Best large capacity 14TB+ drive for NAS

pioneer2000 · 5 Jul 2021 at 12:13

Seagate Exos 16TB (£368) seems to be the most keenly priced hard drive as of late (vs Ironwolf's / Red's etc.)

Apart from that an 18TB elements (£375) is similarly priced, though obvs what one gains in capacity is losing in durability / reliability and performance.

Any other drives worth considering?

Thanks

Cyber-Mav · 5 Jul 2021 at 13:48

Shuck a drive?

pioneer2000 · 5 Jul 2021 at 14:36

Sure, but like I say an equivalent elements drive is not massively cheaper and is less reliable / less warranty / worse performance?

Steviepunk · 9 Jul 2021 at 18:07

I don't believe a shucked Elements HDD is any less reliable than buying a Red, nor would the performance be noticeably different on NAS use (from what I'd heard, the white label drives in the Elements are pretty much the same as a Red), I believe the only notable difference would be the warranty, so if one does fail it might be harder to get a replacement.

If buying an Exos, Red or Ironwolf is the same price as an Elements, then I'd go with the new 'proper' drive - however depending on how quickly you need to get your NAS in place, waiting for a deal on Elements would provide far greater cost savings than you will get on the branded ones. On Black Friday last year I managed to get 4 x 14TB Elements for ~£180/190 each and these have been in my NAS without any issue since (vs around £350 for a branded one, that was a saving of around £600). I would say that the white label drives from the Elements run noticeably quieter than the Ironwolf drives I had previously, so could be factor if your NAS is going be sitting close to you when you work