Seagate IronWolf Pro 8TB SATA3

Background on Hard Disk Drives

Traditional hard drives operate by storing data on one or more spinning metal disks, called platters. The more platters there are in a drive, and the more data that can be crammed onto each platter, is what determines the overall storage capacity of a given hard drive. Having more platters also tends to mean louder drives, though rotational speed affects that as well. Rotational speed also impacts the drive's performance: if platters spin faster the drive can reach data in different areas more quickly and read or write more information per second.

The alternative to hard drives is solid state drives, which are many times faster but much more expensive for the same amount of capacity. The price gap is dropping over time, so SSDs are becoming more and more preferred for us. For performance, reliability, and noise reduction, SSDs are really the way to go.