The best performing mechanical hard drives on the market

No one doubts that even the oldest SATA 3 SSDs are several integers faster than any mechanical hard drive. However, when you need massive storage, there is no choice but to continue to resort to this type of device as the prices for SSDs above 2-4TB capacity are still high. quite prohibitive. However, when you want to buy a mechanical drive, you are interested to see what performance it will deliver, and for that we are here to show you below which are the best 3.5 inch drives based on their performance.

The best mechanical hard drives based on their performance

The classification that we will show you below is not based on the manufacturer’s technical data, as these are theoretical and under ideal conditions and then when we install them in our PCs we rarely have the same figures. Rather, the data is pulled from the UserBenchmark database, where the users themselves upload their benchmarks and from these the performance data is pulled, so this is not only real but also reliable as it does not are not taken from a single unit, but are the average of several units.

Western digital gold

WD Gold hard drives are part of their professional product line, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t accessible to the mainstream market and we can certainly find them easily in stores. Its price is higher than the rest of the drives from both the brand and other manufacturers, but its performance is also the best of all since it reaches 156 MB / s of reading and, eye to the data, 198 MB / s of writing in real tests.

In addition to this, this series of drives has an extended warranty, high durability, 128MB cache memory and are designed for 24 × 7 operation in data centers, so they are also intended to be used in NAS or in PCs that require constant high performance from them. They are your best option across the board … except for the price.

WD Black

The WD Black family of hard drives have been around for a long time, and they’ve also been the top performers in the performance rankings for a long time. Right now they’re the second fastest drive, with up to 160MB / s read and 198MB / s write, but although they perform slightly better than the WD Gold, we have them. put later as these are still desktop drives so they don’t have as many IOPSs and aren’t ready to run 24/7 or high workloads. Of course, they are generally cheaper.

WD Red Pro NAS

The WD Red family of hard drives is the best seller of NAS because they offer a good balance of performance, capacity and price. The WD Red Pro series of NAS is the variant of these drives with CMR technology (instead of SMR), so although they share the same approximate performance, they are less of a problem in RAID systems and their performance does not deteriorate. not with prolonged and demanding use.

According to UserBenchmark data, these drives hit 171MB / s read and 176MB / s actual write, so we’ll have sustained and consistent performance at a fairly reasonable price. In addition, this Pro family has a 5-year warranty instead of the usual 2 years.

HGST DeskStar NAS

According to the data that BackBlaze releases each year, HGST drives are the most reliable in the sense that they are damaged the least. This HGST DeskStar NAS series is also designed for 24 × 7 operation, so its durability is more than guaranteed, while delivering more than decent performance with up to 167MB / s read and 173MB / s write.

Hitachi (HGST) UltraStar He8

Hitachi’s Ultrastar He8 series is the brand’s enterprise line, which means increased reliability, durability, warranty and bandwidth in the form of IOPS to support heavy workloads. These discs are also sealed with helium, which greatly increases their longevity. These drives also offer very stable and fast sustained performance, reaching a read speed of 160MB / s and a write speed of 162MB / s.

Seagate IronWolf NAS

The IronWolf family was Seagate’s alternative to the famous WD Reds, and they have been shown to have superior durability and reliability according to data from BackBlaze. Note that they are a bit slower with speeds of 161MB / s read and 159MB / s write, but are still among the fastest hard drives on the market.

Western Digital Velociraptor

In the past, WD Velociraptors have been launched as the fastest alternative that existed before the arrival of SSDs. Interestingly, we’re looking at hard drives that actually have a 2.5-inch form factor but the manufacturer has packed them into a massive 3.5-inch passive heatsink.

They spin at 10,000 rpm, they are noisy and their maximum capacity is currently 1TB, but one cannot ignore in a performance classification that they are still among the fastest with 174MB / s read and 159 MB / s in writing (yes we compare that with the disks of the time which barely reached 90 MB / s, it was certainly a revolution).

Toshiba P300

In this case, we are faced with one of the most reasonable drives on the market, because although they are neither the fastest nor the most reliable, they are the ones that have the best price per GB in the market and, even so, they maintain a good performance rate with up to 158MB / s read and 158MB / s write, so if you are looking for a drive with good performance and capacity while spending the bare minimum , this is your best option.

Of course, keep in mind that these mechanical drives aren’t designed for 24 × 7 operation or heavy workloads, but are meant to serve as mass storage as a secondary drive to a PC.