The mechanical hard drives are still very much alive in the market, despite the rise of the SSD for outstanding performance these devices are on the market as they continue maintaining the best ratio of price per GB of storage, thus being ideal for storage massive. If you have in mind to buy a new 3.5-inch mechanical drive , then you will be interested in reading on because we have made a ranking of the best 3.5 ″ drives based on their performance .
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 resorting to this type of device since the prices of SSDs above 2-4 TB capacity are still quite prohibitive. However, when you want to buy a mechanical disk, you want to see what performance it will deliver, and for that we are here, to show you below which are the best 3.5-inch disks according to their performance.
The best mechanical hard drives according to their performance
The classification that we are going to show you below is not based on the manufacturer’s technical data, since these are theoretical and in ideal conditions and then when we install them in our PCs we rarely have the same figures. On the contrary, the data is extracted from the UserBenchmark database, where the users themselves upload their benchmarks and from these the performance data is extracted, so these are not only real but are also reliable because they are not extracted of a single unit, but are the average of many units.
Western Digital Gold
Western Digital Gold 2 TB
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EUR
123.57
WD Gold hard drives belong to their range of business products, but that does not mean that they are not accessible to the consumer market and we can certainly find them easily in stores. Its price is higher than the rest of the disks both of the brand and of 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, 128 MB cache and are designed for 24 × 7 operation in data centers, so they are also suitable for use in NAS or in PCs that require a constant high performance from them. They are your best option in all areas … except for the price.
WD Black
WD Black 6 TB
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EUR
279.99
The WD Black family of hard drives has been on the market for a long time, and they were also the top performers in the performance rankings for a long time. Right now they are the second fastest disk, with up to 160 MB / s of reading and 198 MB / s of writing, but although their performance is slightly higher than the WD Gold we have put them later because they are still desktop disks , so they do not have as many IOPS nor are they prepared to operate during 24 × 7 or for high workloads. Of course, they are quite cheaper in general.
WD Red Pro NAS
WD Red Pro NAS 6 TB
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EUR
251.99
The WD Red hard drive family is the top seller for NAS as they provide a good balance between performance, capacity and price. The WD Red Pro NAS series are the variant of these drives with CMR technology (instead of SMR), so although they share the same approximate performance they give less problems in RAID systems and their performance does not deteriorate with prolonged and demanding use.
According to UserBenchmark data, these drives hit 171MB / s read and 176MB / s actual write, so we will 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
HGST DeskStar NAS 4 TB
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EUR
455.00
According to the data that BackBlaze publishes each year, HGST discs are the most reliable in the sense that they have the least damage. This DeskStar NAS series from HGST is also designed for 24 × 7 operation so its durability is more than guaranteed, as well as providing more than decent performance with up to 167 MB / s read and 173 MB / s write speed .
Hitachi (HGST) UltraStar He8
Hitachi UltraStar He8 8 TB
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EUR
421.79
The Hitachi Ultrastar He8 series is the brand’s enterprise range, which means increased reliability, durability, warranty and bandwidth in the form of IOPS to support high workloads. These discs are also sealed with helium, which greatly increases their longevity. These disks also provide a very stable and fast sustained performance, reaching 160 MB / s read speed and 162 MB / s write speed.
Seagate IronWolf NAS
Seagate IronWolf NAS 4 TB
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EUR
118.00
The IronWolf family was Seagate’s alternative to the famous WD Reds, and they have proven to have superior durability and reliability according to BackBlaze data. Mind you, they are a bit slower with speeds of 161MB / s read and 159MB / s write, but still rank among the fastest hard drives on the market.
Western Digital Velociraptor
Western Digital Velociraptor 1 TB
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EUR
327.95
In the past, WD Velociraptors were launched as the fastest alternative that existed before the advent of SSDs. Interestingly, we are looking at hard drives that actually have a 2.5-inch form factor but that the manufacturer integrated them into a huge 3.5-inch passive heatsink.
They rotate at 10,000 RPM, they are noisy and their maximum capacity is currently 1 TB, but we cannot ignore in a performance classification that they are still among the fastest with 174 MB / s read and 159 MB / s write (yes we compared this with the disks of the time that barely reached 90 MB / s, of course they were a revolution).
Toshiba P300
Toshiba P300 6 TB
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EUR
144.21
In this case, we are facing one of the most reasonable discs on the market, because although they are not the fastest or the most reliable, they are the ones with the best price-per-GB ratio on the market and, even so, they maintain a good rate of performance with up to 158 MB / s of reading and 158 MB / s of writing, so if you are looking for a disk with good performance and good capacity spending the bare minimum, this is your best option.
Of course, keep in mind that these mechanical disks are not designed for 24 × 7 operation or for high workloads, but are intended to serve as mass storage as secondary disk of a PC.
