The 5 Best Internal Hard Drives (2023) tested

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In the fast-paced world of today, speed is one of the most important things to look for in an internal hard drive. The speed of a hard drive’s rotation, which is recorded in RPM (Rotations Per Minute), is a big part of how well it works. Most of the time, you’ll find two common speeds: 7,200 RPM and 5,400 RPM. Even though there are speeds in between these two and even faster ones, these are the industry standards for fast and slow hard drives.

If you play games or use software editing programs that require you to read and write a lot of data, you should choose a faster RPM speed. The higher rotational speed makes it easier to get to info faster and improves performance overall. On the other hand, a 5,400 RPM drive is more than enough if you mostly use the hard drive to store files or do regular day-to-day jobs. Also, 5,400 RPM drives are often less expensive, which makes them a good choice in terms of cost. In the end, knowing what your exact needs are and how you plan to use the hard drive will help you choose the RPM speed that best fits your needs.

Best Internal Hard Drives Comparison Table

Product Name	Storage Capacity	Interface	Cache	Form Factor	RPM
Seagate BarraCuda	Varies	SATA	Up to 256MB	3.5-inch	5400-7200
Western Digital 6TB WD Blue	6TB	SATA	256MB	3.5-inch	5400-7200
Western Digital VelociRaptor	Varies	SATA	64MB	3.5-inch	10000-15000
Seagate IronWolf	Varies	SATA	Up to 256MB	3.5-inch	5400-7200
Western Digital My Book	Varies	USB 3.0/3.1	–	External	–

Seagate BarraCuda

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Product Name	Seagate BarraCuda
Storage Capacity	Varies (multiple options)
Interface	SATA
Cache	Up to 256MB
Form Factor	3.5-inch
RPM	5400-7200

It can be hard to pick the Best Internal Hard Drives out of a sea of good ones, especially since most research and development goes into making hard drives bigger instead of better. Still, the Seagate BarraCuda 2TB is a great hard drive because it strikes a good balance between price and speed.

At 7,200rpm, the BarraCuda is already at the top of the speed and performance range for HDDs. This means that sequential write speeds should be around 160MB/s. As for the price, the 2TB model costs around $50, depending on where you buy it. That’s less than three cents per gigabyte, which is a great deal considering how well it works.

Western Digital 6TB WD Blue

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Product Name	Western Digital 6TB WD Blue
Storage Capacity	6TB
Interface	SATA
Cache	256MB
Form Factor	3.5-inch
RPM	5400-7200

The Seagate BarraCuda’s main rival is the Western Digital WD Blue. The BarraCuda is great for low-cost performance, but the WD Blue is unbeatable when it comes to price per gigabyte. Depending on the store, the 6TB version costs around $110, which comes out to $0.018 per gigabyte. This is about 40% cheaper than the BarraCuda.

The trade-off is that it runs slower at 5,400 RPM, so you can expect read and write speeds of around 130MB/s. Even though that is much slower than the BarraCuda, it’s not that bad, especially if you only use it for simple storage or other low-speed chores. You shouldn’t run a game or editing software on it, but for most other uses, it should be sufficient.

Western Digital VelociRaptor

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Product Name	Western Digital VelociRaptor
Storage Capacity	Varies (multiple options)
Interface	SATA
Cache	64MB
Form Factor	3.5-inch
RPM	10000-15000

If you want the Best Internal Hard Drives speed in its class, the WD VelociRaptor is the way to go. Western Digital is a big name in the hard drive market, and their internal hard drives are one of their best-known products. There are several WD options—Blue for budget, Red for NAS, Black for speed, and Purple for surveillance—but the 10000 RPM VelociRaptor is the king of hard disk drives.

But this drive is expensive and only comes in smaller storage sizes. Plus, SSDs are still better than it. For example, the 2TB Kingston A400 SSD is about the same price as this drive and has twice as much room. This kind of drive no longer makes sense.

Seagate IronWolf

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Product Name	Seagate IronWolf
Storage Capacity	Varies (multiple options)
Interface	SATA
Cache	Up to 256MB
Form Factor	3.5-inch
RPM	5400-7200

What if you don’t need a place to store games but rather a place to keep all your important files? A NAS (network-attached storage) can help with this. You’ll need some hard drives to keep everything backed up, whether you build your own computer or buy one that’s already set up. And Seagate’s IronWolf is my choice for that.

These are great, and I run them on my own NAS. NAS drives are a little different from desktop-class HDDs because they’re made to run all the time and keep performing at a higher level. Seagate says that the IronWolf comes with a three-year guarantee and has storage sizes from 1TB to 16TB. There is also the IronWolf Pro line, which is more for professionals and business people.

Western Digital My Book

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Product Name	Western Digital My Book
Storage Capacity	Varies (multiple options)
Interface	USB 3.0/3.1
Form Factor	External
Security Features	Password Protection, Hardware Encryption
Included Software	WD Backup, WD Security, WD Drive Utilities

The Best Internal Hard Drives of game systems quickly fill up with huge libraries. Like laptops, 2.5-inch hard drives don’t have a lot of ways to update, but this is where an external drive comes in. The WD My Book is a great mix between storage space and price, and it has enough space for huge game libraries. It runs on USB 3.0 and might not be as fast as an internal drive update, but it will run games and give you more storage space for less money.

Since this is an external hard drive, you can even take your best games with you. Or, if you’re working on a big project that needs a certain amount of portability, the Western Digital My Book is also a great work storage device in a pinch because of its large capacity.

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