tests to measure the transfer times of very large files and folders, but it also includes testing the hard drives with benchmarking tools like CrystalDiskMark.

Named by the CTA as a CES 2020 Media Trailblazer for his science and technology reporting, John specializes in all areas of computer science, including industry news, hardware reviews, PC gaming, as well as general science writing and the social impact of the tech industry.

1. On a number of recent projects, I found myself wishing I had more than 16 or 24-tracks of tape at my disposal. With more than 24-tracks of recording capability, you can try out multiple takes of solos or vocal parts, you can use lots of room mics or mic everything in stereo, and you can record more sounds to add subtlety to a mix. (If you're limited to 24 outputs during the mix, you need to submix or comp, but that's a non-destructive no-brainer on most digital recorders.)

2. I prefer to mix on a fully automated digital desk. Once you've gotten used to mixing with full automation, it's hard to go back. (The digital vs. analog debate rages on, but having camped on both sides of the fence myself, I can say that my Sony DMX-R100 console sounds phenomenal.) So it only made sense to add a digital recorder to my setup. Instead of performing an A/D conversion with each pass of the analog tape during a mix, I do it once to the MX-2424, and then mix off the MX-2424. My analog machines get much less wear and tear from shuttling the tape back and forth for precise automation moves. And I no longer need to wait for the tape to rewind, fast forward, and loop when I'm tweaking a part.

3. I realized that I needed a portable solution for transferring tracks between commercial studios and my own studio. I wasn't ready to plop down the big bucks for a 24-output Pro Tools system, nor did I want to introduce a permanent computer into my living room. But I wanted something that was Pro Tools compatible not only for ease of transfer to/from other studios, but also for the inevitable purchase of Pro Tools for the "real" studio I'm now building.

There are other 24-bit digital multitracks available. iZ RADAR24, Mackie HDR24/96, various Roland combos, Fostex D-2424, and Alesis ADAT HD24 all come to mind. With so many capable competitors, why did I decide on the Tascam offering?

The MX-2424 costs less than the RADAR24 when configured similarly. (This price difference disappears if you factor in the need for an external computer if you want to do any serious editing on the MX-2424. RADAR24 does not require an external computer because it's a stand-alone recorder and editor). The Mackie was vaporware at the time, and its file system is proprietary. I needed full 24-in, 24-out I/O, which no Roland supports. Likewise, the Fostex doesn't have 24 analog inputs. And the Alesis, which was still vaporware - but possibly worth waiting for due to its extremely attractive price - lacks two crucial features: virtual tracks and onboard editing.

The MX-2424 has a number of other things going for it, some of which the competitors have and some of which are unique to the Tascam unit, like internal and external storage/backup options, ethernet transfer of audio files, visual track editing with an external computer, importing and exporting of tracks in the standard audio formats for Mac or Windows, cascade ability for more tracks, multiple undos, SMPTE and MTC support, and automated punching.

For a full list of its capabilities, check out the official MX-2424 website at: www.tascam.com/ products/mx2424. While you're there, check out one of the other reasons why I decided on the MX-2424, the MX-2424 Online Forum on Tascam's BBS: www.tascambbs.com. Here you'll find posts from other users of the MX-2424 and from employees of Tascam. As a regular reader and poster, I can tell you that Tascam's main MX-2424 representative in this forum, who goes by the username "Jim", is attentive and extremely efficient at answering all queries about the MX-2424. The unit being such a new product with a still-evolving operating system, the forum is a godsend for those of us using the MX-2424 to its limits. (The user manual is a few months behind the OS development, so it's horribly out of date.) This forum came in handy when I got to take the MX-2424 through its paces recently, using just about every one if its features on a two- month-long project that spanned four studios. The band recorded basics and some of the overdubs onto a 2-inch 24-track at a commercial recording studio. These tracks were uploaded to Pro Tools 24 MIX for editing. The tracks were then written to CDR as Pro Tools session files. At a second studio, I transferred these tracks from a Pro Tools Digi 001 system to the MX-2424 via ADAT optical. (An OS with ethernet transfer was not yet available for the MX-2424.) Over the next couple of weeks, we recorded additional tracks in my living room studio onto the MX-2424. Some of the tracks required over 50 takes. With judicious use of the Tascam's undo button and its virtual tracking features, I was able to capture all of the many takes and comp them down to single tracks per mic. With both my laptop (running Windows 98) and my MX-2424 connected to my inhouse ethernet network, I used the included ViewNet application running on the laptop to cut, move, and combine the various tracks visually. I also drew in precise fade-ins, fade-outs, and crossfades. (By the way, not once did the MX-2424 or the ViewNet software hiccup or crash - they performed flawlessly.)

On a few of the tracks, I needed to do some extremely precise edits. By this time, ethernet transfer was available as an OS upgrade. So I downloaded and installed the new software on the MX-2424 and did a high-speed network transfer of the audio files to my laptop. Using SEK'D Samplitude 2496 and a Digigram VXpocket PCMCIA card for hi-fidelity monitoring, I accomplished the edits on my laptop while visiting a friend in New York. Upon my return to Boston, I transferred the files back to the MX-2424 and dropped them into their original positions. Couldn't have been easier.

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