new to NAS looking at 214 and need to know what drives are best to use

[rmacbeth]

 I looking to buy a RN214 NAS that does not come with drives and I would like some advice on what brand and type of drives to put into it.   I will be running 2 Mac's that also run Parallels 12 on them with Windows 10 pro along with MacOS images.  Also I have another desktop running Win 10 Pro. My iMac is also a server running a website.  I will need to use it for backups, cloud services, access to dropbox, I also run multiple iPad's iphones and multimedia devices including a apple tv, and fire-tv and roku etc.

Also I like to know what Raid would be best to use

Thanks

Rich

[JBDragon1 · Accepted solution]

I've had really good luck with the WD Red Drives.    I'm using 4 of the 3TB versions of them currantly, the oldest over 4 years old now and still slowing zero errors.  The slower drives are more then fast enough, especally for the 214.  Your limitation is your network speed and not the drives themsevles.  The slower drives will not only run cooler, but will be quiter.  In general there's only the single fan in the back cooling everything.  I think Less heat = longer laster HDD.  You do wany to use a NAS HDD,  not just throw any old thing in.  

I would get the LARGEST HDD you can afford.  I would go 2 4TB HDD over 4 2TB HDD.  Just for the simple fact that you can never have enough space.  You think 8TB is more then you ever need and then you about MAX is out and think, darn should have got a larger HDD.  Why be stuck at 8 when you can go to 16TB!!!

I upgraded my NAS from a 4 bay Home unit to a 6 bay ReadyNAS 516.  I currantly have the 4 WD 3TB Red drives in it that I moved from my old NAS having to reformat them for the new NAS, plus a new 3TB Seagate NAS drive I'm giving a try with plus a spare I can pop in at any time.  Those 5 3TB drives give me a total space of 10.9TB in a XRAID5 format.  I'm down to 1.3TB now,  but I have space for that 6th drive.  After that I can expand to larger HDD.  Start popping in 6 or 8TB sized HDD and grow that way.  But to make use of that extra space I would need to add 2 larger drives.   Not at once of course, but pull one, let the system rebuild onto the new larger HDD and when done, rebuild onto the 2nd larger HDD, at which point I belieave it would expand to add the extra space of those drives.  I'm not 100% sure as I've never done that.  I think that's what happens with XRAID.  I beleave you can expand UP, but not down.

[cpu8088]

just check hard drives compatibility list

for me i go for performance and reliability so wd re is my priority

for cheap i go with toshiba mg04 series

[StephenB]

WD Red Pro is another option with enterprise specs.

I like WD Red myself.  Though they don't have enterprise specs I have found them reliable and they run cool.

[JBDragon1 · Accepted solution]

I've had really good luck with the WD Red Drives.    I'm using 4 of the 3TB versions of them currantly, the oldest over 4 years old now and still slowing zero errors.  The slower drives are more then fast enough, especally for the 214.  Your limitation is your network speed and not the drives themsevles.  The slower drives will not only run cooler, but will be quiter.  In general there's only the single fan in the back cooling everything.  I think Less heat = longer laster HDD.  You do wany to use a NAS HDD,  not just throw any old thing in.  

I would get the LARGEST HDD you can afford.  I would go 2 4TB HDD over 4 2TB HDD.  Just for the simple fact that you can never have enough space.  You think 8TB is more then you ever need and then you about MAX is out and think, darn should have got a larger HDD.  Why be stuck at 8 when you can go to 16TB!!!

I upgraded my NAS from a 4 bay Home unit to a 6 bay ReadyNAS 516.  I currantly have the 4 WD 3TB Red drives in it that I moved from my old NAS having to reformat them for the new NAS, plus a new 3TB Seagate NAS drive I'm giving a try with plus a spare I can pop in at any time.  Those 5 3TB drives give me a total space of 10.9TB in a XRAID5 format.  I'm down to 1.3TB now,  but I have space for that 6th drive.  After that I can expand to larger HDD.  Start popping in 6 or 8TB sized HDD and grow that way.  But to make use of that extra space I would need to add 2 larger drives.   Not at once of course, but pull one, let the system rebuild onto the new larger HDD and when done, rebuild onto the 2nd larger HDD, at which point I belieave it would expand to add the extra space of those drives.  I'm not 100% sure as I've never done that.  I think that's what happens with XRAID.  I beleave you can expand UP, but not down.

[StephenB]

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@JBDragon1 wrote:

I would get the LARGEST HDD you can afford.  I would go 2 4TB HDD over 4 2TB HDD.  Just for the simple fact that you can never have enough space.  You think 8TB is more then you ever need and then you about MAX is out and think, darn should have got a larger HDD.  Why be stuck at 8 when you can go to 16TB!!!

Most new users do underestimate the space they'll want.

3 TB and 4 TB drives are the most cost-effective at the moment (in the case of WDC Red's they cost about $35/TB).  Other sizes (larger and smaller) cost more per TB. So I also don't recommend 4x2TB.

Since I didn't know the space needed, I guessed 6 TB was the minimum, and suggested 3x4TB because that gives 8. Starting with 8 TB, with easy expansion to 12 TB seems reasonable.

If you have a lot of video you could also start with 2x6TB.  That would be the same total price as 3x4TB.  You'd only get 6 TB initially, but you'd have 2 empty slots for future expansion.  That's convenient because you install a larger drive pair later if you want (for example 2x6TB+2x8TB, giving you 20TB of storage). 

[JBDragon1]

Makes sense and is why I've been going with 3TB WD Red drives myself.  Having the 516, I have room for 6 drives, which makes things nice.  I have 5 slots filled and a new HDD still sitting it it's box ready to install when I need it.  No need to put wear and tear on it until I'm close enough to need the space.  I hope when the time comes that I need more room, I can expand by installing 6TB HDD's and the prices will have dropped to where the 3TB prices are now as the 8TB and larger drives start to comeout.  It just takes time.   I still remember paying over $500 for my first HDD, which was a 40 Meg SCSI drive and that was a deal at the time, used on my Amiga computer. Now we're past Meg's, and Gig's and into Terabytes.  It's simply amazing.

[StephenB]

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@JBDragon1 wrote:

 I still remember paying over $500 for my first HDD, which was a 40 Meg SCSI drive and that was a deal at the time, used on my Amiga computer. Now we're past Meg's, and Gig's and into Terabytes.  It's simply amazing. 

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It is amazing.  Storage has expanded faster than Moore's law (even outpacing CPUs).

My first home drive was ~100 MB - I don't recall what I paid for it, but a lot of storage in its day.

Then there were these puppies:  almost 10 MB in a removable platter about the size of the starship enterprise.  It took 5 minutes to spin them up after power on.

[JBDragon1]

Still better then real to real or punch cards!!!  It's amazing how far we've come and at such low enough prices that people can afford to buy.  

[StephenB]

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@JBDragon1 wrote:

 It's amazing how far we've come and at such low enough prices that people can afford to buy.  

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Totally agree.

[rmacbeth]

Even so memory is even cheaper then data drives now.  I remember in the late 70's 1 k was over $1000 (iron core). I build my first computer in the late 60's and that was just a binary computer for use with assembly language  

[StephenB]

I think overall RAM capacity has kept pace with Moore's Law (though of course Core Memory was a different beast completely).  

Disks have historically outpaced Moore's Law, but the slow transistion from PMR to HAMR has slowed down capacity increases right now.

Though of course Moore's Law (and Kryder's Law) aren't laws at all, and at some point the barriers of the real laws of physics will kick in.

[JBDragon1]

It may have slowed down I guess, but we're now up to 10TB HDD's now already!!!  That's just out of this world crazy.  That didn't take long to get from 3TB, and 4TB, and jumped to 6TB and 8TB, then 10TB in no time flat.   Which is great, because it means by the time I need to buy new HDD, I could double the size from 3TB to 6TB at a resonable price point.  I'm thinking it'll be in the 12-14TB sizes by the time I'm ready to upgrade.  I want to stick to around $100-$150 price point.  I think in a year or so a 6TB WD Red drive will be in that price range.  

[mdgm-ntgr]

At some point practical limits for models will be reached. We can't know for sure whether capacities will work with models till the disks are available.