Hard Drive Recommendations for NAS

I have a Netgear Ready Nas Duo for my storage backup, and the original drives I installed are about 3-4 years old, so it's about time to replace them...

I'm looking at 2 - Seagate Barracuda 7200 3 TB 7200RPM SATA 6 Gb/s NCQ 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch to replace my old 1TB drives... Currently, they are $129 each on Amazon...

My NAS isn't the fastest thing in the world, and I don't really need it to be (I'm just a hobbyist)... I just need some reliable drives with decent capacities...

Any suggestions are welcome... Thanks in advanced...

Check out the Western Digital RED drives. They were designed specifically for NAS devices and, from the reviews I've read, seem to be well received. Not sure about pricing though. I'd imagine they are a bit more expensive since they are a "new" product.

just work on the theory that anything will fail, so have a good backup routine. Then buy the cheapest drives that'll fit the bill...

I have had 4 x 2tb WD green drives running in my server for 4 years. One drive has failed...but you should always expect some level of failure. RAID or backup just I case.

Cisobe, I have two of those 3TB Seagates in-service now. They are reasonably fast -- but not as fast as the Hitachis I own. The difference is pretty significant, about 20%. The Hitachis are considerably more expensive though; when I bought them they were at parity with the other options available and now the Seagates cost much less.

For the money they're decent drives and I haven't had any trouble with them. Expect all fixed disks to have some sort of failure rate and plan (and backup!) accordingly.

I do not yet have any of the REDs; those appear to slot price-wise somewhat higher. Most of the so-called "compatibility" claims for NAS are garbage -- an intelligent NAS (or RAID adapter) will shut off retries in the firmware, choosing instead to immediately report failed reads and writes and handle reallocation of the offending sector and/or posting an error (and rebuilding the pack, if it's a RAID array) on its own. I've yet to run into any modern drives that I'd be willing to run in a NAS system that don't respond to these requests -- IF the firmware issues them. A decent NAS (or RAID) system should do so -- if it doesn't the problem isn't the drive.

In short I like those Seagates, especially for the price. I've seen some negative reviews on early failures (or DOAs) but all appear to be head-crash style damage which implicates serious abuse during shipping, which isn't the drive's fault. Make sure your NAS can handle 3TB disks (not all can.)

Relatively inexpensive - WD Red. High end - Hitachi Ultrastar. Many techs also like the Hitachi Deskstar.

Ive got a ReadyNas Duo (V2) and have two WD Red drives in it. They are a bit slower than desktop drives but are designed for 24/7 operation so should be pretty reliable. Very quiet as well.

Another vote for the WD Reds.

Backblaze who use 10,000s of drives suggest Hitachi. They have had less issues with them. I use Hitachi drives in 2 NAS’s, no issues.

WD Reds.

dave_bass5 wrote in post #15547997
Ive got a ReadyNas Duo (V2) and have two WD Red drives in it. They are a bit slower than desktop drives but are designed for 24/7 operation so should be pretty reliable. Very quiet as well.

Their 5400rpm speed doesn't appear to be an issue NAS-performance-wise. See this review which shows performance against non-NAS-optimised disks: http://www.anandtech.c​om …ed-hdds-worth-the-premium

The Seagate Constellations are great for NAS systems as well. I have QNAP NAS systems running on my work network, all using Seagate Constellations in RAID 5 with no issues. As others have said, go for the WD Reds, or pretty much any enterprise drive from Seagate, Hitachi, etc..

TheDocAUS wrote in post #15550100
Backblaze who use 10,000s of drives suggest Hitachi. They have had less issues with them. I use Hitachi drives in 2 NAS’s, no issues.

Hitachi 3.5" is now Toshiba. Hitachi 2.5" and SSD are now Western Digital.

There are only 3 hard drive manufacturers left: WD, Seagate, and Toshiba.

(At least, according to Wikipedia, and they are NEVER wrong! )

Another vote for WD red drives. They are not all that much more expensive and designed for the task.

Rai33 wrote in post #15550136
WD Reds.


Their 5400rpm speed doesn't appear to be an issue NAS-performance-wise. See this review which shows performance against non-NAS-optimised disks: http://www.anandtech.c​om …ed-hdds-worth-the-premium

No, not an issue but thought it worth pointing out to the OP. some people will look at the figures and feel its a slow drive but like you say, the Reds are optimised for this sort of thing. I stream HD video from my NAS and never have any speed issues, and write speed to the NAS is around 60-70 MB/s so fast enough.

I've got Seagate 3TB drives in one of my NAS's (thinking the A651 model off hand, If you PM me I'll look and tell you exactly which ones). Which work fine, no problems at all.

Speed of the drives isn't nearly as much of a factor as the processor speed in your NAS.... If you seek more speed, get a faster box (which it doesn't seem like you). If nothing else once you get these drives you can get a faster box and more drives,

Last be sure that the drives you want to use are on your NAS's recommended drive list. If not you may have what THECUS likes to term an "UNSTABLE RAID", which doesn't mean it loses data, as much as it drops off line whenever it feels like it or will not be recognized by the NAS, etc..... Best to use recommended drives in matched sets.

Good luck

Mark H