SPCR

I have been using an 80GB system drive and a 120GB storage drive (both Seagate) for about 7 years now. They have served me well but I finally need some more space. I am leaning towards a 1TB drive which I will use for both system and storage of backups. 1TB will easily last me a decade, so I am looking for something very reliable. What would be a good choice for my scenario? I have read about the firmware and head parking issues of the latest hard drives but I'm confused as to what's reliable and what's not. There is a lot of conflicting information...

In general one consumer grade harddrive is never much more reliable than another. Sample variance is also a significant factor. Get two regular 1TB drives like for instance Samsung F3's and make backups now and then. Or a single drive together with some other backup solution.

I have also had a 80GB SATA for 4 years upgraded to a Samsung F3 1TB. Great disk. Fast and silent.

WD Blue are very reliable drives which do run always (unline WD Greens which spindown) and WD Blacks who have raw performance and are noisy.

Just get 2 drives. One for drive and one for backups.