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HDD: HGST
HMS5C4040BLE640

Description: MegaScale 4TB SATA3 NAS
Standards: SATA3 (6GB/s), 512e, NAS, MegaScale, SMART command transport, CoolSpin, TFC, DSA, RVS, APM

This is likely the most reliable 4TB hard drive in the world. The same drive also sells under the Hitachi and WD brand names. It is a NAS drive, yet costs about the same as an ordinary desktop PC drive, and is easily configured for a PC. It was engineered for demands of up to 180TB reads/writes per year. (see datasheet at brochure link above)

The truth about hard drive reliability is impossible to get out of any reviewer that gets paid by advertisers. Instead, you must look at drive replacement statistics at a huge data bank.

Black Blaze Statistics paint an unmistakable picture...

The final column is what's important. "AFR" means "average failure rate". Look for a very small AFR wherever there is a very large drive count. It takes a lot of drives to produce an accurate AFR.

What you are looking at is over 14 thousand of these hard drives in use at one organization, failing at a rate of 0.36% per year. That's incredible.

Seagate has 6 times as many returns.

8TB Seagate show improvements, but you should keep in mind that many of those drives were more recently installed.

There are other good drives out there, but it takes so much data to be processed before really knowing one from another. This method here cuts right through an ocean of uncertainty.