NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Best Place to Buy Hard Drives?
I am looking to replace my RN424 with something newer that is supported. To this end, where is the best place to buy hard drives?
FURRYe38 wrote:
Places like newegg, amazon, I've got good drives from for NAS. I prefer the Western Digital RED drives for my NAS.
Be a little careful here. WD started shipping SMR drives for some of the WD Reds, and those particular drives aren't good options for ReadyNAS. There was a lot of pushback, and WD ended up re-branding their CMR Red drives as WD Red Plus. More recently they stopped selling WD Reds. However, there might be old inventory still, and you don't want to purchase one of these older SMR models.
The saga there is still on-going, a recent article is here:
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/wd-launches-investigation-into-problems-with-its-smr-hard-drives-the-same-drives-that-got-wd-sued-in-2021-now-reporting-failure-rates-due-to-fundamental-flaws
Today the SMR/CMR technology info is included on WD and Seagate datasheets (and Toshiba also), so you can double-check the technology prior to purchase if you are worried you might get one of these older drives.
For a long time I used WD Reds exclusively, but more recently have begun mixing in some Ironwolf. I've had no problems with either (or with mixing them). So now I look at both, and purchase whatever is less expensive at the time.
Interesting. Had not known of varients to RED drives. Last set I bought was a couple of years ago, 4Tb drives. Working. Hopefully there not SMRs. Will keep this in mind. There a cost jump to Ironwolf drives?
There a cost jump to Ironwolf drives?
They are pretty close most of the time - sometimes IronWolf is cheaper, other times Red Plus are cheaper.
At the moment, US Amazon prices are
- 8 TB Red Plus (WD80EFPX) for $168.75 (marked down from $194.99)
- 8 TB IronWolf (ST8000VNZ04) is $179.00
Though these prices are very fluid/dynamic.
Thats not too bad. Been using 4Tb drives so maybe a bit cheaper.
Do these work in RND4000s?
Do these work in RND4000s?
The original NV+ (running 4.1.x firmware) has a limitation of 2 TB drives
The NV+ v2 (running 5.3.x firmware) can handle larger drives, but has some expansion limitations on volume size. Volumes cannot expand over the 16 TiB limit (and that includes scenarios when you do a factory reset with mixed size drives). But I believe it can handle the case when you do a factory reset with 4x8TB in place. I know for certain that works with 4.2.x firmware, but I've never owned a 5.3.x NAS.
The problem is that the 4.2.x and 5.3.x systems will use 32 bit inodes if the initial RAID group is less than 16 TiB. That can't be changed once the file system is created, and you need 64 bit inodes for volumes bigger than 16 TiB.
There is also a max expansion of 8 TiB from the original volume size, and with 4.2.x systems you cannot vertically expand if your starting volume is bigger than 16 TiB. I am not certain if that last constraint applies to 5.3.x or not, but believe it does.
OS-6 doesn't have any of these limitations, and there is no known limit on the disk size.
Been using 4Tb drives so maybe a bit cheaper.
~$99 for Red Plus, and for ~$105 for IronWolf at the moment.
FWIW, a lot of smaller sizes are starting to disappear as bigger NVME drives gain more traction. Both Seagate and WDC have dropped 1 TB NAS-purposed drives. Others remain on their datasheets, but can be hard to find.
And both vendors are starting to sell larger sizes only in their Pro lines. I think that is because the cost to manufacture the Pro models is essentially the same as the non-enterprise grade versions.
NETGEAR Academy
Boost your skills with the Netgear Academy - Get trained, certified and stay ahead with the latest Netgear technology!
Join Us!
