I have about 800 gigs of audio files - albums and audiobooks stored on a one terabyte WD Black SATA drive.
Like many, I have lost my share of data over the years to failed drives.

Recently I copied all that stuff to a new drive for use/access, and put the WD away as backup, because I don't want to continue wearing it out with no backup.

Who do I look to for a drive with decent reliability, and can I get a model recommendation?

I can use SATA-III, I'm planning on running an internal drive and I'm undecided as to whether it's worth chancing a 2-tera drive yet or not.

Also, a lot of my audiobooks are compressed to mp3.
Are there any favorites for a player client that won't decide to rearrange my audio file preferences, or garble the database?

Recommendations/Help?

Thanks for any time you take and/or info you post.

This is the most informative reporting that I'm aware of on the topic.  They're a cloud storage company that reports their HDD failure rates.  HGST and Toshiba have been the most reliable, but the drives that they use are considerably more expensive than those companies' consumer-class drives.  Still, if reliability is extremely important to you, it's probably worth the extra $$$.

Came here to post the same link.  HGST drives for me.  No question.  Raided on my NAS, I'd say just about the only way I'll lose data is if the house burns down.

get a 2 HDD RAID 1. I like HGST HDDs, WDs are good also.

Thanks, guys.

I really appreciate the info and help.

Oddball suggestion but something like amazon glacier (or similar) could come in handy if you want a backup of your backup offsite.

Unless I'm reading incorrectly amazon glacier would be relatively cheap for your use case and while it's a slight PITA to access your data it is designed for long term secure storage. Just a thought. glacier pricing. I know some aren't a fan of online backups but for non sensitive data like audio/books it isn't a bad idea and it will prevent loss via theft, natural disaster, or technical failure.

it is 800 gb, burn it to blue ray.
about 30 discs.

raid and nas storage is not a backup.

cloud storage can crash.

... and writable optical media is subject to bit-rot. No single answer is perfect. 

I have a Synology 216j with twin Toshiba 6 TB storage for my private cloud.

Synology 216j