Storage

[Leonardo_B]

I planing on buying two Hard Disk drives . One for gamming and one for backups. I will also end up eventually buying another nvme drive for the game i play most offten. I have msi aegis zs2 that has a amd ryzen 7 8700f 16gb of ram and a xfx rx 9060 xt 16 gb. I am currently running fedora 43 cinnamon . For the last 4 years on all my desktops i have run fedora and will keep running fedora into the future. What brand of Hard Disk drives would you recommend me buy and what sizes? I always want two backups of my operating system.

 

[kc1di]

I have 1 TB liteon ssd that has worked well for me for backups.

 

[GatorsFan]

I use an AirDisk 1TB SSD for my main drive

 

[KGIII]

I've come to appreciate TeamGroup. They're budget-friendly, and I haven't had any failures.

 

[MikeRocor]

I bought a 4 TB USB 3 external hard drive and popped it into an computer that's used mainly for backups so that I could consolidate the data from a bunch of old HDDs and then retire said old HDDs. I actually pulled the little SATA drive out of the USB enclosure and put directly into the "backup server".

But then, with the retirement of those old HDDs, I still didn't have redundant backup of a whole lot of data. But to what does one backup a 4TB drive? To another identical drive, of course. So, when my daily driver needed a new HDD, I picked up another such external HDD to serve as a "mutual backup" to the one in the backup server. The newer one remains in its USB enclosure, primarily because I don't want to break the laptop trying to get it open - and no, booting from a USB HDD does not seem to hamper performance noticeably.

It may no longer be an issue, but I long ago developed a lack of confidence in WD hard disks so I stick with Seagate drives. For all I know, they might nowadays be made in the same factory, but the Seagates only cost about five dollars more so, for me, Seagate it is.

I have very limited experience with SSDs, so no opinion there.

(And no, I don't store anything in "the cloud".)

 

[Brickwizard]

Both my Del laptop and HP desktop have NVMe3 primary drives, nothing extra in the laptop as no room, the HP has a Seagate 500gb for local storage, all my important and personal stuff is backed up to a M2B SATA SSD in an external Cady with usb3 adaptor,I do not use the cloud for anything

 

[kibasnowpaw]

If your goal is “one big game library disk + a separate backup disk, and I want two independent OS backups,” I’d think about it in terms of workload and failure domains more than brand loyalty.

For HDD brands, the safe choices in 2026 are still the usual three: Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba. I’d pick from their NAS / performance lines rather than the very cheapest “desktop” drives, because they tend to behave better under longer sustained reads/writes and are generally built for heavier duty cycles. Examples that are consistently reasonable: WD Red Plus / WD Ultrastar (if you can find them at a good price), Seagate IronWolf / Exos, or Toshiba N300/X300. The exact model matters more than the logo avoid “SMR” drives for anything you care about (especially backups), and aim for “CMR” drives.

Sizes: for a “gaming HDD,” I’d start at 4 TB minimum, and 8 TB is usually the sweet spot if you install a lot and don’t want to play storage Tetris. That said, the best “gaming” experience is still NVMe for the games you actually play often (which you already plan), and then the HDD becomes the cold/medium storage for the rest of your library.

For the backup disk, I’d go bigger than you think you need. If you want two OS backups plus personal files plus growth, 8 TB is a good baseline; 12–16 TB if you keep a lot of games/media or you want to keep multiple historical snapshots. A common rule is “backup capacity = at least 2× what you plan to store,” because versioned backups grow fast.

On “two backups of my operating system”: don’t just keep two copies on the same backup drive. Two backups that share the same physical disk are still one point of failure. A solid setup is:

• one local backup (external HDD or internal backup HDD),
• one second copy on a different device (another external drive rotated, or a NAS, or cloud), even if it’s updated less often.

Since you’re on Fedora, you can make this clean:

• Use Btrfs snapshots (Fedora often defaults to Btrfs) for quick rollback.
• Use a real backup tool (Borg, Restic, or similar) to a separate disk for “I can restore after the drive dies.”
• Optionally keep a periodic full image (Clonezilla or similar) if you like bare-metal restores.

 

[The Duck]

I've come to appreciate TeamGroup. They're budget-friendly, and I haven't had any failures.

Yeah they are A-Okay.

I bought a couple similar to these to replace HDDs in the family's computers and they are still working fine bout 5 years old.

Teamgroup L5 Lite 3D 480 GB Specs

480 GB, TLC, SATA 6 Gbps, 2.5"

www.techpowerup.com

 

[The Duck]

I use an AirDisk 1TB SSD for my main drive

I know someone who swears by them and buys them from ali express or temu for like almost nothing and I mean dirt cheap.

 

[KGIII]

Yeah they are A-Okay.

I first noticed them on Newegg. They were still 'new', but they had a solid reputation. Well, their flash drives had a good reputation. I tried a handful and had great results. That made me try their SSD offerings. They were also pretty good, so I've purchased some of them and more flash drives.

They weren't really new at the time, thus the quotes. The company has existed since the mid-90s. I didn't realize they existed until maybe a decade ago, maybe less. My lizard brain thinks it might have been 2018.

 

[Leonardo_B]

I end up buying a wd gold hdd 14t. Might be over kill for games and music but price per gb was better vs 12t and 10t in same brand. I could not find a segate exo in stock in my local microcenter and the barracuda i saw only go up to 8t at 5400rpm. It also give great comfort that box say that wd gold is compatible with linux . I have two 18inch sata 3 cables in red coming to connect the new harddrive. I bought two because I planing another sata 3 drive.

 

[kibasnowpaw]

I end up buying a wd gold hdd 14t. Might be over kill for games and music but price per gb was better vs 12t and 10t in same brand. I could not find a segate exo in stock in my local microcenter and the barracuda i saw only go up to 8t at 5400rpm. It also give great comfort that box say that wd gold is compatible with linux . I have two 18inch sata 3 cables in red coming to connect the new harddrive. I bought two because I planing another sata 3 drive.

then you should check out Seagate Exos enterprise the used to be cheaper pr gb have not really check price on HDD in some time so that my have change.

 

[Leonardo_B]

then you should check out Seagate Exos enterprise the used to be cheaper pr gb have not really check price on HDD in some time so that my have change.

Ya i don't plan on buying another hard disk unless this one fails early. I currently looking at ssds

 

[Leonardo_B]

i got the Wester digital harddrive install and it shows up. But it will not copy past or make folders . I already formated it to ext4

 

[kibasnowpaw]

i got the Wester digital harddrive install and it shows up. But it will not copy past or make folders . I already formated it to ext4

make sure you have right to the HDD

 

[Leonardo_B]

make sure you have right to the HDD

I fixed it . Open as root and change user. what do i need to edit so i do not require password for hard drive

 

[kibasnowpaw]

First run:

ls -ld /mountpoint

Replace /mountpoint with the actual path to your HDD. The fastest way is to open the drive in your file manager, go to the location bar, and copy the full path. Example:

/mnt/wwn-0x5000cca258c06033-part1/

Then run:

ls -ld /mnt/wwn-0x5000cca258c06033-part1/

You should see something like:

drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20480 Feb 1 16:49 /mnt/wwn-0x5000cca258c06033-part1/

If it shows root root, that is likely why you are being asked for a password. You need to change the ownership to your user.

Run:

sudo chown username:username /mountpoint

Example:

sudo chown kibasnowpaw:kibasnowpaw /mnt/wwn-0x5000cca258c06033-part1/

That should fix it.

if it don't work then im not really sure.

 

[Leonardo_B]

First run:

ls -ld /mountpoint

Replace /mountpoint with the actual path to your HDD. The fastest way is to open the drive in your file manager, go to the location bar, and copy the full path. Example:

/mnt/wwn-0x5000cca258c06033-part1/

Then run:

ls -ld /mnt/wwn-0x5000cca258c06033-part1/

You should see something like:

drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20480 Feb 1 16:49 /mnt/wwn-0x5000cca258c06033-part1/

If it shows root root, that is likely why you are being asked for a password. You need to change the ownership to your user.

Run:

sudo chown username:username /mountpoint

Example:

sudo chown kibasnowpaw:kibasnowpaw /mnt/wwn-0x5000cca258c06033-part1/

That should fix it.

if it don't work then im not really sure.

i actually fixed it in gnome disk. no more password required .

 

[kibasnowpaw]

Some question are you manually mounting the drive every time instead of auto-mounting it?

Because that makes a big difference. If you leave “User Session Defaults” enabled (or configure it to auto-mount at startup), the system mounts the drive automatically when you log in or when the PC starts. That means GNOME treats it as already trusted and you normally won’t get a password prompt. I’ve never had to change anything from /mnt to /run because my drives are auto-mounted, so I honestly didn’t think about that angle at first.

If you manually mount a drive especially if it is mounted under /mnt as a system/root mount GNOME may ask for a password. That’s not really about the folder name itself; it’s about how the drive is mounted and which permissions/policies apply.

Difference between /mnt and /run/media in practice:

/mnt is traditionally used for manual or administrator-style mounts. Many times these are mounted as root (via sudo, scripts, or manual commands). When GNOME sees a root-owned mount that wasn’t created as a user session mount, it may require authentication (polkit) for actions like mounting, unmounting, or accessing certain operations.

/run/media/username/... is the default location used by udisks (the GNOME mounting system). These mounts are tied to your logged-in user session. Ownership and permissions are automatically set for the active user, so normally no password is needed. The system assumes it belongs to you because it was mounted through the desktop session.

That’s why what I gave you with chown should still be valid for ext4 ext4 supports real Linux ownership but if the mount itself is handled through GNOME with authorization enabled, ownership alone won’t remove the password prompt. The mount policy still applies.

If you want to configure auto-mount using GNOME Disks (like in the screenshot):

Open GNOME Disks → select the partition → click the gear icon → “Edit Mount Options”.

Then:

• Disable “User Session Defaults”.
• Enable “Mount at system startup” (or automatic mounting).
• Make sure “Require additional authorization to mount” is OFF.
• Set a stable mount point if you want (for example /mnt/mydrive or another folder).
• Give it a clear name if needed so it’s easy to recognize.

After that, the system should mount it automatically without asking for a password, similar to how mine behaves.

So the main difference here is not really /mnt vs /run, but manual mount vs auto/user-session mount and whether polkit authorization is required.