NAS Not all drives are equal - choosing the right drive for you

[mdgm-ntgr]

One of the most important decisions you will make when purchasing a NAS is the decision as to which drives to purchase to put in it. Indeed depending on which NAS model and which drives you buy you can spend more (or almost as much) on disks as you spend on the NAS itself. It is vital that you get this decision right.

We have a hard disk compatibility list for you to choose drives from: http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/20641

Whether the drive has Rotational Vibration Safeguard, the warranty length and the price of the drive can give an initial indication as to the quality of the drive.

Particularly in desktop models with large numbers of drive bays and in rackmount models, Rotational Vibration Safeguard is important. Indeed in the 12-bay models it is essential.

Drives pitched at consumers tend to have shorter warranties. Drives targeted at business users tend to have longer warranties and be designed to handle heavy 24x7 use.

If the NAS is used for primary storage then considering backup storage as well is important. What drives will you use in e.g. a backup NAS?

Budget and capacity requirements are important considerations. Should you go with lower capacity enterprise drives or higher capacity drives targeted at consumers?

Drive choice is very much a personal choice. I would recommend that when you do narrow it down to a handful of options that you may wish to purchase that you do a search for them e.g. using Google and take a look at reviews for the drives to see how other users have found them. Some drives have lower failure rates than others.

If you need help with selecting the right drive for you please ask and the community will be happy to assist.

Do you have any tips for drive selection or an experience you'd like to share or do you have a question about choosing drives for your NAS? Please comment below.

[StephenB]

In general the new NAS-purposed drives from both Seagate and Western Digital are worth a look, and are (in my opinon) better choices than consumer desktop drives - particularly the "green" ones.

Also, if you are particularly bothered by noise (or if the NAS is in a location where noise is bothersome), then you should look for drives that run cooler, and also check the acoustic specs on the drive datasheet.

Searching this forum on specific drive models is a good idea (and you can do that with google if you add site:readynas.com to the google search string).

[CharlesR]

I believe Netgear should work in reverse by emphasizing a non compatible list. Which by default would make available which drives do in fact work.

Today there are very few hard drive vendors and their lines are reduced as well. Easily broken into categories and I'm guessing one "series" performs virtually the same which greatly reduces the testing variables. Same for the various NAS models... will the 314 really handle drives differently than the 316? I understand they might support different RAID options but on a lower level are the drives really treated differently...

I think a non approved list is much more valuable than an approved list. You are still going to have an approved list via the drives that are tested and don't fail. So those who want to play the game according to the rules can as in the past. Netgear can even continue to dismiss those who don't if they deem.

However a good chunk of users who blindly guess at what drive they will purchase will know what to avoid. By only listing drives that are certified Netgear to some degree is endorsing all of the others (by default). They may or may not work... take your chances.

Now you can pick the above apart if you wish as I really only have two points.

I see no excuse for not testing the majority of available drives.
Each of their results should be published as passed or failed.

The user can decide if increased warranty and other side issues are important to them. Simply let them know if the drive works or doesn't.

[StephenB]

CharlesR wrote:
I believe Netgear should work in reverse by emphasizing a non compatible list. Which by default would make available which drives do in fact work.

There is a middle ground here too. Identify some disk drive families that are supported until proven that they are suspect (e.g.,all the NAS-purposed and enterprise-grade drives). Then consumers would have current and safe choices, and Netgear would still have the ability to test consumer drives, SSDs, the new "cold storage" drives.

I'd agree that the disk manufacturers are winnowed down, which should help. But there are newer technologies (SSDs and SMR) that could have issues with the NAS - and there's probably sound reasons to test green drives carefully.

[BaJohn]

StephenB wrote:
In general the new NAS-purposed drives from both Seagate and Western Digital are worth a look, and are (in my opinon) better choices than consumer desktop drives - particularly the "green" ones.).

Sorry for being a pedant, the above statement appears ambiguous to me 😮
Are the 'green ones' the "better choices" or the "consumer desktop drives" (and hence to be avoided)?

[mdgm-ntgr]

No. The NAS drives are the better choices. The green ones are "consumer desktop drives" and to be avoided. Green disks have energy saving features which are great for some uses but not for NAS use. The NAS needs to control when disks spin down etc.

[meverz]

I thing to keep in mind when choosing drives, is the size of the drive. A Larger drive means longer rebuild times, and therefore an increased risk of errors during a rebuild. That's why I choose 3TB drives for my RN104, and it still takes the best part of a full day to rebuild when replacing a disk.

[mdgm-ntgr]

Longer rebuild times or not, backups are still important. If you have another copy or two of your data elsewhere, if you do happen to have e.g. multiple disk failures then you should still be O.K.

[nsne]

No, not all drives are equal, but there's a good chance they come with high-quality NSA spyware.

[eton]

backblaze.com — What Hard Drive Should I Buy?
backblaze.com — Hard Drive Reliability Update – Sep 2014
backblaze.com — Hard Drive Reliability Stats for Q1 2015

Hitachi for the win!

Hitachi Drives Used by Backblaze				
				
Model                         Size	 n	   ~y    Fail
	            		
Hitachi GST Deskstar 7K2000	2.0TB	4716	2.9	1.1%
(HDS722020ALA330)				
Hitachi GST Deskstar 5K3000	3.0TB	4592	1.7	0.9%
(HDS5C3030ALA630)				
Hitachi Deskstar 5K4000	    4.0TB	2587	0.8	1.5%
(HDS5C4040ALE630)				
Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000	    3.0TB	1027	2.1	0.9%
(HDS723030ALA640)				

[cpu8088]

u may notice that backblaze used a lot of desktop and low end drives. also those drives were operating at around 35 degree c in an air conditioned room

in real world hd housed in a nas may operate around 40 degree c or higher.

so their reviews cannot be taken as the norm.

[StephenB]

cpu8088 wrote:
u may notice that backblaze used a lot of desktop and low end drives. also those drives were operating at around 35 degree c in an air conditioned room in real world hd housed in a nas may operate around 40 degree c or higher. so their reviews cannot be taken as the norm.

Backblaze definitely is looking for the least expensive drives.

I agree their environment might make comparisons with ReadyNAS misleading. For instance, they are running 45 drives in each of their storage pods - a very different setup than a home NAS.

[eton]

StephenB wrote:

cpu8088 wrote: u may notice that backblaze used a lot of desktop and low end drives. also those drives were operating at around 35 degree c in an air conditioned room in real world hd housed in a nas may operate around 40 degree c or higher. so their reviews cannot be taken as the norm. Backblaze definitely is looking for the least expensive drives. I agree their environment might make comparisons with ReadyNAS misleading. For instance, they are running 45 drives in each of their storage pods - a very different setup than a home NAS.

Logic?

Backblaze has got quantitative data. If a drive survives there, it will most likely survive in any home nas setup.

And btw, if your nas drives reaches 40 C and above, get a better fan pronto.

[StephenB]

eton wrote:
Backblaze has got quantitative data. If a drive survives there, it will most likely survive in any home nas setup.

And drives that fail there might be fine in a home setup.

eton wrote:
And btw, if your nas drives reaches 40 C and above, get a better fan pronto.

Of course replacing the fan will void your warranty. BTW, mine run cooler than that.

[itsjasper]

eton wrote:
And btw, if your nas drives reaches 40 C and above, get a better fan pronto.

Without knowing the drive's general operating temperature range, number of drives in NAS or ambient temperature, this advice becomes less reliable.

e.g.: My Pro 6 with 6 x Hitachi 4TB DeskStar 7200rpm, happily running without issue for 3 years with drive temps between 42-48 degrees C: in ambient temps ranging from 15 degrees to 40 degrees. System Fan was generally sitting at no more than 1293 rpm.

The issue for me was more to do with the ambient temperature becoming too hot in my room during hot summer months with the extra heat output. Switching to Seagate 5900rpm 4TB NAS drives dropped the drive temps to 33-37 degrees C.

[cpu8088]

5x00 rpm drives will run cooler than 7x00 rpm drives

as long as the temp not over 46 degree c should be ok. good drives can withstand to 55 degree c.

[StephenB]

There's an interesting study focused particularly on drive temps and failure rates here: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~gurumurthi/ ... mtos13.pdf

Figure 5 shows that drive failure rate climbs steadily as the average drive temperature rises. The figure suggests that the ideal drive temperature range is ~27-33C.

[cpu8088]

"""The figure suggests that the ideal drive temperature range is ~27-33C."""

yea with ambient room temp at 30 C can u tell me which readynas can maintain hd temp at 27-33C?  i mean without air conditioner running.

[StephenB]

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@cpu8088 wrote:

"""The figure suggests that the ideal drive temperature range is ~27-33C."""

yea with ambient room temp at 30 C can u tell me which readynas can maintain hd temp at 27-33C?  i mean without air conditioner running.

---

As I'm sure you know, the readynas internal temp will always be ambient or higher.

Figure 5 in the link shows the impact of higher temps on disk failure rates as measured in the study. You can dismiss that data, or act on it - your choice.  

Personally I've chosen WDC Reds partly because they are low in power consumption, and therefore run cooler.  Most of my NAS are in my basement - not air conditioned, but usually cool even in summer.  One is in my home office- in the summer the room air conditioner there is set to 30C when I am not working there.  Disk spindown is also enabled.

Overall, disk temps might sometimes creep into the mid-30s, but generally they stay below 33C.

FWIW, I do wish Netgear would provide some knobs in the fan control, allowing people with power-hungry drives to run the fans more aggressively.

[jtp64]

I have the ReadyNASRND2000, NASDuo, with 2x1TB Seagate Drives running RAID1. So it is an older NAS but still functioning well.  I am at capacity would like to replace the 1TB drives with 2x3TB drives but the compatabibility chart only shows 2TB drives as "compatiable". In addition several of the drives are older drives in the list as tested. Do you all know if it really matters or should any reliable 3TB drive should work?

Thanks

Jeff

[StephenB]

NAS that run 4.1.x firmware are limited to 2 TB drives.  Larger drives won't work.

[jtp64]

Thanks for the info.

Jeff